WASHINGTON -- Early voters tend to be
educated, informed and motivated voters -- the kind of people who would
probably find a way to vote no matter what.
So
the major presidential campaigns will spend the next month looking for
exactly the opposite -- unlikely voters -- to get to the polls before
Election Day. "People who may have voted in a presidential election, but
not an off-year election," said Aaron Pickrell, a senior adviser for
the Obama campaign in Ohio.
"What we want to
do is use early and absentee to get your lower propensity voters to
vote," said Rich Beeson, the national political director for Republican
Mitt Romney's campaign. "Get the number of contacts to them up, and make
it as easy as possible for them to vote."
That
kind of bird-in-hand approach, coupled with aggressive data-mining and
voter targeting, is changing the arc of campaigns, especially in
early-voting swing states. Iowa opens in-person early voting Thursday,
followed by Ohio next week. The battleground states of Colorado,
Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin are also among the
32 states allowing some form of in-person early voting.
In
2008, about 25.7% of voters nationwide cast a ballot before Election
Day, according to data compiled by George Mason University's United
States Elections Project. In the 12 key swing states where the campaigns
are devoting most of their resources this year, it was 32.5%.
The
early-voting calendar can even dictate candidates' schedules. Both
President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney were in
Ohio on Wednesday, with Obama focusing on college campuses where his
campaign is stepping up early-voting efforts.
As
Election Day becomes election month, campaigns have to invest more
money and effort in getting out the vote -- but with a greater potential
payoff.
"It's a much more efficient use of
money when you get someone to vote early or absentee," Beeson said. "You
can take them out of the turnout universe and not have to contact them
again through Election Day."
"It gives you more bites at the apple," Pickrell said.
In
fact, campaigns say their early voting strategies have more to do with
identifying and engaging borderline voters than logistics like getting
them to the polls. The Obama campaign's "neighborhood team" model
stresses data-driven phone banks and door-to-door canvassing to help
identify and persuade potential early voters.
But
the Romney campaign says Obama's early vote operation is suffering from
a dropoff in enthusiasm from 2008, and so is front-loading their early
votes with votes they would have gotten anyway. "They have a lack of
intensity," Beeson said. "They may be voting some of their
higher-engaged voters early. They have a different priority than we do."
Studies of early voting thus far show, at
best, a modest increase in overall turnout. And it's unclear whether
either party has a natural advantage. In Iowa, five times as many
absentee ballot requests are coming from Democrats as Republicans. In
North Carolina, Republican requests are leading 51% to 28%.
But
it's returned ballots that count, and a party can only claim an
early-voting advantage if it gets supporters to the polls who wouldn't
have shown up Nov. 6.
"People only cast their
ballot once they're ready to do so," said Michael McDonald, a professor
at George Mason who tracks early voting. "The earliest of early voters
are hard-core partisan supporters. ... They're going to cast their
ballot the same way now as they would on Election Day."
Still,
there are enough swing voters casting their vote early that campaign
advertising -- especially negative advertising -- is appearing even
earlier.
"The media needs to get info out
sooner, and so do the campaigns. They can't hold what's traditionally
known as the October surprise -- that particularly damning piece of
information on their opponent -- they can't hold that until days before
the election any more," McDonald said.
Beeson
said he doesn't concede anything to the Obama campaign when it comes to
early voting. "They're the reigning champs, so you have to give them
that. They did a tremendous job in 2008. But we pioneered this stuff in
2004. They took it to the next level in 2008, and we'll learn from that
in 2012."
USA Today