Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Special Election

I posted the following on RedMassGroup and thought I should also make it available on MassRoots.

Cangiamila received 1,040 votes in Billerica.
Ogonowski received 3,120 votes in Billerica.
Romney received 7,738 votes in Billerica.
Bush received 8,472 votes in Billerica.

Arlington and Lexington were not the problems in this race. We needed a better GOTV operation and this requires a lot of campaign muscle.

Brion Cangiamila - 3,810 (33.2% of GOP registration)
Jim Marzilli - 6,273 (15.9% of Dem registration)

11, 454 Republicans
39,444 Democrats

4/4 Republicans 617
4/4 Democrats 6,619

Bush - 30,295

Kerry - 51,433
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Matt Talancy, the campaign manager is going to write up an internal detailed analysis of the campaign. This will analysze our targeted universe, the type and amount of contacts on each voter and how each segment responded.

First, we knew that Arlington and Lexington were going to be very difficult for us based on election history and voter registration. We knew we had to win Burlington, Woburn, and Billerica but we had to win them with a larger margin (obviously.) Yes, the campaign went door to door and it also made a lot of personal phone calls but not the volume that we needed. We had goals of phone calls to be made per week/day to achieve our daily/weekly voter i.d. goals but we were coming up short. We need more activists and we can't wait for campaigns to find new volunteers, there are several tactics that RTC's can be doing right now to identify future GOP volunteers. If you are interested
in learning more about what you can do now, please request access to MassRootsAction http://www.massgop.com/FlexPag...

We turned the RNC "72 Hour" GOTV program into our own "96 Hour" GOTV program and our base received multiple contacts in the last 96 hours, and coordinated rides to the polls. The Grinch mailer was only one mailer out of many that we did and it was to grab the attention of the reader - it did not mobilize the Democrats since the mailer was sent to targeted houses (but they obviously obtained a copy). We were not relying on one mailer to do the trick.

Special elections are for special voters and the primary voters in each party are more more in-tune with elections. Keep in mind that the Democrat candidates spent nearly a half million dollars combined in the Democrat primary a few weeks ago. Therefore, the Democrats were really awake to the fact that there was an open State Senate seat and a special election when most people are asleep. Marzilli received 6,631 votes in the Democrat primary which is 358 more votes in the primary than he received in the general.

Also there are 6,619 hardcore Democrat voters that have voted 4 times in the last 4 elections (compared to 617 Republicans) in this district - if Brion had won, he would have had the smallest number of registered Republicans in any senate seat held by a Republican.

The blame is not with the Arlington vote. What kills me is that even if we take Arlington out of the race, Marzilli still wins with 99 votes. The problem was not Arlington/Lexington, it was weak turnout in Billerica, Burlington, and Woburn. We needed to go into the GOTV phase with more positive i.d's and we needed more personal contacts on that universe in the last 96 hours. This requires more volunteers and activists to be involved and to be doing the right things.