Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (File photo via Minnesota Governor's Office)

Before his trip to Iowa, Pawlenty had taken heat for endorsing the Conservative Party candidate over the Republican in Tuesday’s U.S. House district in New York. He then called moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine “more liberal than most Republicans would like.”

Pawlenty seemed to be addressing that controversy, saying debate over things like the party platform are good, but once that’s complete Republicans must unite to “start the American comeback.”

Pawlenty then struck a chord for party unity, saying that there should be vigorous primary campaigns, but then everyone should get back on the same team in order to elect Republicans.

“We’re going to have our debates about what the platform will look like,” he said. “We’re going to have our primaries and caucuses. We’re going to go through that process, and it should be hard fought. But when those decisions are made, as a team we have to come around and support each other.”

This marks the second major Republican Party of Iowa fundraiser where a potential 2012 presidential candidate has made it a point to discuss creating an inclusive party. In June, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told a crowd of GOP activists and elected officials that the only way back into the majority was to resist demands for ideological purity.

For most of his speech, Pawlenty struck a populist tone attacking federal bailouts for Wall Street companies and Detroit automakers. And on the night that U.S. House lawmakers approved health care reform legislation, Pawlenty repeatedly hit the Democratic reform efforts, saying they are proof that Democrats no longer care about working families.

“They have a party now, our competitors, that have embraced big government, big unions and big bailouts,” he said. “And they want to have the people believe that they work for the common person. The working person.”

During his successful presidential campaign, Barack Obama regularly asked if the crowd was “fired up and ready to go,” Pawlenty said

“Are you fired up and ready to fight back?” Pawlenty said. “Are you willing to be involved?”

He said Obama broke his campaign promise to seek bipartisan health care reform, instead deciding to push for a liberal bill, ignore Republican voices and continue the “dangerous leftward tilt” the president has pursued for the country.

“In his victory speech in Iowa after the caucuses, President Obama promised — he used the word promise — he was going to bring Republicans and Democrats together to pass needed health care reform,” Pawlenty said. “Now I ask you, are you sick and tired of Democrats trying to ram down this liberal monstrosity down our throat which is their health care reform plan?”

But the Republican Party can’t simply be critics, Pawlenty said. Republicans must also offer solutions, and he pointed to his record as governor of Minnesota as proof that GOP ideas work. Minnesota is a very liberal state, Pawlenty said, and he was still able to cut spending and taxes.

“If we can do it there, we can do it anywhere,” he said.

The federal government could learn from his experience in Minnesota. Instead of allowing the national deficit to continue to grow, government should begin to live within its means, Pawlenty said.

“The only thing growing faster than the national debt is [MSNBC host] Chris Matthews’ man-crush on Barack Obama,” he said.

This marks Pawlenty’s first trip to Iowa since he campaigned for Arizona Sen. John McCain last year, and many are speculating that the trip is another indication of his interest in seeking the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. He has already said he will not seek a third term as governor and last month he formed a political action committee called Freedom First, a typical first move for presidential aspirants.

Both are scheduled to address the Log Cabin Republican convention this weekend in Washington, D.C.

Schmidt, according to a transcript of his speech attained by CNN, says becoming more accepting of same-sex marriage is critical for the party to remain relevant. He also criticizes opposition to same-sex marriage on moral grounds.

Schmidt likens the fight for gay rights to civil rights and women’s rights, and he admonishes conservatives who argue for the protection of the unborn as a God-given right, but against protections for same-sex couples.

“It cannot be argued that marriage between people of the same sex is un American or threatens the rights of others,” he says in the speech. “On the contrary, it seems to me that denying two consenting adults of the same sex the right to form a lawful union that is protected and respected by the state denies them two of the most basic natural rights affirmed in the preamble of our Declaration of Independence — liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“That, I believe, gives the argument of same sex marriage proponents its moral force,” Schmidt will say.

Meghan McCain, in a column written for the online news site The Daily Beast, called herself a “pro-life, pro-gay marriage Republican.”

I believe life begins at conception and I believe that people who fall in love should have the option to get married. Lest we forget, our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, grants the same rights to everyone in this country—“All men are created equal.” If you think certain rights should not apply to certain people, then you are saying those people are not equal. People may always have a difference of opinion on certain lifestyles, but championing a position that wants to treat people unequally isn’t just un-Republican. At its fundamental core, it’s un-American.

In Iowa, a state McCain lost by nine percentage points to President Barack Obama, recent polling by the University of Iowa shows two-thirds of Iowans support some sort of recognition of same-sex relationships, either civil unions or marriage. When only voters younger than 30 are polled, that total rises to nearly 75 percent.

County recorders are to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 10 days.

Sarah Palin at a rally in Sioux City. (Photo: Douglas Burns)

And the exclusive story is no longer the exclusive domain of the traditional media. In many cases, it’s the small, independent media that are breaking stories and driving the news these days.

With that in mind, the Iowa Independent would like to share the best of the stories that you read here first.

1. Why John McCain will select Sarah Palin as running mate by Douglas Burns (June 29, 2008)

Sarah who?

That was pretty much the reaction in June when the Iowa Independent’s Doug Burns not only said the one-term governor from Alaska should be John McCain’s vice presidential pick, but that she would be his pick. By late August, McCain actually did choose Palin to be his running mate, and Burns (and his crystal ball) were vindicated.

2. Agriprocessors official who sold used cars and favors has fled the country, residents say by Lynda Waddington (June 20, 2008)

If a scoop is defined as getting a story before any other news organization, then Lynda Waddington’s story about Hasom Amara, a former supervisor at Agriprocessors, can be counted as a super scoop. That’s because she not only broke the news to the public that Amara had fled the country, she broke the news to the Department of Justice and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division.

3. Dems’ coordinated campaign largely disbanded, replaced by Obama staff by Jason Hancock (July 3, 2008)

In a year that saw Democrats expand their majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, you wouldn’t think there would be much talk of missed opportunities. But in the months leading up to Election Day, Democrats were predicting (and Republicans were bracing for) huge gains that never came. This despite the fact that Obama overwhelmingly carried the Hawkeye State with his army of volunteers and paid staff blanketing the state and turning out supporters.

So are Iowans just notorious ticket-splitters, or was there something else to blame? Many point back to one of Obama’s first post-primary decisions, to forgo participating in the state party’s coordinated campaign and instead focus all efforts on his own election, a story we broke in Iowa. Many predicted at the time that this could make legislative races tighter, a hypothesis that seems to have panned out.

4. Fallon faces campaign finance questions By Chase Martyn (March 30, 2008)

Former state Rep. Ed Fallon

The Democratic primary for the Third Congressional District between incumbent Leonard Boswell and Ed Fallon garnered national attention and was widely expected to go right down to the wire. In the end, Boswell cruised to victory. Two major factors seemed to pull Fallon’s support down in the months leading up to the primary vote. The first was his outspoken support for Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2000, something Boswell repeatedly used to try and show Fallon was somehow less of a loyal Democrat. The second was a report by the Iowa Independent calling into question the campaign finance ethics of Fallon’s for-profit political advocacy organization “I’m for Iowa.”

One of Fallon’s major lines of attack was Boswell’s stance on campaign finance reform, calling the Blue Dog Democrat a pawn of corporate America due to his willingness to accept millions of dollars from corporate political action committees. So when Fallon revealed that his for-profit advocacy organization accepted contributions that would never be disclosed, cries of hypocrisy quickly followed, whether justified or not. His campaign never seemed to regain traction.

5. Iowa’s intelligence fusion center ‘connects the dots’ By Jason Hancock (July 29, 2008)

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government began creating a nationwide intelligence network with a headquarters in every state. The fusion center concept was born. Here in Iowa, very little was known about the organization, even though its major structure had been in place for years and its director, Russell Porter, was a well-known figure in the national intelligence community. As part of a nationwide series including the Iowa Independent and its sister sites in Minnesota, New Mexico, Colorado and Michigan, the doors of this secretive organization were flung open. Soon after our coverage, the story of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center was being told on national television.

6.  The invocation that stole the show from Sen. John McCain by John Deeth (Oct. 11, 2008)

John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, had not yet arrived at an Oct. 11 Davenport event, so naturally very few media members had bothered to show. Luckily, the Iowa Independent’s John Deeth is much like a Marine -– first one in, last one out, which meant he was practically the only one there to file the following report:

Before McCain’s arrival, a minister delivering an invocation said, “There are plenty of people around the world who are praying to their god, be they Hindu, Buddah, or Allah, that (McCain’s) opponent wins. … And Lord, I pray that you step forward and honor your own name.”

The story quickly made its way across the Internet, and the preacher who made the remark, The Rev. Arnold Conrad, past pastor of the Grace Evangelical Free Church, was later “honored” as Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World.”

7. Obama/Richardson Caucus deal by Chase Martyn and Lynda Waddington (Jan. 2, 2008)

There is a lot of wheeling and dealing on Caucus night. One day before Iowans rocketed Barack Obama to front-runner status, the Iowa Independent reported on possible deals between New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and the Obama campaign that directed Richardson supporters to caucus for Obama in the second round of voting.  Both sides (and nearly every other Democratic candidate) denied the deal, but we found plenty of evidence on the ground.

8. GOP platform calls for end to ethanol mandate By Jason Hancock (Sept. 3, 2008)

It was a move that received very little attention on a night when most of the Republican National Convention was cancelled because of concerns over Hurricane Gustav, but for farm states, it was a big deal. The GOP’s national platform for the first time called for an end to a mandate that gasoline contain a set amount of ethanol. Overall, the 2008 RNC Convention was not kind to the ethanol industry, with Sen. John McCain and his vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hardly mentioning biofuels as part of the energy mix of the future. The move was seen as a putting the party in line with its presidential candidates, but many observers said at the time that it would cost Republicans support up and down the ballot in agricultural states like Iowa.

Here is The Register:

U.S. Rep. Steve King, a conservative Republican who won re-election in western Iowa, said he tried without success to get McCain to soften his position on ethanol.

King said he suggested to McCain’s advisers that the candidate talk about the 2015 mandate for ethanol usage as a workable goal. McCain didn’t take the advice and instead kept attacking ethanol, King said.

In the end, ethanol was one of several issues that hurt McCain, including his support for the bailout of the financial system, King said. King said McCain needed to get at least 60 percent of the vote in his district to have a chance at winning Iowa but wound up with less than 50 percent.

Sen. Tom Harkin met with supporters at a pre-election rally in Cedar Rapids.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, while predicting national Democrats would pick up seven seats in the U.S. Senate, was in a forgiving mood toward Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.

“[Lieberman] happens to be a friend of mine,” Harkin said during a pre-election rally in Cedar Rapids Sunday evening. “I happen to like Joe very much. But, I suppose, there has to be some discipline. We can’t have someone going off and doing things like Joe has done.”

Lieberman, who has caucused with the Senate Democrats since being re-elected to his Senate seat as an Independent, actively supported the presidential bid of Arizona Sen. John McCain and vice presidential bid of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Lieberman lost the Democratic primary for his seat in 2006 — largely due to his support for the Iraq War — and the former Democratic vice presidential nominee has been playing both sides of the political aisle ever since. In September he was a much lauded speaker at the Republican National Convention where he harshly criticized the Democratic ticket.

“[Whether or not Lieberman continues to caucus with the Democrats] is something to be decided later on,” Harkin said. “I don’t want to get into that right now, although it is something that will need to be decided. … But, you know, sometimes it is better to forgive and forget. Quit dwelling in the past. Leave the past behind us. Let’s look to the future. And, in that case, maybe Joe will stay with us in the Democratic caucus. We just don’t know yet.”

Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who serves as Senate Majority Leader, announced that he would be speaking with Lieberman in the days following the election to discuss the matter. Since that announcement, most U.S. Senators have remained mute on the topic and have taken a wait and see approach.

Lieberman was able to retain his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee largely because he, along with Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, caucused with the Democrats and helped the group maintain a thin 51-49 majority. Lieberman has also voted with the Democrats on most issues. The main exception to that rule of thumb has been legislation concerning the Iraq War. As a part of the gentleman’s agreement between Reid and Lieberman, the Connecticut Senator does not attend party meetings when war policy is the primary topic.

With six seats in the can for the Democratic majority, as well as three others remaining up for grabs, it could be that Lieberman won’t be the hot commodity he has been.

“Well, if we discount Joe Lieberman and we pick up seven seats, that would give us 57 Democratic Senators,” Harkin contemplated prior to Tuesday’s election. “You need 60 to break a filibuster. What I’m telling you is that there are always five or six or seven moderate Republicans who will vote with us to break a filibuster.”

According to Harkin, there have been 90 filibusters in the past two years.

“On any one of those, in which we’ve had a vote, we’ve always gotten four or five Republicans who don’t want to plug things up,” he said. “So, we don’t need 60 because there are enough moderate Republicans who will work with us to get the job done.”

The new make-up of the Senate combined with the fact that Vice President-elect Joe Biden will break any tie votes definitely benefits the Democratic caucus, but that configuration won’t take place until January. Until then, if the Democrats press too much, Lieberman could decide to leave the caucus which would place the Senate in a 50-50 split with current Vice President Dick Cheney casting the tie-breaking vote.

In further paradox, Lieberman, while publicly supporting the McCain-Palin ticket, has made significant monetary contributions toward the election of Democrats. As the Washington Post reports, Lieberman gave Biden $5,000 to help retire the Delaware Senator’s campaign debt. He also provided more than $145,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and $5,000 each to Colorado Democratic U.S. House candidate Mark Udall and Virginia Gov. Mark Warner.

Hours after Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was announced as president-elect, Lieberman issued his congratulations.

“America remains a nation of extraordinary opportunity and the American people are a people of extraordinary fairness,” Lieberman said in the prepared statement. “Now that the election is over, it is time to put partisan considerations aside and come together as a nation to solve the difficult challenges we face and make our blessed land stronger and safer. I pledge to work with President-election Obama and his incoming administration in their efforts to reinvigorate our economy and keep our nation secure and free.”

Barack Obama speaks at Carroll High School just before the Iowa Caucuses.

Carroll County — which went for President-elect Barack Obama in the Iowa Caucuses nearly a year ago — was there for him again Tuesday.

After going for President George W. Bush in the last two elections, Carroll County went for Obama.  The Illionis Democrat earned 51 percent of the county’s votes, while GOP hopeful John McCain drew 47 percent.  In raw votes, that is 5,284 to 4,905. State Democratic officials said the county was one they paid attention to as something of a bellwether.

“We finally got a man who I think really showed some intelligence,” said Butch Heisterkamp, chairman of the Carroll County Democratic Party.

Iowa as a whole went was called early in the night for Obama — 54 percent to GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s 45 percent.

For his part, Heisterkamp was an early Obama supporter.

He introduced Obama at a Carroll rally just after Labor Day in 2007 and minutes later formally endorsed him, becoming one of the first county chairs to do so.

“I got on there a little bit early,” Heisterkamp said. “I just believed in the man.”

With a nearly 70 percent turnout among registered voters in Carroll County, Obama dominated the ground game with absentee ballots and early voting.

“We had a good organization,” Heisterkamp said. “We were here in January in the caucus times.”

State Rep Rod Roberts, R-Carroll, who himself won re-election, said the McCain campaign sailed into a furious Democratic headwind — and deserves credit for doing as well as it did against long odds.

“Regardless of the nominee the cycle and trends favored the Democrats this time around,” Roberts said.
Roberts said that ironically and with great unfairness, McCain’s position on the war in Iraq, his support for the surge, helped matters in that conflict and largely took the issue off the table for the election in favor of the economy.

“That (the economy) became the pre-eminent issue among voters,” Roberts said.

What’s more, Roberts — an early and consistent supporter of McCain even during the darkest days of the primary campaign and caucuses campaign — said he had several conversations with area farmers, generally conservative, who punished McCain at the polls for the Arizonan’s hostility to ethanol and agricultural subsidies — which McCain expressed during campaign stops and in two of the  highly watched presidential debates.

“There were some people who were concerned about his position on ethanol and renewable fuels,” Roberts said.

Those concerns, Roberts said, help explain a remarkable dynamic in which both Obama and U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, carried Carroll County.

Heisterkamp and other local Obama supporters said they received enthusiastic calls late Tuesday from young Obama staff people who spent months in Carroll before the caucuses, and then moved on to other states.

“We got that done,” Heisterkamp said. “We got Iowa for him.”

In terms of sheer logistics, boots-on-the-ground campaigning, Obama is overwhelmed McCain here.
Obama had an office in Carroll, and has had staff in place dating back well before the caucuses. Additionally, Obama campaigned in Carroll twice.

Obama, who pulled crowds of more than 600 people in each of the two visits here, turned that enthusiasm into living and breathing Iowa Caucuses support in capturing Carroll County with 35 percent of the delegates.

McCain never visited Carroll.

The nation’s first African-American president, Obama captured Carroll, a county that is 98.8 percent white, according to the 2006 U.S. Census.

“I think it’s wonderful,” said Mary Bruner, an Obama supporter from Carroll. “People are using the term transformational and I really think it was. I was talking to my kids who are in their 20s. They don’t see that color. I really hope that’s the way the world is going to be.”

Obama won Crawford and Audubon and Greene Counties, but lost in Sac and Calhoun counties.

With the exception of Monona County, which went for McCain, Obama won a stretch a counties along the U.S. Highway 30 Corridor running across the state from Crawford County to the Mississippi River.

Sen. Barack Obama campaigns in Cedar Rapids, 7/31. (Photo: John Deeth)

70 percent: Obama’s winning percentage in his best county, the People’s Republic of Johnson County. Obama exceeded a local Lyndon Johnson record of 68 percent from 1964. The dusty old canvass books may tell if Obama’s margin breaks any sort of FDR record. Johnson County had by far the biggest Obama percentage in the state.

Other counties that traditionally go heavily Democratic, such as Des Moines, were just over 60 percent. Obama had an unusual hot spot on the Minnesota border, topping 60 in Winneshiek, Worth, and in his second best county, 63 percent in Howard. Democrats picked up highly targeted state House and Senate races in Winneshiek, so the extra effort may have been a factor.

81 percent: McCain’s winning percentage in his best county. One guess… yeah, Sioux County.

30,069: Obama’s Johnson County winning margin. Local Democrats set a goal of 25,000 months ago, and far exceeded John Kerry’s 19,000 margin.

4,173: John McCain votes in Iowa County.

4,173: Barack Obama votes in Iowa County, giving Iowa County the Golden Hanging Chad Award for close results. Cedar County got national attention in 2000 with an election night tie, but less attention for a final count that gave Al Gore the county by two votes.

55.2 percent: The percentage of Johnson County’s vote that came in as early ballots. Yes, more people voted before Election Day than on Election Day. Statewide, 533,967 voters had returned absentee ballots through midday Tuesday, 16 percent higher than 2004. Absentees postmarked by Monday, Nov. 3 can still be counted, which might affect a couple of the races listed below.

62.6 percent: Senator Tom Harkin’s winning margin. Some polls showed low-profile Republican Christopher Reed breaking 40 percent, but he landed at 37.4. That can now be marked as the official baseline for Republican votes in Iowa, a few points above Democrat Art Small’s 2004 loss to Chuck Grassley.

O. Kay Henderson at Radio Iowa reports that Reed has still not called to congratulate Harkin, but then, neither has Jim Ross Lightfoot, who lost to Harkin 12 years ago.

35.7 percent: Republican Dave Hartsuch’s count in the 1st Congressional District, lowest among the ten major party nominees. Rob Hubler made the deep red 5th District as competitive as any of the others, with 37.3 against Steve King.

42.2 percent: Republican Kim Schmett’s percentage, making his race against 3rd District Democrat Leonard Boswell, surprisingly, the closest in the state.

0: Iowa women elected to Congress or governorship, as Iowa remains in the club with Mississippi. Democrats had high hopes for Becky Greenwald in the 4th, but Tom Latham held her under 40 percent.

Likewise, the Iowa Republican blogosphere was convinced, without any neutral indications to guide them, that Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the 2nd District was the sleeper candidate of the entire nation. But she only pulled 38.9 percent to Democrat Dave Loebsack’s 57.1, with the remaining 4 points going to two other candidates.

31-19: The new Iowa Senate margin. Democrats gained three Senate districts. Swati Dandekar won an expected victory in open District 18 in Marion, and Mary Jo Wilhelm knocked off GOP incumbent Mark Zieman in District 8 in the northeast corner. Steve Sodders took open District 22 from the GOP in Marshall County. But two incumbent Democrats went down in defeat: Jeff Danielson in Waterloo’s District 10 and Frank Wood in the Quad Cities District 42.

6: State Rep. Wes Whitead’s lead in House District 1. Not percentage lead, vote lead. Six (6) votes, the state’s closest. Seesaw results and conflicting reports kept the Iowa House in question during the night. For a few hours, Rep. Elesha Gayman was shown as losing, but the highly-targeted Democrat held on once the absentees were added in.

160: Democrat Larry Marek’s winning margin in House in House District 89 for a Democratic gain. Marek won with a big margin in the Johnson County part of the district, the same way Becky Schmitz carried the corresponding Senate District 45 two years ago.

56-44: The new Iowa House margin, with six Democratic gains. In addition to Marek, the pickups were open district 16 in the northeast (John Beard) and 13 in Mason City (Sharon Steckman). Kerry Burt knocked off ex-TV anchor Tammy Weincek in Waterloo’s District 21. Gene Ficken defeated incumbent Dan Rassmussen in District 23 in Buchanan and Black Hawk counties. Phyllis Thede, who narrowly lost a Senate seat to Hartsuch two years ago, beat incumbent Jamie Van Fossen in Davenport’s District 81.

But Democrats lost three seats, including two in two northern Linn County. Nick Wagner beat Gretchen Lawyer in open District 36 (Dandekar’s old seat), and Renee Schulte bashed first term Rep. Art Staed over the head with a flowerpot (a frequent ad theme) in District 37 by 47 votes, which is within the provisional ballot and late absentee ballot margin.

Incumbent Democrat Mark Davitt appears to have lost in House District 74, though the Des Moines Register reports that Davitt’s campaign gathered different numbers and says they won.

If all results hold (Staed and Whitead may not), that’s a Democratic gain of three from the last session, but only a gain of two over the 2006 election results. In perhaps the most frustrating result for Democrats, party switcher Dawn Pettengill held on in Benton County’s District 39.

60.8 percent: The narrow winning margin for the $20 million Johnson County conservation bond. The issue got off to a roaring start with 70 percent of the absentee, but saw its margin drop through the night. Two vote No committees fought the measure, but by the time they got started many votes were already in the box. (Like mine–making their two robocalls asking me to vote no pretty much moot.) Local Republicans were urging a No vote on their headquarters answering machine, while the Democrats formally endorsed a Yes vote. With so many Democrats voting early, the election day pool of voters leaned more GOP than average. The measure won the Election Day vote in Iowa City by 60-40 but lost by the same margin in the rest of the county. Janelle Rettig of the Land Water Future vote Yes committee calculates the winning margin at 486 votes.

44: Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States. Obama frequently credited Iowa for the Jan. 3 caucus win that sent him on the road to the White House, and that should help Iowa keep its place in the front of the line for the 2012 and 2016 nomination process.

Editor’s note: Some of these numbers could change before results are certified, so take them with a grain of salt.

That timing makes it likely that Obama’s margin of victory over Sen. John McCain will be large.

It was also projected that U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin has retained his seat, fending off challenger Chris Reed.

Right now, staffers for Senators Barack Obama and John McCain are working frantically to keep everything together.  Below, you’ll find a brief synopsis of what they are doing.

Both campaigns began the political season building a list — or “universe” — of supporters.  Essentially, that means making lots of phone calls — using volunteers as well as paid call centers — to determine which voters are supporting which candidates. If you got a phone call asking you whom you were voting for, it probably came from one of the two presidential campaigns.

The process of adding names to a campaign’s GOTV universe continues pretty much all the way until Election Day, but campaigns also do their best to cut down on the number of names on their list by encouraging early voting.  Both campaigns will attempt to call through their GOTV universes several times today to encourage their supporters to vote, and they will also attempt to knock on as many supporters’ doors as possible.  As one might imagine, getting through the lists is easier when there are fewer voters left to vote.

Both sides will also work during the day today to narrow their lists even more.  They have strategically placed pollwatchers in precincts where they have a lot of supporters.  When a supporter enters the polls to cast a ballot, pollwatchers will cross them off their campaign’s list.  Eventually, the names of voters who have been crossed off — or “struck” — by a pollwatcher will reach the local campaign headquarters.  The campaign will then cross the names of those voters off of their lists, leaving them with fewer people to reach in their next round of phone calls or door knocks.

That means that if you do not want to be hassled by your candidate all day, your best bet is to vote now.  Eventually, the fact that you voted will probably filter back to the campaign, and the calls will stop.