The Florida Vote

While I was out canvassing on Saturday, I was struck by just how outflanked McCain is in this area. Literally every few blocks I ran into another Obama volunteer with their "Change" t-shirts and clipboards. The streets were so saturated with Obama canvassers, yard signs and stickers that for a moment it was hard to believe this was a swing state.

The Obama campaign's canvassing technique was exacting to the extreme. We visited Democrats with a history of not showing up on election day, and the organizational system employed by the office ensured that EVERY ONE of these people were visited, either in person of by phone, by a representative. If they weren't home when we were canvassing at their door, we marked them as "N/H" on a form so a volunteer later in the day could follow up. Obama's penetration into this district is so complete that many people have been visited numerous times.

Of course, as the organizers pointed out, for every Obama supporter in South Beach there is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican in Pensacola or Jacksonville. All of the three major South Florida counties will most likely go blue (Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade); however, we're going to need strong victories here to offset the red votes from Northern Florida. In this election, the place to watch is not West Palm or Miami: it is the area between the north and the south, that deeply purple area around Orlando in central Florida. Tonight, as goes the I-4 corridor and Orange County, so goes Florida.