I am not complaining about this strategy. Quite frankly, I don't think phone calls and door knocking from strangers, even if they live in your district, is an effective means of influencing swingers and independents. If you weren't already favorable to the message being presented in a solicitation, I think that there is reason to believe that the solicitation will probably turn you off to the message more than anything else. Thus, using traditional canvassing and phone banking activism only on a pool of people very likely to be receptive your your message is probably a good strategy, and will help you in GOTV. It will also help because it allows you to focus your entire GOTV resources on a smaller number of receptive people, thus probably increasing turnout among the targeted group.

Of course, as we all know, this is the OH-02, the most conservative district in Ohio, which voted for Bush nearly 2-1 and which has returned its former congressman Portman by around 3-1 in several consecutive cycles (for example, 2002 and 2004). Given this scenario, is a base turnout strategy feasible for a Democratic candidate? Again, though more tentatively, I am going to say yes.

I think the strategy is a good idea for four reasons. First, as I already mentioned, door-knocking and phone banking work best among the already receptive, and might be damaging to the campaign if such activities were used to target swingers and undecideds. Second, the free media the campaign is receiving in the form of endorsements, air time, and questions about Schmidt's ethics and commitment to conservative causes, is an effective means of targeting swing voters and undecideds. Use free and paid media to target those on the fence, use personal contact to target the choir. Third, Schmidt does not seem to have much of a canvass operation, and right now there is actually a conservative group in the district urging Republicans to stay home on August 2nd. Thus, I do not think that Republican turnout will be all that great.

Fourth, and most importantly, turnout in this election is going to be low, low, low. While in 2002 there were 187,000 votes for congress in the OH-02, and while in 2004 there were 317,000 votes, historical voter turnout in Ohio in off-years has been very low compared to congressional mid-term and Presidential years. Thus, even though there may only have been 120K Kerry voters here, and maybe another 15K Democrats who voted for Bush, that still means Hackett's base GOTV drive is drawing from a potential pool of voters probably equal to the total number of people who will turnout. Thus, if heavily targeting his potential base with personal contacts does in fact lead to a large base turnout, Hackett could very well win this election.

Granted, Hackett is really going to have to crush Schmidt on base turnout to win, and the number from June are not encouraging. In the primary election, the Republican candidates managed 45,290 total votes, while the Democratic candidate managed only 13,495 votes, actually less than Schmidt's total. Further, if Hackett does win, he won't be able to use this strategy in 2006, since there is no way a base turnout strategy will work in a fairly high turnout election. Still further, as Hiram speculates, it is entirely possible that the large amount of buzz the blogosphere has managed to stir up about this race could actually cause turnout to be fairly high, which could, in a true Catch-22 moment, actually cause Hackett to lose. High turnout in this district among anyone except Democrats and Kerry voters will almost certainly be bad for Hackett.

Still, I don' really know what else the Hackett campaign could have done. This has been a fairly solid strategy, now tremendously aided by lots of good free and paid media. If it doesn't quite bring Hackett all the way past the finish line, it would be sad, though neither disappointing nor surprising. To tell you the truth, if Hackett ends up losing by only two or three points (or less), much of the blame can be laid at the feet of America Votes and the Kerry campaign, which ignored areas like these in its massive voter contact and registration drive in Ohio in 2004. While such drives did a good job to make Ohio more blue in future elections, they also conceded rural and suburban districts like this, making them more red. If Hackett loses a nail biter, than the campaign was lost in 2004, not 2005.