Obama's Convention Crowd: Biggest Phone Bank Ever

[tekisui]

DENVER - Those 75,000 Democrats who will pack a football stadium for Barack Obama's convention speech won't be there just to whoop and holler on television. They'll form the world's largest phone bank to boost voter registration — fired-up supporters using computer targeting the campaign has spent months putting together.
ADVERTISEMENT

The move to the Invesco Field at Mile High stadium for the convention's final night next month — at an additional cost of $5 million — will capture a huge crowd the Obama campaign plans to put to work. They'll be armed with data gleaned through "microtargeting" unregistered voters the campaign believes are ripe to back Obama if pressed to get on board.

"If we do this right, we'll be unbeatable," said Steve Hildebrand, the Obama adviser overseeing the effort.

One key to Obama's victory plan is to expand the electorate, bringing in more young voters, minorities, suburban women, seniors on fixed incomes and people who have been disaffected by politics and might respond to the freshman Illinois senator's message of change over the more experienced Republican John McCain.

President Bush used microtargeting techniques effectively in 2004, but his target was regular voters who were likely to vote for him. Obama's focus is more on finding people who are not registered to vote and figuring out how to persuade them to sign up and back him.

Hildebrand said the campaign has identified 55 million unregistered voters across the country, by comparing registration lists with lists of potential voters gleaned by mining consumer databases the same way credit card companies track people's spending. They say their research estimates more than two-thirds would vote for Obama if they were registered and motivated.

The campaign is already holding voter registration efforts across the country, and the convention will be followed by a big drive on the following Labor Day weekend.

more at link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080731/ap_on_el_pr/democratic_convention;_ylt=AuNHmQSBuEtQnuU1I3vcYuis0NUE

[IndyOp]

1. So the stadium speech isn't just a reflection of Obama's overgrown ego?

:shrug:

:sarcasm:

This is exactly what Obama did ALL through the primary -- speaking to crowds as large as possible in order to get names and contact information for attendees so that they could get people to really participate in the campaign. They did, sometimes, sacrifice the quality of interaction that we can see between candidate and attendees at smaller gatherings like town halls or luncheons in a local diner, but they won because they understand that it is neighbors talking to neighbors, coworkers talking to coworkers... that changes minds and wins elections.

I won't bother expressing surprise that the media is just now figuring out why Obama moved the acceptance speech to the stadium. :eyes: