Election Eve

It's hard to believe that this is the last night of the campaign. It is almost 19 months since Barack Obama announced his candidacy in the presidential race on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois and what a 19 months it has been. I have been personally involved over the past three months and it has been an intense but rewarding experience. I can only imagine what it has been like for Senator Obama and those who have been involved from the beginning.

Today, after a full day's canvassing and an evening's phone banking, I should have been exhausted but there is such a buzz in the office it is hard not to be excited. Everyone is working flat out and taking nothing for granted but there is definitely a carnival atmosphere in the air to the point that it makes you giddy. Jitters mixed with caffeine, unhealthy fast food and sweets have made me feel like a young boy waiting for Santa to arrive on Christmas Eve. I just hope he brings the one thing I asked for and not a Mc Cain-shaped bag of coal.

To give you an idea of what it's like in a presidential campaign office on the eve of an election, I filmed a video tour for your benefit. Just click here to view it.

Yard Sign Wars

Unlike the Irish, Americans love people knowing what party they vote for. They love to adorn their cars with the candidates' bumper stickers and to decorate their front lawns with their yard signs. As a by-product of the mutual dislike of Republicans and Democrats, some neighbourhoods, there have been experiencing "yard sign wars". This can range from the trivial - everyone trying to keep up with the Jones' with bigger and multiple signs for opposing candidates, to the sinister - people robbing signs of the opposing candidate.

It all seems very petty but I can guarantee you it goes on. I took the above photograph while out canvassing today and while it is of course very amusing, some people are getting very upset about it. When I was in the Mc Cain headquarters the other day, a guy was filling out an 'Incident Report Form' which I was told was being passed on to the Albuquerque Police Department. He filled out the form and added it to the already overflowing stack. I haven't heard of as many Obama signs being robbed but that's only anecdotal.

Here's a flavour of what I've been seeing while I've been here.

(Click on this one above to get a closer look at the little leaflet stuck onto it)

A Word of Thanks from the Senator

As I was arriving into one of the Obama campaign offices tonight to phone bank, everyone was crowded into the 'data entry room' listening to a mobile phone on loudspeaker. After whispering to a colleague, I found out it was Jon Carson, the Obama campaign's National Field Director, on the line. He was on a conference call to all field offices across the country, simultaneously talking to thousands of volunteers. He was thanking us for all our hard work and giving us some encouraging figures from some of the key battleground states.

In the state of Nevada alone, the campaign registered over 111,000 voters. At present, 13% more registered Democrats have early voted there than registered Republicans. At the same stage in 2004, this figure was just 4%. Also, across all the swing states, the campaign has made contact with over 13.3 million voters either face to face or over the phone over the past couple of weeks. these figures are just phenomenal.

After a couple of minutes of these astounding figures, while the Obama campaign plane was landing in Springfield, Missouri, Senator Obama eventually came on the line. In a heart-rendering speech, he thanked all of the volunteers' efforts and asked us to give it our all between now and Tuesday. To hear what the Senator had to say, click here.

Don't mess with Texas!

The two main things going on at the moment in terms of volunteering at Obama campaign offices are phone banking and door-to-door canvassing. I've been involved in both, canvassing during the day and phone banking at night. For canvassing, I mainly work out of the South Valley office which is located in the poorer part of Albuquerque and home to most of the city's Hispanic population. In the evening, I usually phone bank out of the North-East Heights office where I was working in August. It is located in the more upmarket end of town.

The South Valley office has faced many challenges in recruiting volunteers; low voter turnouts, a disconnect with politics in general not to mention that most of the South Valley's inhabitants have to work multiple minimum wage jobs to remain solvent and thus have no time to volunteer.

As a result of this, campaign bosses have targeted it for placement with out-of-state volunteers. The idea is that supporters located in strong Democratic states or strong Republican states travel to the key swing states to help turn them Democratic. A large percentage of the volunteers in New Mexico, especially the more ardent ones, are non-natives of the state.


Early this morning, a bus-load of Texans arrived "fired up and ready to go" canvassing for Barack in the South Valley over the next few days up to and including Tuesday. A heavily 'red state', Texas does not offer many volunteer opportunities for Obama supporters there. A Democratic presidential candidate hasn't carried in this state since Jimmy Carter in 1976. So Obama volunteers in Texas make calls to voters in other states like New Mexico and if they can, travel to them too. I interviewed a couple of people getting off the bus. Most were really excited to be here but lamented the fact that they were Democrats stuck in a conservative Republican state. One volunteer, poignantly stated, "When Obama is elected, though, he will be President for all of us."

Victory HQ

Yesterday I paid a visit to the John Mc Cain campaign's New Mexican headquarters located here in Albuquerque. The reason for my visit was to somehow tip the balance of my reporting on my blog and the radio documentary I'm doing for Trinity FM. While I was expecting a bunch of bible-bashing conservative Christians, I was very pleasantly surprised.

The atmosphere in the headquarters can only be described as 'folksy', to use a very American adjective. Upon arrival, I was welcomed at the front desk by a middle-aged American mom who was extremely friendly and helpful. She introduced me to the chief organiser who again was very welcoming. He invited me to have some food which was laid out in the volunteer room where there was a modest army of volunteers making campaign calls. While I was there, the campaign staff held a raffle for the volunteers. Top prize was a Mc Cain - Palin yard sign with various other prizes such as car bumber stickers, badges etc. It was like a church fete!

News travelled fast that I was Irish and all of a sudden I had loads of people come out of the woodwork to tell me about their Irish roots. It was all very good humoured.. apart from a woman who was embittered by the Democrats' claim to represent the African American community. As she put it, Lincoln, a lifelong Republican, had freed the slaves and she was vehement that Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican, something which is strongly upheld by the National Black Republican Association. In a country where partisan divisions have been blurred throughtout its brief history, it is hard to tell who say who is telling the truth. As one Obama supporter said to me though it is without doubt that Dr. King would have supported Obama's candidacy. I tend to agree.

And while the atmosphere was certainly very folksy, the paid staffers were wary of me because they saw me as a media person. I wasn't allowed conduct any interviews with staffers or volunteers on the record nor was I allowed take any close-up photographs. They scheduled an interview for me with the Communications Director for the south west region of the Mc Cain campaign.

I interviewed the lady in question, Yvette Barajas this afternoon. A confident and well prepared young woman, Yvette was very on top of her brief. She didn't stray once from the party line and refused to divulge any sensitive camapaign strategy. When I asked her what she felt Sarah Palin added to the campaign, she told me that Palin had concrete answers to the ailing American economy. Her experience as a mayor and governor would lend her an insight into middle America, an essential for Vice Presidents and indeed Presidents. While I was obviously not swayed by Yvette's mastery of PR, I can see how other people would be.

With five days left in the campaign, the Mc Cain camp seem to have an uphill struggle on their hands. From seeing the Obama campaign from the inside, I don't see how Mc Cain has a hope of winning. This is America though where we're told anything is possible.

Michelle

Today I met Michelle Obama. As part of the final push to get people out to vote before Election Day, Barack and Michelle have been campaigning separately to cover more ground in the key swing states. New Mexico along with 33 other states allows people to vote early i.e. any day in the fortnight leading up to the general election so as to avoid long queues on Election Day. As the Obama campaign feels that it can only win on a high turnout, they have been really pushing people to vote early and that's what I have been mainly doing these past few days in my volunteering efforts.

So the official title of the event I attended was the "Early Vote for Change Rally". It took place in Las Vegas, New Mexico, a relatively poor Hispanic town of around 15,000 inhabitants in northern New Mexico. Here is an excerpt from her speech.

To compare Michelle's oratorical abilities to Barack's would be unfair but she is an extremely charismatic speaker in her own right. She is very personable and no matter how large the crowd is she makes you feel like she is speaking directly to you. Not only that, but she has an innate quality of being able to appeal to all sections of society.

After she spoke, I began analysing what she said and she managed to "tick all the boxes" to put it in crude political strategy terms. She convincingly played the part of caring mother, devoted wife, proud daughter, concerned citizen, hard-working career woman and quite frankly, future First Lady. Always a fan of Hillary Clinton, I can say with conviction that Michelle Obama came across as wholly genuine in a way that Hillary is incapable. It truly was a sight to behold. Here is a video of her close up where I got to shake her hand.

The Houdini Project

One of the things that impressed me most about the Obama campaign the last time I was here was the high level of organisation provided centrally by campaign HQ in Chicago. I was amazed at how they were able to coordinate such a disparate group of supporters to achieve very effective and tangible goals. Most analysts attribute this success to Obama’s background in community organising which he seems to have adapted to a national scale. While I’m sure he was behind the initial campaign strategy, it is without doubt that he has highly astute organisational specialists and political scientists working on his behalf to direct the organisation.

The latest manifestation of this superior organisational machine is the Houdini Project. The Houdini Project aims to track voter turnout on a real time basis over the course of Election Day. To simplify, the campaign will be able to tell if one of the people who said they’d vote for Barack has actually turned up at their local polling station to vote already.

And how do they do this? The secret is manpower and an extensive voter database. To start off with, the campaign inherited massive databases of the electorate from previous elections. Combined with voter registration records, campaign volunteers have been able to contact people on a targeted basis, already knowing their age, sex, address, telephone number and party affiliation before speaking to them. Over the past few months every time a voter has been contacted, any more information garnered has been added to their ‘profile’ to make a super-database.

Armed with this, the campaign will be sending volunteers into all strongly democratic polling stations as well as some of the marginal ones to monitor who turns up to vote. At regular intervals throughout the day, the information will be returned for data processing. On the basis of this, those that don’t turn up to vote will be called to be reminded to do so either over the phone or directly to their door by other volunteers. If they need a lift, that will be provided too.

The sheer extent of the machine is mind boggling. How it is able to extend all of its tentacles into every far flung electoral precinct in every battleground state is overwhelming. The campaign estimates that the Houdini Project alone will add 2-3% to Obama’s electoral support nationally. So paranoid are they of electoral fraud on the behalf of the Republicans that they are keeping the final details of the project top secret until election day.