New Technology Helps Grassroots Efforts

Matt Stoller has an article up on the Nation magazine website about how new technology is helping improve the effectiveness of grassroots campaigning. This is a quote from the article about why television is losing influence as a campaign medium:

Since the 1960s, television has been the primary conduit for political information, with campaigns spending about 80 percent of their budget on media. But while broadcast television can reach millions of voters, it is, as Podhorzer notes, a dying medium. "The main thing that has changed is the heading to collapse of broadcast TV and heading to dominance of systematic, organized word of mouth and more targeted communication," he says. What's most promising about the shift from broadcast campaigns to those centered on "systematic, organized word of mouth" is the possibility of activating new voters, something TV has never been capable of doing. Political scientists Alan Gerber and Donald Green, experts on election turnout, conducted an experiment in 1998 with voters in New Haven, Connecticut, showing that person-to-person canvassing when the canvassers are ethnically and demographically matched to voters can increase turnout by 10 percent with a single contact and a nonpartisan message.

The article goes on to talk about the new database system that the DNC has put together under Howard Dean. This effort by Dean is being matched by an effort of the Ohio Democratic Party under Chair Chris Redfern called Votebuilder. Votebuilder is designed to compete with the Republican database program called Voter Vault. Both rely on using databases with a lot of information about potential voters so that when volunteers go out to canvass voters, they can be more effective in their presentation.

Of course, all of this technology depends on having volunteers and paid canvassers and a party leadership dedicated to making the technology work. It is up to local Democratic Party leaders, particularly county chairs, to make sure that their local parties are using the technology being provided by the DNC and the ODP.

Rural Vote Starting to Turn Democratic, Ohio Led Way in 2006

According to this report from NPR the reliably Republican vote out of the rural areas of our country is staring to turn Democratic and the war in Iraq seems to be the reason. This is a very important development. The rural vote is credited with giving Bush both his 2000 and 2004 election victories.

What’s important to remember is that Chris Redfern, Ohio Democratic Chair, realized the importance of the rural vote in 2005 when he encouraged Ted Strickland to run for governor. Prior to 2006, and since 1962, Ohio Democrats had nominated eight candidates for governor. Seven of them had come from the top five counties in the state based on population. Those seven candidates won a total of three elections.

The reason why they lost was that they weren’t able to run up enough votes in the big counties to off set their losses in the areas outside of the large urban counties. The same thing happened in 2004 when Kerry won the larger counties, but lost counties that bordered the large urban counties such as Medina, Delaware, and Butler. They also lost more rural counties and didn’t carry the southeastern part of Ohio.

Contrast this with Ted Strickland who is from a rural part of Ohio. He carried not only the large urban counties, but ran up the vote in the rural parts of Ohio. He carried the southeastern part of the State.

Why did Strickland do so well all over Ohio? It is tempting to agree with the conventional wisdom and say it was largely because the Republicans nominated a nutcase for Governor. Like most conventional wisdom, however, the GOP nomination of Blackwell is only part of the story. Another part of the story is that Strickland was able to appeal to all sorts of Ohioans, not just those from large urban counties.

Take guns for example. Strickland’s position on guns is not favored by a lot of Ohio Democrats who come from large urban counties. Yet, in 2006, it was not possible for the GOP to demonize Strickland on this issue. Because the GOP couldn’t demonize Strickland on that issue, a lot of voters for whom guns are a deal breaker actually listened to Strickland on other issues such as education, jobs, and corruption.

Redfern deserves credit for realizing that the Ohio Democratic Party had to expand its reach in order to win state-wide victories in 2006. National Democrats who want to learn about winning the rural vote could do a lot worse than talking to both Strickland and Redfern.