Campaign '04: Fighting For Every Last Vote

(2 of 7)

If you are among the majority of Americans who live in blue zones like New York and California or red ones like Texas and Mississippi, you probably have heard little more from the campaigns than the distant rumble of artillery--the flicker of a campaign ad as you flip from TLC to the Golf Channel, a quick glimpse of a candidate who is in the area to raise some money. But if you live in Ohio or Wisconsin or Florida or Pennsylvania, you are getting more attention from the presidential campaigns than you would expect in a hotly contested school-board race. In the town of Portsmouth in Ohio's depressed southeastern corner, the turnout was high when President Bush visited last month. He was, after all, the first President that Portsmouth's citizens had seen in person since Herbert Hoover in 1932. Thousands cheered Kerry at his rally in Newark, the seat of Licking County. They were celebrating what local records said was the first visit to the town by a presidential candidate since William Henry Harrison came in 1840. Kerry skipped Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's speech before Congress on Sept. 23 to spend some quality time with the Republican-leaning editorial-page writers of the Columbus Dispatch.

Both sides say the election is ultimately going to be won or lost in the battles that are raging block to block, house to house--and even, on Main Street in Lancaster, floor to floor. Given the relatively small slice of swing voters, the two campaigns, along with an array of outside organizations, are aiming their efforts primarily at their bases. That means finding their voters, registering them if they aren't already, keeping them excited about the race, getting them to vote early where it's possible and, come Election Day, making sure they get to the polls, even if doing so means loading them into a van and driving them there.

The weapons are as old-fashioned as yard signs and leaflets; the tactics, as post-millennial as data mining and microtargeting. If you live in the right precinct, a database somewhere probably holds information that not even the person who sits in the next office knows about your voting record, the issues that matter to you, the church you attend, even the things you like to do on weekends (see story, page 38). All year, both sides have been showing up at the doorsteps of millions of potential voters, asking them their views on gun control, the death penalty and abortion and trying to figure out what it will take to get them to vote. Catholics get regular emails telling them about the President's position on gay marriage or providing a Web page where they can see a picture of Bush with the Pope. Sportsmen are linked to a page that shows Bush with a shotgun.

Some novel tactics of voter mobilization are being tested as well. Votergasm.org is asking for volunteers to have sex with a voter--and to withhold from nonvoters--on election night. Convinceyourmom.com offers tips for the "frustrated young lefty" for swaying his or her parents to vote against Bush. An ad in a local paper in the northwestern tip of New Mexico sought young women 16 to 28 who could "do a dance number and represent American diversity" at Republican events. Applicants, it warned, "must be able to smile and stay pleasant for long hours."