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Candidates turn focus to getting people out to vote
AP Photos
Hillary Clinton has the endorsement of Gov. Mike Easley, seen at a Greensboro rally, but polls show Barack Obama, seen at a Charlotte rally, leading.
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VIDEO: Sen. Barack Obama in Charlotte on Friday, May 2, 2008
Published: May 3, 2008
CHARLOTTE - CHARLOTTE - As the Democratic battle for North Carolina entered its final weekend, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama criss-crossed the state yesterday, urging their supporters to get out and vote.
A record turnout is expected for Tuesday's primary.
"We need a big, big vote in North Carolina," Clinton said yesterday afternoon during a rally at Guilford College in Greensboro. Clinton, according to polls, is trailing Obama in the state.
Neither campaign is leaving turnout to chance. Both have sophisticated "ground-game" operations, honed during numerous previous contests, to make sure that their supporters do not stay home on primary day. Their method of getting voters to the polls, known by the shorthand "GOTV" to political insiders, is largely reliant on a network of unpaid volunteers, such as Christopher Johnson.
Johnson, a fifth-grade teacher in Winston-Salem, is a volunteer precinct captain for the Obama campaign in his Old Town neighborhood.
For weeks, he has gone door to door, talking up Obama to his neighbors, answering questions and identifying supporters who might need an extra push this week to cast a ballot.
"Early on, it was about education and recruiting volunteers. Right now, it's all about getting people out to vote," he said.
Bina Bhagwandin-Maharaj, from Jamestown, has been doing similar duty for Clinton since the day before the Pennsylvania primary.
Initially, she said, she found that pitching Clinton to total strangers and later encouraging them to actually cast a ballot was uncomfortable.
"The first one was difficult," she said. "The second one was easier, and the third was easiest."
The get-out-the-vote efforts are expected to intensify this weekend. But they have been under way for weeks, a byproduct of North Carolina's new one-stop early-voting law. Both campaigns have been pushing supporters to vote early.
At a rally in Charlotte yesterday, Obama's field director for the region, Jason Green, warmed up the crowd with a request.
"Raise your hand if you've already voted," he said. Hundreds of hands shot up. "While your hand is raised, look at your neighbor. If their hand isn't up, smack 'em."
Getting out the vote
Although volunteers provide the labor required to make get-out-the-vote operations work, they are hardly freelancing. They get guidance from campaign staff members and political consultants, who help them create an effective pitch to their neighbors and help them determine who to target.
Knocking on doors and making calls to turn out voters is an old campaign practice, but it is far more sophisticated today than even 10 years ago.
Thanks to voter-registration and commercial marketing databases, campaigns know more than ever about voters and which ones are inclined to support their candidates. They can use this data to determine income levels, if voters have children, how much education they have, and other factors that help give the campaigns an idea of whether a household is likely to contain an Obama supporter or a Clinton supporter.
That helps them direct their volunteer canvassing armies to neighborhoods where they will have the most effect.
"In a lot of ways, it's still the same operation it always was. Contacting people, getting them registered and get them out to vote on election," said Gary Pearce, a Democratic political consultant in Raleigh.
"What's changed is the same thing that is changing other aspects of politics -- and our lives -- and that's technology," Pearce said.
Obama started developing his volunteer network in North Carolina in March, far earlier than Clinton, said Brad Crone, the president of Campaign Connections, a Raleigh company.
"He had a big advantage in the state in the last month, but Hillary has caught up with him in the ground game within the last two weeks, after Pennsylvania," said Crone, who does similar work on behalf of state and local candidates.
Now, he said, "both have very sophisticated get-out-the-vote operations."
Turnout, especially in this year of record interest in the election, has helped change outcomes.
An average of statewide polls by Real Clear Politics over the past five days gives Obama an eight-point lead over Clinton heading into the final weekend. But all of those polls are dependent on educated guesses about which demographic groups will actually turn out and in what numbers.
Because of unprecedented turnout this year, pollsters have had trouble predicting the correct turnout mix. They have improved as the campaign has advanced, but problems predicting turnout have sometimes produced big surprises.
For example, polls showed Obama on track to win New Hampshire. He lost, and the surprise was blamed on pollsters who did not anticipate a surge in turnout among women who supported Clinton.
Federal gas-tax battle
Although Clinton's and Obama's activities yesterday were billed as get-out-the-vote rallies designed to fire up supporters, both candidates took the opportunity to again bash the other's position on suspending the federal gas tax for the summer.
Clinton supports the suspension, arguing that it would lead to lower gas prices. Money from the gas tax is used to pay for roads and bridges. To make up for the loss of the money, Clinton said she would impose a "windfall tax" on oil companies, which have been reporting record profits.
"We should ask the oil companies this summer to pay the gas tax out of their own pockets," she said.
Obama opposes such a move.
He, and most energy economists, say that repealing the gas tax for the summer would do nothing to lower gas prices because of the complex nature of petroleum markets. Market forces would quickly push prices back to pre-tax cut levels, they say.
"It's a gimmick," Obama said of her plan.
■ Sean Mussenden can be reached in Washington at 202- 662-7668 or at smussenden@mediageneral.com.
■ Wesley Young can be reached at 727-7369 or at wyoung@wsjournal.com.
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