In May, 2003, Bush had what seemed like intimidatingly high popularity ratings, and there was overwhelming public support for the war. But Soros had one of his anticipatory hunches that the President’s support was a bubble that could burst. Moreover, he had the ego and the audacity to think that he could pop it. He commissioned two political researchers, Mark Steitz and Tom Novick, to determine whether it would be possible for Soros himself to exert political impact.Aha. So he wondered if he could have an impact, and then commissioned an expert study to find out whether that was true, and, if so, what was the best way to do it. He didn't just trust his "gut."
The following July, Soros invited a group of top Democratic activists to join him in the salmon-colored drawing room at El Mirador, his weekend estate in Southampton, Long Island, for the presentation of the consultants’ report. Steitz and Novick indicated that the 2004 election would probably be very close. The electorate was polarized, with only ten per cent of likely voters undecided. The best strategy, they said, would be to mobilize the Democratic base and persuade undecided voters with a state-of-the-art field operation. The plan was projected to cost at least seventy-five million dollars. As the researchers gave their presentation, Steitz recalled, “Soros was very engrossed. He leaned forward when we were talking about getting out the vote, and asked, ‘You mean you actually go door to door?’ All the practical aspects caught his imagination.”
Under the new campaign-finance law, supporters could no longer give unlimited funds directly to the Democratic Party—but according to the consultants’ interpretation of the law they could funnel private contributions into allied “independent” groups. As the discussion proceeded, it was proposed that Soros provide enough funds to these groups to pay for field operations in six or seven of the seventeen states that were expected to be the most contested. Soros, Steitz recalled, insisted that funds be offered for all seventeen. “He said, ‘I don’t want to build half a bridge! I want to do what’s necessary to effect the outcome!’”
Incidentally, it just so happens that two Yale political scientists (who, by the way, are top-notch in their field) have just published a book examing the effectiveness of various approaches to organizing electoral campaigns. Here's what Donald Green and Alan Gerber concluded in Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout.
Too bad the wrong George was in charge of postwar planning for Iraq.
- Door-to-door canvassing, though expensive, yields the most votes. As a rule of thumb, one additional vote is cast from each 14 people contacted. That works out to somewhere between $7 and $19 a vote, depending on the pay of canvassers - not much different from the cost of that three-pack of underwear. Canvassers who matched the ethnic profile of their assigned neighborhoods were more successful.