President Obama’s campaign released numbers Saturday that illustrate the robust ground operation Democrats say will secure him a second term Tuesday night.
In a memo sent to reporters, the Obama campaign said it opened more than 5,000 get-out-the-vote “staging locations” Saturday morning in advance of the big push for votes Tuesday. Based in homes and businesses, the GOTV locations are “localized versions” of Obama field offices from which teams of volunteers using what the campaign says is advanced software will coordinate efforts to win the battleground states.
The campaign revealed some impressive results from its grassroots operations so far. Team Obama says the campaign has registered 1,792,261 new voters across the battleground states. That’s “nearly double the number of voters the Obama campaign registered in 2008,” according to the campaign.
Obama volunteers have had more than 125,646,479 personal contacts with voters by Saturday via phone calls and door knocks, the campaign said. That doesn’t count the “robocalls on auto-dialers, mail, literature drops or any other non-volunteer, non-personal contacts,” the campaign said.
A central focus this cycle (as in 2008) for the Obama campaign has been early voting. The campaign said their ground operation has successfully pulled out early voters across the battleground states, putting them in the driver’s seat Tuesday. The Romney campaign and Republicans have pushed back on the Obama campaign’s rosy predictions, saying they’re performing well enough in early voting to match the Obama effort in some of the swing states.
The Obama ground operation has been touted by Democrats and feared by Republicans since the start of the campaign. Republicans have upped their ground game this cycle, but Democrats insist the impressive numbers coming out of the Obama campaign prove the president still has the edge.
