"Dems: Don't Panic About Voter Turnout Spending"

Hotline:

It's true that the Republicans have an overall spending advantage heading into October.

But will Republicans really have a $50 million advantage over Democrats on Get Out The Vote spending? Maybe not.

In fact, national Dem committees have transferred more than $30 million to state parties since the beginning of the year. The majority of that money will pay for GOTV. Also: the DNC has spent more than $7M upgrading its database of state voter files and adding reams of consumer information. In most competitive states, the party's coordinated committee -- that's the roundtable for election decision making -- will have access to much better data than they did in 2002. The caveat: When we last checked, Republican state parties had about $12 million more to spend than Democratic state parties.

Don't forget the unions. Their goal is to turn out union members for Democrats. The AFL-CIO will spent $40 million. The SEIU, part of the Change to Win coalition, will probably spend in excess of $20 million. Other unions will spend millions of their own money. Also: outside groups. We've written about America Votes members and their multi-million dollar voter modeling projects in several competitive states. If the September Fund, run by ex-Media Fund pres. Erik Smith, ever gets off the ground, it might be able to direct even more

Of course, one lesson from '04 was that quality trumps quantity. The Democrats, America Coming Together and organized labor dumped thousands more volunteers in the competitive states than Republicans. But the person-to-person, neighbor-to-neighbor coalitions model that the RNC and the Bush campaign used in about 16 states was far more efficient.

In all, it's likely that both parties' spending on turnout will be, roughly, equal. But whereas Republicans have mastered the art of microtargeting, Democrats are playing catch up. For Dems, ’06 is both a test run and a full launch.