Senator Obama leads Senator McCain among women by 9 points in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, conducted 7/18-21 (click on “data drilldown” pop-up). It should be a lot more, according to Kate Sheppard’s don’t-miss In These Times cover story “McSexist: John McCain’s War on Women.” Sheppard does a good job of pulling together the case against McCain for women voters, and her article should be helpful in encouraging women to vote their interests. Here’s three key graphs:

A February Planned Parenthood poll of 1,205 women voters in 16 battleground states found that 50 percent of women voters don’t know McCain’s position on abortion, and that 49 percent of women who backed McCain were pro-choice. Forty-six percent of women supporting McCain said they’d like to see Roe v. Wade upheld — though McCain says he supports overturning the decision. When they learned of his position on Roe, 36 percent of women who identified as both pro-choice and likely McCain voters said they would be less likely to vote for him.
These moderate, often suburban, middle-class women could be critical swing voters this election. At the time of the Planned Parenthood poll, Obama held only a 5 percentage-point margin over McCain with its swing-state demographic, 41 percent to 36 percent.
Planned Parenthood concludes that these findings suggest “that just filling in McCain’s actual voting record and his publicly stated positions on a handful of key issues has the potential to diminish his total vote share among battleground women voters by about 17 to 20 percentage points.”

Sheppard goes on to reveal McCain flip-flopping like a mullett on meth regarding issues of concern to women. Indeed, his political Achilles’ Heel may prove to be his dismal record on women’s concerns — provided Dems do a good job of publicizing it.
And the key to increasing Obama’s edge among women in general may be targeting unmarried women in particular, as a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner survey conducted for Womens’ Voices 6/19-24 concluded:

…in key battleground states — Obama holds a 32-point lead over McCain (61%-29%) among this demographic. By comparison, another recent Greenberg/Democracy Corps survey has him leading McCain among married by just one point (49%-48%).
…Per Census data, there are 53 million unmarried women in this country — which is almost equal to the number of married women, both representing 26% of the voting-age population. In fact, Page Gardner, president of Women’s Voices, Women Vote Action Fund, says that unmarried women represent the nation’s fastest-growing demographic. “It is huge and it’s growing,” she told First Read. “This is an extremely important demographic.”
One of the poll’s conclusions is that increasing the size of the unmarried women’s vote — from 22% of all voters in 2004 to 24% in 2008 — could result in at least a two-point increase in Obama’s total, “a huge gain in presidential politics.”
But turning out unmarried women to vote hasn’t always been easy. In 2004, according to the polling analysis, 41% of unmarried women DIDN’T vote in 2004, versus 29% of married women who didn’t.

Targeting and mobilizing this demographic for a record-level turnout is a difficult challenge. But meeting it could open the door for a Democratic landslide.

To further the exploration of ideas for increasing voter turnout noted in J.P. Green’s TDS post yesterday, check out Harold Meyerson’s American Prospect review article about a new book of interest, “Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout” by Yale poly sci proffs Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber. As Meyerson explains, the authors, who tested numerous GOTV tactics, conclude that personal contact, including door-to-door canvassing, trumps other approaches, when it comes to getting rv’s to cast ballots.

What Green and Gerber have done would seem conceptually obvious–except, no one has done it before. Working with academic colleagues and a range of political and civic groups and campaigns across the nation, they ran more than 100 experiments in elections over the past decade, testing which get-out-the-vote tactics–direct mail, phone banks, door-to-door canvassing, radio and television ads–actually turned out more voters. They designed all manner of GOTV efforts and employed them on groups of randomly selected voters while not employing them on a control group of other randomly selected voters, then checked after the election to see who’d voted and who hadn’t, and whether those results had any correlation to the respective GOTV drives. They worked with nonpartisan good-government groups, with groups trying to mobilize African American, Latino, low-income, or environmentally inclined voters, and occasionally, and, remarkably, with candidates’ campaigns–remarkably, because not many candidates will respond favorably to establishing a control group of voters who don’t get canvassed or phoned or mailed on his or her behalf.
…Green and Gerber are concerned simply and totally with the actual electoral system we have saddled ourselves with, and their goal, as they put it, is to produce a “shopper’s guide” for candidates pondering whether to use robocalls or canvassers. The great question they hurl at the reader in their very first sentence bears no trace of the controversies over postmodernist theory: “What are the most cost-effective ways to increase voter turnout?”
…the sheer number and scale of the experiments they’ve run make Get Out The Vote a signally important tool to campaigners trying to figure out how best to campaign. It is also a signally important challenge to portions of the political- consulting industry, most particularly those consultants whose GOTV campaigns rely on recorded phone calls, paid phone bankers, or typical direct mail.
What Green and Gerber have found, in brief, is that the personal touch matters. “Door-to-door canvassing by friends and neighbors is the gold-standard mobilization tactic,” they write. It’s the contact itself that’s the key: the kind of message that the canvassers delivered–whether they handed voters a position paper or a potholder–in itself had no effect on turnout rates. Phone banks staffed by genuinely enthusiastic and chatty volunteers worked as well.

Gerber and Green’s book undoubtedly has more to say about advertising choices, and sounds like a must-read for GOTV organizers.

There’s been a lot of interesting articles about team Obama’s voter registration campaign, nation-wide and state by state. But Rhodes Cook’s article “A New Electorate in the Making?” at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball deserves a big plug as one of the most interesting, and certainly the post on the topic of recent voter registration trends that has the classiest graphics. (See also Ed’s post on Cook’s article) Michael Duffy of Time Magazine calls Cook’s piece an “an invaluable study that is the best glimpse yet of who is likely to be voting this fall..” Among Cook’s more interesting revelations:

…the number of registered Democrats in party registration states has grown by nearly 700,000 since President George W. Bush was reelected in November 2004, while the total of registered Republicans has declined by almost 1 million.

And that just reflects the 29 states that register by poltiical party. Duffy says of Cook’s data:

A hodgepodge change of 1.7 million registrations in about half the states may not sound significant in a nation that could see 110 million people vote in November, but it is, in fact, something that looks potentially seismic…in some battleground states for which new registrations by party are available, there is a comparable shift underway. Iowa, the most important swing state in the upper Midwest, has seen Democratic registration grow by about 68,000 since 2004 while Republican registration has dropped by nearly 27,000. (Bush won the state by about 10,000 votes in 2004.) In New Hampshire, which Kerry won in 2004 by about 9,000 votes, Democratic registration is up by 35,000 while new Republican voters number less than 2000. In Nevada, which Bush won by 21,000, Democrats have enrolled 16,000 new voters. Republicans have lost more than 43,000. Does it mean Obama will win these states? No. Does it make it easier to capture them? Certainly.

And Duffy says Obama’s campaign “hopes to triple or quadruple” the Dem registration edge by the election — a highly ambitious goal to be sure (Most registration deadlines are in October). But even if they merely double their edge, it seems a safe bet that ’08 will go down as a wave election.

Not going to Denver, but wishing there was some way you could be more involved in the Democratic convention? The DNC is holding 1,300 Party Platform meetings in all 50 states between July 18 to 27th (nitty-gritty here). A broad range of programs, including “town hall-style meetings, radio call-ins, and web chats” have already been scheduled. The Obama campaign has a ‘plug-in-your-zipcode‘ tool identifying local meetings. As National Platform Director Michael Yaki says, “The renewal of America begins with listening to the hopes, fears, and dreams of the American people..”
As Senator Obama prepares for his trip abroad, Elizabeth Bumiller of The New York Times has a report on his large, ok huge, team of foreign policy advisors, organized into issue areas and briefing him via email on a daily basis.
Chris Bowers’ latest Open Left forecast sees a 5-6 seat pick-up for Dems in the Senate. Perceptive reader comments on individual races follow his post.
Hotline‘s Matthew Gottlieb says the latest St. Louis Post-Dispatch/KMOV-TV poll data indicates that Missouri “has become a solid Obama state,” which is good news, considering the Republicans never win the white house without it. As a result Gottlieb sees Obama’s Electoral College lead upgraded to 292-234 (270 wins).
Lest we wallow in unbridled optimism, former Dukakis campaign director Susan Estrich writes in her Real Clear Politics post that her candidate was 20 points ahead of Bush I in mid-July ’88, and still lost. Despite abundant Democratic advantages this cycle, Estrich argues that Dems must now put aside internecine bickering: “it’s time to stop whining and start working. Otherwise, it will be hello President McCain.”
E.J. Dionne, Jr. reviews Al Gore’s buzz-generating speech on energy independence at Constitution Hall, which may begin the “compelling narrative” on the topic Democracy Corps says Dems need.
Michael Sean Winters has an interesting TNR article advising Obama how to win Catholic voters, who are 23 percent of the electorate and even more influential in swing states, like PA, NV, NH and WI. Winters, author of “Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats,” says “Catholics are ripe for Obama to pick if he can master the distinctive ways they view economic issues. Unlike the gloom-and-doom preaching of Calvin’s heirs, Catholicism has a more positive take on the possibilities of human culture and politics that would fit Obama’s politics of hope nicely.”
Here’s a simple, but very effective video ad that could be broadly-used by Democratic candidates for the white house and Congress — and making a point that merits repetition.

Meteor Blades over at Daily Kos has a riff, “Poll Finds Massive ‘Whining’ in Florida, Ohio,” discussing the new NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health poll (toplines here) in relation to Phil Gramm’s “whiner”-driven “mental recession.” Blades does a nice job of presenting the data, which shows majorities of respondents in both states worried about real-world economic problems.
The poll is interesting in that it gets respondents to break down the sources of their economic discontent into categories such as “Problems paying for gas” (55%); “Problems getting a good-paying job/raise in pay” (39%); “Problem buying/selling home/home losing value” (36%); “Problems paying for health care and insurance” (32%); “Problems paying for college/education cost” (26%); and “Losing a job” (26%) and other problems. Respondents also saw a connection between the Iraq mess and their economic problems:

…according to the poll, the top two things people in Florida say would help the most are stopping American jobs from going overseas and pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.

As Dee Moskona, a 47-year-old attorney and mother in Miami, quoted in Blades’ report puts it, “Iraq is draining everything.”
If Democratic registration meets high expectations, swing state voters will elect leaders who will address their very real economic concerns and bring home our troops — and our money.

Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis has an instructive post on poll interpretation. Sher discusses three new polls that have Obama ahead by 9, 8 and 6 points. Contrary to MSM spin that he should be “doing better,” however, Sher argues that “a final victory with that margin would be earth-shifting.” Of today’s New York Times article ,”Poll Finds Obama Candidacy Isn’t Closing Divide on Race,” Sher says the headline:

…makes it sound like massive numbers of whites have an unfavorable opinion of Obama.
The complete poll data shows that 1) 31% said they are “undecided” or “haven’t heard enough,” and 2) McCain doesn’t do much better, only scoring a 35% favorable rating from whites, with a similar number also not expressing an opinion.
The article also notes that McCain leads Obama among whites 46%-37%, a 9-point margin. (The other two polls today have McCain up 8 and 7 points among whites.)
But it doesn’t tell you that in 2004, President Bush beat Sen. John Kerry among whites by 17 points.
Obama runs at least 8 points better among whites than Kerry, not to mention performing vastly better among Latino voters (39 point lead) than Kerry (9 points).

An equal opportunity debunker, Scher has this to say about WaPo‘s article on its poll, noting

…this line buried at the bottom of the Washington Post analysis of its poll: “The candidates are tied among whites who earn less than $50,000 a year, while McCain leads by 10 percentage points among those earning more than that.”
Yes, Obama runs better among white working-class voters than other whites.
Not a half-bad step forward for race relations, in my book.

Amazing what a little clear thinking can do.

Today’s edition of The Orlando Sun-Sentinel has a headline that should gladden the spirits of Dems: “Voter Registrations in Florida Show ‘Huge Swing’ Toward Democrats.” Political writer Anthony Man reports that the latest tally shows 106,508 Dems added to the FL voter registration rolls from Jan-May, compared with 16,686 for Republicans.
Man quotes Broward Democratic Chairman Mitch Ceasar, “The Democratic brand has cycled back.” And you gotta love his quote from Marian Johnson, political director for the Florida Chamber of Commerce — “It’s a huge swing…I looked at that and said ‘wow.”
Democrats may find yet more encouragement regarding their FL prospects in David Rieff’s Sunday New York Times Magazine article “Will Little Havana Go Blue?,” which discusses Dem gains among greater Miami’s Cuban-American community. (See also our staff post below, noting that, for the first time, more FL Latinos are now registered as Dems than Republicans)
As always, there is a cautionary note. Man reports that state GOP leaders are already responding with a call for a more energetic registration campaign from their party. And of course the FL Republican establishment has never been shy about cranking up their voter suppression efforts, which will be at full tilt going forward. Hopefully, FL — and national — Democratic Party officials are also strengthening their voting rights legal teams.

Teresa Watanabe reports in today’s L.A. Times that the number of Mexican-born immigrants who became U.S. citizens increased by nearly 50% in 2007, as a result of citizenship campaigns coordinated by Spanish-language media and immigrant activist groups. Watanabe explains further:

Despite Mexicans’ historically low rates of naturalization, 122,000 attained citizenship in 2007, up from 84,000 the previous year, with California and Texas posting the largest gains. Salvadorans and Guatemalans also showed significant increases at a time when the overall number of naturalizations declined by 6%
At the same time, the number of citizenship applications filed doubled to 1.4 million last year, the report by the U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics found….The report cited the campaign by Spanish-language media and community groups, along with a desire to apply before steep fee increases took effect, as two major reasons for the jump in naturalizations

The surge in enfranchised Latinos may have significant political benefits for Dems, even in FL, Watanabe explains:

Louis DiSipio, a UC Irvine political science professor, said one of the biggest impacts could be in Florida, a key battleground state that posted 54,500 new citizens last year. Although the ethnic Cuban population there has dominated the Latino political landscape and tended to vote Republican, he said, more of the newer immigrants are coming from South America and trending Democratic. For the first time this decade, more Latinos were registered as Democrats than Republicans, 35% to 33% as of this spring, according to Gold.

But Dems will have to work for it:

Gold said that new Latino citizens have higher voting rates than longtime Mexican Americans and that their political allegiances are shallower. As a result, she said, their votes are still up for grabs for those elected officials willing to work hard to reach them. In addition, she said, the proportion of Latino voters identifying themselves as independents is growing.

In any event, the naturalization movement is picking up speed:

Erica L. Bernal-Martinez, senior director of civic engagement for the association of Latino officials, said grass-roots organizations planned to continue their push to encourage naturalizations among the estimated 4 million to 5 million eligible Latinos. Mexicans have historically had low rates of naturalization — 35% compared with 59% for all immigrants — but that appears to be changing as media and community organizations pour unprecedented resources and energy into their civic engagement campaigns, Bernal-Martinez and Gold said.
More than 400 community organizations across the country, along with major Spanish-language media, have joined forces in a “Ya Es Hora” (It’s Time) campaign to help eligible voters become citizens and register to vote. The campaign plans to hold naturalization workshops in 10 cities Saturday.

Latino naturalizations soared last year despite an overall drop in the number of naturalizations, caused by expired funding for processing citizenship applications. Watanabe reports that “After Mexico, the largest number of new citizens came from India, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, South Korea and El Salvador.”

The strangest article of the day has to be Karl Rove’s Wall St. Journal piece “Barack’s Brilliant Ground Game,” in which he compliments the Obama campaign. Says Rove:

Sen. Obama’s organizational emphasis wisely avoids the Democratic mistake of 2000, when Donna Brazille’s plea for a stronger grassroots focus was ignored by the Gore high command. It also avoids the mistake of 2004, when Democrats outsourced their ground game to George Soros’s 527 organizations. The latter effort paid at least $76 million to more than 45,000 canvassers – many hired from temp agencies – to register and turn out voters. It was the wrong model: Undecideds are more likely to be influenced by those in their social network than an anonymous, low-wage campaign worker.

Rove’s central argument, however, is that Obama’s campaign strategy owes much of its success to “the Bush-Cheney playbooks of 2000 and 2004,” which were designed by you know who. For example:

Barack Obama’s manager admitted to the New York Times that he wanted an “army of persuasion” modeled explicitly on the massive Bush neighbor-to-neighbor “Victory Committee” of ’00 and ’04. Those efforts deployed millions of volunteers to register, persuade and get-out-the-vote…The Obama campaign is trying to catch up with the GOP’s “microtargeting” program, which uses powerful analytical tools and extensive household consumer information to focus on prospects for conversion and extra turnout help. Another Obama adaptation of a 2004 Bush campaign technique is a stepped-up, rapid response effort. Charges do not go unanswered, the campaign stays relentlessly on the offense, using every channel of communication.

While there is a grain of truth to that part of Rove’s argument, low-tech versions of such GOTV tactics have been around for a while. Rove is on even shakier ground in claiming credit for pioneering the use of internet tools, and when he critiques elements of Obama’s strategy, you have to wonder if he’s really afraid it is working.

Mr. Obama’s people admit they want to sucker Mr. McCain into spending money. To be successful, a bluff must be credible. In places like Nebraska and North Dakota, Mr. Obama can’t rely on local issues – like Mr. Bush did with coal in West Virginia in 2000 – to unexpectedly win a critical state. Organization alone won’t suffice. And putting Obama dollars into Texas, for example, to help win five state House seats may simply cause Texan Republicans – not Mr. McCain – to raise money and work harder to counter…Instead of consistency, Mr. Obama has followed Richard Nixon’s advice, to cater to his party’s extreme in the primaries and then move aggressively to the middle for the fall.

The article concludes, predictably enough, with a barrage of cheap shots about the perils of flip-flopping, as if McCain was immune to the charge. Coming from the architect of the GOP’s ’06 debacle, it’s another encouraging sign that the Obama campaign is on the right track.