PSoftheD

(From the Detroit News) Campaign officials said they hope to contact 1.4 million Michigan voters in the final four days of the campaign as part of their get-out-the-vote drive.

Those efforts could help Democrats in close races, which in Michigan include two high-profile congressional races, a dozen or more state House contests and a contentious Supreme Court battle.

The Obama campaign has kept roughly 200 paid staffers in Michigan to coordinate thousands of volunteers, who began shifting last week from contacting and persuading voters to encouraging absentee voting and laying the ground work for Election Day efforts.

Donald Green, a Yale University professor and one of the nation's leading experts on motivating voters to get to the polls, expects Obama's teams across the country to be "very, very effective."
"They are the beneficiaries of an unprecedented allocation of financial resources, coupled with an immense reservoir of activism and enthusiasm," Green said.

Republicans in Michigan, he said, may well suffer from the opposite: reduced money and less energy.

"Once you say, 'I'm leaving that state for dead,' you do run the risk of creating an effect that's even worse than the financial resources you lose," he said. "You undercut the enthusiasm of activists who may be less willing to work the very, very long hours a campaign needs."