ExpatGirl inspired this.
Here’s what’s going on in Arkansas:
The good news is that the walking lists are chock full of people that are persuadable. I have never encountered so many “Haven’t decided yet” responses when asked who they are voting for. But they are usually inclined toward voting for Democrats. Time after time I was able to turn “Undecided” to “Definitely voting for Mark Pryor.”
Today (Saturday 10/25) I had a list of 87 people at 54 different doors and out of that I must have had close to 20 people that initially indicated they were undecided.
Many were like the 34 y.o. mother with kids bouncing around behind her as I spoke to her in the door. When she said she was undecided I asked her what her big issues were. She was at first non-committal so I asked her about “choice.” She indicated that it was important to her. I told her that she absolutely needed to vote Democratic if she cared about a woman’s right to choose, which she agreed with. I told her about Tom Cotton’s vote to raise the retirement age to 70 and asked her if she wanted to work until she was 70. She agreed that she did not want to do that. I asked her about her husband, who was also on my list but not home at the time. She indicated that he usually votes Republican. By the time I left she firmly committed to get out and vote. I encouraged her to vote without her husband knowing that she had.
I eventually learned that NO ONE wants to work to 70 and that is a MAJOR motivator to get people to vote against Tom Cotton.
Then there were the retired people that indicated they would vote (older people will always tell you they are going to vote), but weren’t sure who they would vote for. I told them about Tom Cotton’s vote on Social Security and that he wanted to privatize SS. One woman indicated that that frightened her even though it wouldn't affect her. Most of the older people ended up agreeing that they would vote for Mark Pryor and Mike Ross (for Governor).
Then there was the musician who, despite being registered to vote, no longer believes in voting because it doesn't do any good. I persuaded him that with the Koch’s dropping $400 million into this race, that our only hope for democracy was to vote against money like that. By the end he thanked me for my hard work and promised that he would be sure to get out and vote for Pryor and Ross.
Analysis: I suspect that most of the undecideds are actually not all that excited about voting in this off-year election and were probably not going to vote. It is possible that a few of them were intending to vote for Tom Cotton and were reluctant to tell me that since I had identified myself as a Democrat. The screening that generated my list had done a good job of identifying people who would likely vote for Democrats who need a boost to actually vote.
The other reason driving their “undecided” status is the constant anti-Obama advertising here. They are considering not voting for Pryor, I learned, as a way of voting against Obama. I politely disagreed when I heard anti-Obama rhetoric. It was surprising just how successful a little push back from me on that issue seemed to disarm them and help them get over their Obamanoia. Most people don't hear reasonable people defending Obama around here.
Of course some people I considered to be successes will not actually vote, but I am very sure that some will, because I was there, and that convinces me that my time was well spent.
As an avid DailyKos reader, I can unequivocally say that we here at DK are extremely well prepared for this type of work. The people that are undecided are almost completely oblivious to things like the Koch brother's $400 million spending, and the importance of Mark Pryor winning this election. Every reason for voting against Mark Pryor is easily shot down if you are a regular here.
Now the bad news: I was one of less than a hand full of people that went canvassing out of that office today. They literally have stacks and stacks of lists of people that are from the exact same screening that created my list and those people are not going to be contacted before election day.
I talked with the staffers in the office and they indicate that a lot of people have said they will come out to work but haven’t and the staffers are very frustrated.
I often ran into strong Democrats that were definitely voting for our slate. I tried to recruit them to help with the door knocking. Two promised to come next week to knock on doors and another agreed to do some calling from home as she couldn't walk very well. I happened to have a call list in the car that I had already started on so I gave her a couple pages from that.
Still, there are many more votes that can be won here. If this election is close, and there is every reason to believe that it will be, we will have no one to blame but ourselves if Tom Cotton becomes the next Senator from Arkansas.
There are REAL VOTES to be gained, but we need more volunteers to get out there and do it. PLEASE, if you are in Arkansas, get out there. If you are elsewhere in the country, consider coming to Arkansas to help. Get phone lists to call. You have one more weekend to help out.
Notes to the people creating these lists:
1. The lists are very good as I indicate above. I did run into a few hard core Republicans, but I imagine it is impossible to screen all of them out.
2. I ran into a lot of people that had already voted. That was a big waste of my time. Some had voted in the last day or two, but a bunch of them indicated they had voted as much as a week ago which is plenty of time to have gotten them out of the target population.
3. The lists occasionally break a household over a page break. I will walk away from a house only to discover when I turn the page that I should have asked about the other person. Since people in the same household are separated by a dotted line instead of a solid line I know you can identify them by household. Obviously I can learn to deal with that detail, but a technological (programming) solution would make life easier for us volunteers.
4. It would be really nice if these lists could be uploaded into an Android app. I realize that is a tall order but I imagined being able to get a code for a walking list, uploading the list, and using the navigation feature on my Android to tell me when I was close to a house that was on my list. With three pages of names it always takes time to get my bearings in a neighborhood and discover where my doors are. The paper map really helps, but is still inadequate. If my names were numbered and then the map had the numbers on it, I could relate a name to a specific location and that would make life so much easier. I could easily do 25% more doors in the same amount of time with an app like that.
5. One more suggestion: The staffers tell me that they cannot track the people that I contacted. In other words, they cannot enter a code by the people I contact to identify that I contacted them. If they could, after election day, I could be told just how many of the people I contacted actually voted, and statistics could be generated to show me how that stacked up with what would have happened had I not been there. The actual amount of effort required to track that would be fleetingly small. On the data entry of my contacts, entering my name once could be propagated until my entire list was entered. It would be nice to know that I got 10 more votes for our guys - or whatever - as a result of my effort.