What the impact of Obama's Volunteer Ground Game quantified!

Many of you became politico's for the first time. The role of volunteer to a political campaign comes in many flavors, helping out in the field offices, donating food or hosting house parties, but the most important is making direct contact with voters who are strangers. Unlike TV or radio commercials or speaking events, contact with strangers offers persuasion impact on far more levels emotionally and intellectually than a virtual impact of a media message that can be countered buy the opposition's media message. When one campaign overwhelms the ground with volunteers the opposition cannot counter in kind and the imprint can be extraordinary.

FiveThirtyEight.com has done some enlightening post election analysis attempting quantifying the effect of Obama's volunteer ground game where in exit polls in battleground states they asked the question: "whether the voter had been contacted by the Obama and McCain campaigns personally about getting out to vote?"

The Obama campaign had a superior contact rate in 11 of the 12 battlegrounds; the only exception was West Virginia. Wisconsin was also relatively close, perhaps because Obama redirected its legion number of Illinois-based volunteers from Wisconsin to Indiana a couple of weeks in advance of the election.

The largest gaps, however, were in Indiana and out west in Colorado and Nevada, all places where Obama outperformed his polls on election day.

% of Voters Reporting Direct Contact from Campaigns

State  Obama   McCain   Gap

CO     51%     34%      17%
NV     50%     29%      21%
IN     37%     22%      15%
VA     50%     38%      12%
PA     50%     39%      11%
IA     41%     30%      11%
FL     29%     20%       9%
NC     34%     26%       8%
MO     44%     37%       7%
OH     43%     36%       7%
WI     42%     39%       3%
WV     29%     31%      -2%

They continued the analysis by saying:
Roughly speaking, each marginal 10-point advantage in contact
rate translated into a marginal 3-point gain in the popular vote
in that state. So the rule of thumb that a "good" ground game may be worth
additional 2-3 points above and beyond what is reflected in the
polls appears to hold; a great ground game may be worth somewhat
more than that.
The implications are profound going forward especially with the
coalition of voters who in the past were less inclined to vote
where a strong volunteer base ground game will be essential to
prevail inupcoming elections. Outside of this those of you who
took part in this historical election take heart you were the
difference when it came to votes. Obama won in Colorado 53.5% to
45% and going into the final weekend the polls indicated in Real
Clear Politics average that the spread was 5.0% but the final
results were 8.5%. Take a look at the final polls the weekend
prior to the election:

• Fox/Rasmussen had it Obama +4% (51%-47%)
• Denver Post/Mason Dixon had it Obama +5% (49%-44%)
• Marist had it Obama +6% (51%-45%)
  
• ARG had it closer with Obama +7% (52%-45%)

The week previous

• PPP was a little strong at Obama +10% (54%-44%)
• Politico/Adv was dead on a week previous +8% (53%-45%)
• CNN/TIME also was dead on +8% (53%-45%)
  

Even more striking is that two of the four final polling had McCain's vote percentage dead on, ARG was a point below while the hopeful Fox/Rasmussen gave McCain two points while sliding Obama by 2.5% points. None of them had Obama performing above 53% except when you go back a week prior to the election.

Back to the ratio FiveThirtyEight ratio states that for every 10% advantage equates to 2-3% increase in vote over the polling or in case of Colorado, seventeen percent contact gap translated in a 3.4 to 5.1% increase in the vote over the polling. Taking the RCP average of 5.0% and adding 3.4% equates to 8.4%. Local knowledge of Colorado being a traditional Republican/convervative leaning electorate where Colorado College professors have held an inherent 2% advantage for any Republican candidate this all falls in the deviation of 3.4 to 5.1%.