Why it's a Durham kind of election

Forgive me, dear readers, for straying into national politics for a moment; but as the presidential election winds down, there's a connection worth making between life in Durham and the strategy that looks to be a winner for Barack Obama.

Like many of you, I've been fixated on the presidential race these past few days, wondering which path Americans will collectively choose for the next eight years. Unlike most presidential races, though, this one resonates right on my doorstep.

I've seen McCain ads on TV, and Obama ads on TV, sure. But I've also seen something I've not seen in any national election: folks walking door to door in the neighborhood, knocking on doors, turning out the vote.

Universally, these have been Obama supporters. They've left materials at the door when we're not home. One even sent my wife (a registered, but infrequent voter) a hand-written, two page letter encouraging her to vote for Obama. Mind you, this was someone we've never met, who likely got her name and address from Obama's masterful voting database.

As the N&O notes in its Sunday edition, the GOP's mocking of Obama's background as a "community organizer" appears to have bit them in the elephant tuckus, since it's that very skill that's served him so well in the ground war on this race:

In the closing hours of a national election, Republican nominee John McCain faces an Obama get-out-the-vote push that is exceptionally well organized at the community level. The Democrat's campaign is culminating in an enormous door-by-door effort. North Carolina is one of its key targets.

The results are already showing up in a lopsided turnout by Democrats in early voting states. The scale of the operation has left even some Republicans impressed.

"He has had an amazing organization down to the street level, I've never seen anything like it," former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said on CBS on Friday. "It's stunning, it's impressive, and he has done something I've never seen in any candidate."

Whichever candidate you support, there's something truly inspiring about such personal connections between citizens, between voters; something wonderful about passionate volunteers visiting your house to encourage you to vote for their ticket.

This election, unlike so many others, probably won't be won or lost in the offices of an Arlington, Va. political consultancy working up television advertising -- be it LBJ's fear-inducing "Daisy" ad or Reagan's "Morning in America" piece.

What does this have to do with Durham? It struck me this weekend that the personal level on which so much of this campaign is being carried forth is, well, a very typically Durham experience.

The value of personal connections is something that many Durhamites, I find, understand quite well. I've talked about this before here at BCR, but one of the really wonderful things about the Bull City is how engaged so many citizens are.

It's hard to go to the grocery store or the mall without running into several people I know. I grew up in a town of 30,000 people and never saw a soul I knew out and about. Here, in a city of a quarter-million people, it's impossible not to see a friend or colleague out at the shopping center. Heck, one of the best thing about yesterday's Art Walk was getting to catch up with a half-dozen friends along the way.

And Durham's a city where volunteering is a way of life; as we've talked about here before, Durhamites volunteer at a rate that ranks near the top, on a per capita basis, in the United States. A place where residents follow local politics with as much passion as they do their favorite sports team, and where citizens are engaged in the political sphere in a real, meaningful way.

Is it any surprise, then, that Obama's campaign tactics -- using and building those connections on a personal level, reaching out to voters at a grass-roots level in a way that's, ironically, possible only when an age of Internet connectivity and electronic communications empowers such activities -- resonate so well among Durhamites?

Or feel so natural and normal, to those of us in neighborhoods where we're used to active neighborhood associations? Where places like Watts-Hillandale have non-profits that, quite apart from the mandatory homeowners associations formed in newer 'hoods, raise money voluntarily from residents, and use it to do things like hiring a half-dozen police officers and opening their streets to almost one thousand trick-or-treaters this past Friday?

Durham has felt like home to my wife and I in part because there's a warmth, an interconnectedness among residents, that we haven't experienced anywhere else we've lived.

Whatever you think about national politics, isn't it nice seeing a presidential campaign recognizing those lessons, and using those connections as a key part of their campaign?

Sure, the Obama campaign is running TV ads every other commercial break -- just like McCain. But this election is likely to be won with a ground game unlike anything else in modern American political history.

And that's a kind of campaign that should feel pretty normal to Durhamites.

Comments

[Elizabeth T.]

I was part of the Durham Women Votes campaign. Over 800 different women wrote almost 55,000 handwritten letters to every Democratic or unaffiliated infrequent female voter in Durham County. This effort was begun in late August and spread rapidly through the tireless efforts of the organizers. Hats off to these women! Their model ought to be replicable nationwide.

[Justin B. Clark]

Just wanted to point out that while it looks like Obama will win there is no promise of a second term. So really we're not deciding the next 8 years tomorrow...simply the next 4.

[Ross Grady]

While I applaud everybody's efforts (really, I do!), I have to ask: does this giant database include a field for "would or would not be skeeved or irritated by uninvited personal contact from random well-meaning strangers"?

I tend to be tolerant of said well-meaning strangers, because I believe in the larger cause, but I can pretty much state definitively that the best way to persuade my girlfriend *not* to vote would be to send her a handwritten letter from someone she'd never met.

But then I suppose we introverts are in the minority. It *would* be nice if there were some sort of public service announcement or training for extroverts, reminding them that introverts exist, and that we find random contact with strangers to be tiring.

[Erik]

Infrequent voters? Less likely to vote because of a personal letter received in the mail? Fellas, do we need to have an intervention with your better halves?

[Tar Heelz]

I think the reason we don't see Republicans walking door to door through Durham is because the GOP doesn't understand that Durham is about personal connections. It is unlikely that it has anything to do with the fact that Durham is effectively a single party town.

[DRR]

The Obama ground game has been significantly out performing the McCain ground game nationwide.

Read the "On the Road" posts at fivethirtyeight.com for some good insight into this.

[Phil]

I returned to the Triangle last night after four months wandering around the US. It's nice to be back. And interesting to be in a swing state, after being in five fairly or decidedly red ones.

Today I stopped by the Watts Street Obama office in Durham to pick up a walk package. The HQ was packed -- with maybe 20 volunteers in or around the house. And yes, I saw a bunch of familiar faces. I trotted with my canvassing partner to northeast Durham for a couple of hours of canvassing. Where we found people at home, nearly all had already voted. And for Obama. It was, as you would say, a very nice experience to see all the folks and to exchange handshakes, smiles, and good wishes.

Of interest -- we were knocking on doors of registered voters that had not yet been contacted by the Democrats. Nearly half of the people we met were not the people listed as living at the address. We think that the list was developed from 2004 data. The semi-corrections (simply a record of "incorrect address", without info about the new resident) will presumably be useful to the Democratic campaigning in 2010.

[Bull City Rising]

@TH/D: I was going to note that I'm talking about the nationwide ground game, not Durham-specific (you're right, Durham goes Obama in a cakewalk no matter what), but DRR captured that for me.

@JBC: You're right; must be a Freudian slip. :)

[Craig Good]

I had someone steal my Obama yard sign earlier this evening. I guess that's what the McCain campaign calls a ground game. ;-)

[Matt Johnson]

I wonder, when was the last time Durham County voted for a Republican? The Google Election Maps application says we've voted for the Democrat in each election in their database- since 1980 (yes, even for Mondale). The Durham County BOE website has data for the 1976 election (Durham overwhelmingly for Carter). They have pdfs of the election results from 1972 and 1968, but these are curiously missing the Presidential results. If they didn't vote for Nixon, who was the last Republican to carry Durham County? Eisenhower? Hoover?

[Bull City Rising]

@Matt: Interesting question. Mike Ashe, Durham's elections director, will be Barry and my guest on "Shooting the Bull" this Thursday and we can ask him then. (Mike reads BCR from time to time but imagine he's a bit busy today to field this one!)

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

An excellent point made by Matt -- Durham County is more liberal than Orange County, having voted for Dukakis and Mondale when Chapel Hill went for the Republicans.

Whether this is due to the more rural parts of Orange Co. or the increasing gentrification / yuppification of Chapel Hill I cannot say (calling Michael Bacon and all precinct stats geeks). In any case, woo hoo for Durham!

[Michael Faber]

I've been volunteering for the Obama campaign for the last month on a leave of absence from my day job. The volunteer effort here in Durham has been extraordinary. Volunteers expected to hit every registered voter's door multiple times last weekend and possibly again today.

If you are interested, I've been following my own progress on my blog at 1000doors.wordpress.com with stories and pictures from my experiences volunteering in the Bull City.

See you all downtown tonight...

[10,000 Maniacs]

The N&O has the registeration and turn-out results for the Triangle today, including some really interesting charts if anyone wants to see what the above work generated and analyze the results. Can't seem to embed a link, so here is the URL:

www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1286779.html

The charts accompanying the article are more interesting than the article itself. A quick look at the figures shows there was a modest uptick in Durham's new Dem registrations and turn-out over the rest of the Triangle (which showed an increase in both across the board), and a nice net gain of votes for Obama over Kerry 4 years ago that seemed to be caused, in part, by a pretty big drop in Republican turn-out as much as anything else.

If I had to reach any conclusion from these numbers, it would be that every county reaches a saturation point and no matter how hard you work, you're not going to get people off their duffs beyond that. Durham may have reached its Dem saturation point in this election, but I'd be interested in what others think.