Saturday, June 2, 2012

Stonewalled

The latest ad by Team Barrett:



"I'm a straight shooter."

No further comment.

5 comments:

  1. Just got back from a long day of canvassing and I have a sort of random question I thought you might know the answer to. I was canvassing in Milwaukee and people were just overwhelmed by canvassers. In one neighborhood I was sent to, multiple people told me I was the fourth person to stop at their house in the past two hours. My brother was phonebanking and he said people felt like their phones had been ringing off the hook and were really upset. I'm just wondering if there's something I could do to reach voters that won't be overkill. I know it's important to get out the vote, but I don't know if voter contact becomes ineffective at some point. What else can I do?

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  2. A friend and I just leaving a call center were having the same discussion. She wondered why we don't make use of postcards. You can include a simple message and the receiver will see it without even having to open an envelope. It's much less intrusive.

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  3. Huh. It has been very quiet in my little corner of the city of Milwaukee. Hardly a phone call for days, only one doorbell-ringing for days -- and I could not get to the door in time, so I was left some literature, which was fine.

    Maybe because we made clear to callers some time ago that we are voting for Barrett? We do have a Barrett sign, too.

    I have noticed an upswing in postcards and the like in snail mail this week, also fine for someone who works at home with a long walk to the door. Compared to other campaigns for the last year and a half (we were in a recall district last year) and in the primary, and comparing notes with others in the area, we saw this effort as well organized in minimizing repeated contacts by so many groups, and we guessed that they were doing a better job at coordinating effort.

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  4. I'm not in Wisconsin, so I'm not seeing the ads on TV. I hope the ad above is on TV. It's great! It made me cheer. Thank you for sharing it.

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  5. Response to the various comments:

    The various groups can coordinate with one another (United Wisconsin and We Are Wisconsin, eg)but they can't coordinate with the party or the candidates. I'm not sure who, if anyone, the unions can coordinate with.

    'They' will tell you that face-to-face encounters with voters will drive up turnout more effectively than phone calls, and phone calls better than mailers. The tradeoff is that you can send mail to more people than you can phone, and phone more than you can get to door-to-door.

    Groups will target particular voters/households. I was knocking on doors today of 'occasional' voters; voted in 2008 but not in 2010. If you never vote or you always vote, you weren't on my list today.

    One guy had a note taped to his door; something along the lines of "Canvassers, I don't care what your clipboard says. I'm not interested. I'm not voting for either of these idiots. If you are close enough to read this, you are already trespassing, and you'd better not ring the bell!" I really wish I had had my camera with me; it made my day.

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