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Yard Signs Don’t Vote

By ROBERT ROUTLEDGE, Canadian Field Organizer with Obama for America

The “lessons” from the Obama campaign are likely to be a very hot topic for the foreseeable future as political thinkers and strategists struggle to unearth the secrets of this historic win. Books will be written and bloggers will discuss. But overall, the media is likely to skew some the core of what happened over 2007 and 2008.

Beyond the exciting new tools and innovative strategies that were employed with great skill and tact, the secret of Obama’s success was more about the way any good grassroots political campaign is run. The campaign was not as much about winning the country, or winning Wyoming, or winning any particular congressional district. It was about winning Broadmoor Blvd. in Moon, Pennsylvania. It was about getting everybody in a project in Milwaukee to vote for the first time.

And believe it or not, yard signs, TV ads, radio ads, and waving at traffic don’t get the job done like good ol’ fashioned door-knocking coupled with a solid framework for mobilizing and organizing volunteers.

So before getting into the nuts and bolts of the campaign strategy and my experience as an Obama Field Organizer, I think it’s important to dispel several myths about the campaign that are often attributed to its success:

1. Yard signs don’t vote, they don’t identify who your supporters are, and they don’t really persuade anyone to vote for you. If someone wanted a yard sign, they had to pay money for it and sign up for a volunteer shift. If they were unwilling to do so, then they were likely to be sent away empty-handed because the input of resources and volunteer labour was worth way more than meager advertising potential.

2. Waving at traffic does not persuade or identify supporters. A good campaign is a visible campaign, but a more effective approach is to find ways to engage with voters and potential supporters to attract donations and build resources.

3. Facebook, Twitter, MYBO and YouTube are all great new media tools that the campaign used to communicate. They were only tools, though. They weren’t the message. Barack Obama is a charismatic leader who has had the right message at the right time. These tools weren’t why people voted for him, they were how people who liked him had a chance to connect.

Rather than depend exclusively on publicity, advertising or even the Internet, Barack Obama’s approach revolved around one primary objective: to get people to talk to each other in their own communities. Here are the broad strokes of how this goal was achieved:

1. A model voter was created for what an Obama supporter might be expected to look like in terms of education, financial status, ethnicity, and age.

2. Vote goals were then created per region, based on previous election results and expected voter turnout.

3. Field Organizers (FOs) were hired to be responsible for identifying supporters and persuading voters to vote for Obama at a rate of one FO per 10,000 person vote goal. This meant that a city like Charlotte, North Carolina might have had upwards of 50 FOs, whereas a state like South Dakota might have had one FO responsible for each 10 percent bloc of the local geographic area. Some FOs worked on specific communities like churches, universities, hunters, and women while other FOs canvassed more widely.

4. Regional Field Directors (RFDs) were hired to supervise teams of FOs based on the team’s experience and the relative challenge of the region they were operating in. Lead Field Organizers were occasionally hired to assist RFDs based on the geographic spread of the FOs.

5. RFDs then reported to a field director at the state level on a daily basis to report what was working and what wasn’t.

Then we went to work! Our days consisted of two things: knocking on doors and making phone calls. Our goal was to identify a certain number of voters everyday. Generally, we were responsible for either 1,000 phone calls or 500 doors knocked on. Obviously we could not do this ourselves, so we were also responsible for building and training a community of volunteers to help. These volunteers would be built as neighbourhood teams, generally consisting of a team captain, a phone bank captain, a canvass captain, and canvassers.

Overall, the most significant legacy of this campaign will be these volunteers who are now empowered to make a difference in their community. In many instances this effort served to improve the chances of Obama winning the election. But even where it didn’t, people learned how to identify goals and work together that will leave a legacy for future elections.

One of my proudest moments on the campaign came the day after I left Pittsburgh. I had been working for three months in an area that was heavily supporting either the Republicans or Hillary Clinton. It was a struggle everyday to find a positive moment for both myself and my regular volunteers. The day after I left, however, the team we had formed started exchanging emails about ways they could prevent a Walmart from opening up in one of their shopping areas as it was seen as a threat to local businesses.

Building upon the momentum of the 2008 campaign, volunteers in this area are now in a better position to mobilize for 2012. Similarly Green party activists and organizers can learn from these lessons as we build towards break-through elections in Canada and sew the seeds of grassroots political campaigns for years to come.

Robert Routledge managed a rural Albertan campaign for Reeve and the 2008 federal campaign in Edmonton Strathcona. Robert was consulted for the 2009 BC provincial election and worked as a Field Organizer with Obama for America in five states.