Vote Mob

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message.
This article has been tagged since October 2005.

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since July 2006.

In 2004, 21st Century Democrats launched Vote Mob to increase the Democratic youth vote. The group opened nine field offices in Ohio, Minnesota, Oregon, and Nevada, and hired over thirty full-time organizers and dozens of canvassers and student team leaders.

In Ohio, Democratic turnout rose in Vote Mob’s targeted precincts by an average of 97% over the 2000 election. In Columbus, OH, Al Gore won the precincts on the campus of Ohio State University by 1,099 votes. In 2004, John Kerry won those same precincts by 3,154 votes, an increase of 187%.

In Portland, OR and Eugene, OR, Vote Mob organized young voters city-wide, the turnout rate for young voters was just 3% less than the turnout rate for older voters. Nationally, the youth turnout rate was 12% behind the rate for older voters.

In Minnesota, Democratic turnout in Vote Mob’s 21 targeted precincts increased 80.7%, while Republican turnout increased by only 17%. In St. Paul, MN Vote Mob targeted five "swing precincts" that split evenly between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000. This year, John Kerry won all five precincts by 2% to 14%.

21st Century Democrats achieved these results by creating a Get out the vote (GOTV) program as intense and effective as the programs traditionally focused on neighborhoods of reliable Democratic voters. During the campaign, 21st Century Democrats

contacted over 200,000 young people;
contacted each voter an average of five times, with three contacts the week of the election providing specific information about how and where to vote;
supplemented in-person and telephone contacts with email messages, text messages, and automated calls;
were on 31 college campuses, we recruited and supported student leaders who helped us break new ground organizing door-to-door within dorms and residence halls; and
pioneered a new street teaming approach called “Vote Mobbing” -- organizers approached groups of young people wherever we could find them, gathering candidate preference and personal contact information while asking respondents to sign a pledge to vote.