Impressions of the voting (or non-voting) landscape.

I spent some time on the phone last night talking to folks from both Georgia and Colorado as part of the GOTV effort for Obama. I finished up feeling that we are all over the page on this one, and this thing must be totally up for grabs. I'm not surprised at all at how dreadfully wrong the polls can be.

My first call must have polluted the home of a painfully white Georgia man. He in clear terms conveyed to me that I had called the wrong house. So it was clearly a wrong house. My very next call was also to Georgia, to an older woman (sounded white, if that's possible. Of course it's possible, quit being so damned PC) who was thrilled to hear from the campaign. Sounding as though she were ready to burst with excitement, she told me that she was a Republican crossing party lines to support Obama. My next click on Obama's website showed that the site was completely paralyzed. The campaign was experiencing overwhelming support as volunteers frantically attempted to close out the east coast while calling hours were still good. Hopefully this kind of thing is a good test for the general election GOTV.

With the site pretty much disabled, my frantic clicking to refresh my call list actually popped a cable splitter in the basement. The energy of this campaign was too much for the internet. It was bursting like that proud Republican crossover. Well maybe not but I did have an actual twofer; website was choked with traffic AND I had a hardware failure. I frantically cannibalized some other inactive network of cables downstairs to scrounge up a splitter to get reconnected.

By the time I was up and running again the east coast was closed down, freeing up enough bandwidth for me to resume calling. So it was off to Colorado. We must get better data out of Colorado, because I seemed to be getting nothing but solid Dems. While I may have received no hostility out of Colorado, there was enough apathy to make up for it. It was obvious to me that at least half of the people I talked to hadn't given the first though to the primaries, but will say anything if it means expediting the conversation. "Oh yeah, I support him.... yep I'm going to vote.... yeah I mean caucus, you betcha"

I did speak with one Colorado woman that was "leaning Hillary", but really wanted to hear what I had to say. Her poor husband was irritated with curiosity.
"Who are you talking to?..... What the hell are you doin?"
"Shhhhh! It's Obama. Let me talk Randal."
"For real?! Let me talk to him!"
"Not Obama, but one of his.... guys."
"Whatever, gimme the phone."
I then talked to this guy for 20 minutes. He was truly undecided, and seemed to be waiting for someone to call him and tell him who to support and why. I was amazed. I thought undecided voters were like true vacuum. While it might exist in theory, the universe would implode if it were ever achieved. Turns out they are for real and I had one on the line. Until now I had regarded GOTV efforts as a sort of token support. We do it because if we had nothing else to do while anticipating results we would go crazy. I was wrong. There are all kinds of votes floating around out there. The cards haven't fallen yet. Tonight should be good.