TO: INTERESTED PARTIES
FROM: ASHLEY WALKER, OBAMA FOR AMERICA STATE DIRECTOR – FLORIDA
DATE: OCTOBER 16, 2012
RE: WINNING ON THE GROUND
The day after Barack Obama won Florida’s then-27 electoral votes in 2008, Organizing for America began engaging Floridians in an ongoing conversation with our supporters and open-minded residents about supporting the President’s agenda and working to re-elect him in 2012.
In the process, the hard working grassroots volunteers of OFA-FL have worked to build the largest grassroots organization in state history.
The facts are truly remarkable:
· Organizing for America has opened 103 offices in the state.
· More than 20,000 people completed the extensive voter registration training required before volunteers could register voters.
Vote Now and Absentee Ballots
Compared
with the same date in 2008, the Republicans’ traditional advantage in
vote-by-mail has shrunk by 67% from R +249,813 to just
R +61,456.
Working with local Supervisors of Elections (SOE), we have worked to make it easier for Floridians to vote with our in-person absentee voting initiative Vote Now! which encourages voters to simply go to their local SOE office, request a ballot and vote in person. Most Florida counties are allowing their residents to vote this way, and thanks to OFA-FL’s Vote Now! efforts, we expect to continue to significantly outperform 2008’s voting record prior to the start of Early Voting.
Voter Registration
The
largest ever voter registration effort in Florida history – by
Organizing for America – has led to a net increase
in the number of Democratic registrations compared with the number of
Republican registrations every single month for the last five months.
This improvement has been driven by a substantial gain in the percentage
of Hispanic voters registering as Democrats.
In fact, while the total number of registered Hispanics has increased
by more than 195,000 since August and less than 18,000 of those are
Republican. This means just 9% of the increase in Hispanic
registrations was accounted for by Republicans. The other
91% accrued to Democrats and independents.
In 2008, Republicans built up a huge advantage in vote-by-mail which Democrats obliterated during in-person early vote to win the state by 3 percentage points. In 2012, Republicans have a much more difficult task ahead since they have already ceded two-thirds of the vote-by-mail advantage they started with four years ago.
The
African-American and Caribbean-American registered voter population
increased by more than 50,000. The number of non-Hispanic
white registered voters actually fell by 44,000.
With these facts taken into account it serves as a reminder that on Election Day, the race in Florida is always close. Since 1992, nearly 33 million ballots have been cast in presidential elections in Florida, while the average separation between the two parties over those five presidential elections is less than 60 thousand votes.
It is also worth noting that the Presidential incumbent has won Florida in every re-election since 1984. Thanks to our volunteer-driven grassroots operation, and the voter registration efforts undertaken by OFA-FL, President Obama is extremely well positioned to continue this trend and win the state Florida.
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