On Why Harry Reid's Nevada Field Operation Is Losing
leaving voicemails? That\\\'s probably the problem.
Also, this is a great piece.
One last thing: maybe you could blur the phone numbers?
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On Why Harry Reid's Nevada Field Operation Is Losing
Ah hah. Very fancy. The only auto-dialer system I saw was just a number you call into that has a set of codes (ie # is Not Home, etc.) to enter data, without knowing who you're looking for.
I wonder how much this costs? I'm too lazy to look up spending but it might just come down to money. Persuasion and gotv are both "about numbers," and targeting is equally important in each case.
I should mention that I don't work for Harry Reid (did it sound this way?) and have no connections to Nevada. (Though I kind of like him). I'm also very disconnected from this years elections.
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On Why Harry Reid's Nevada Field Operation Is Losing
Also, sorry, but 32 calls in an hour is not average. Average is 50-60 calls (1/minute) with about one in three answering. (Maybe you actually connected with higher percentage?).
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On Why Harry Reid's Nevada Field Operation Is Losing
Here\'s why paper is better:
a) Why spend so much time and money microtargeting when you\'re going to just mark down whoever answered the phone? You could be talking to the 18 year old son who isn\'t even registered, you could be talking to the \"target\"s husband, you could be talking to the housekeeper. Paper = specific names. Ideally you should be trained to ask for a particular person before marking it down. Households do not vote uniformly.
b) Data is/should be done every night, new lists printed every morning. So, there shouldn\'t be any overlapping. If you run out of lists, you print from a different group (ie you run out of likely undecideds? print a list of people unlikely to turnout)
c)Alternatively, you can be set up with a \"virtual phone bank\" which has the advantages of paper (you see names! even ages, districts, and other information!), but updates in real time. This requires everyone to be sitting in front of a computer, which has obvious pitfalls.
d) Coordinating campaigns (ie asking for three candidates) means the individual gets called once instead of three times. Its more efficient for the campaign and its less annoying for them. You may have called more people at Sharon\'s office, but they\'re going to be have to called twice more (or more!) to get the same amount of information.
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On London's Student Demonstrations Are the Best Sort of Education
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Quebec_student_strike
80 000 isn't so bad, considering that Quebec is about a tenth the size of the UK, it was a good show.
This Sunday there's a demonstration in Quebec city about the attempt to raise fees from 2 500$ to 5 000$. It probably won't be huge, but whenever they have one in Montreal I'm sure it will be massive.