ID -GOTV, and the impact on the Green voter turnout

ID-GOTV is important, but the impact isn't as large as some previous comments assume. I recently commented on Greg Morrow's excellent blog, regarding the impact on the GPC vote: 

http://democraticspace.com/blog/2009/08/conservatives-up-may-faces-chall...

His blog URL is:  http://democraticspace.com/blog

I think if you dig deeper into the demographic of the GPC supporters, you will find that they are disproportionately:
1) Living in rented accomodations. (1/2 the average turnout)
2) Youth, (under 25yrs), again, about 1/2 the average turnout.
3) Unidentified voters, hence no GOTV, for about 10% reduction in turnout.

There’s lot’s of overlap between youth, and renters, which explains why we don’t have a negative turnout!
That’s why I think that ID’ing the vote is doubly critical for the GPC, plus we should be innovative about motivating our youth, and marginal population to get out and vote. It's not that ID'ing is going to change the outcome all by itself, but without more data, there's no way to target a message on our own supporters, which in turn implies that there is no way to plan an effective response to our opponents various messages to Green voters. If it's the only thing the local EDA can do to change turnouts, then we should be doing it.

w.r.t. strategic voting message, the Liberals have been getting more effective at narrowcasting in the final days of the campaign here in Etobicoke-Lakeshore. I have watched their assault on the GPC become more refined since 2004, and they are really working on it hard. Given that this is Ignatieff’s riding, and he has direct experience of this effect, I suspect that he will be pushing this very targeted narrowcasting across the country next General election.

If I were planning a National Campaign for the GPC, I would be thinking very hard about how to innoculate. Sure, it’s probably only about 10% of our vote we lose this way now, but in Etobicoke, I have watched strong Green polls completely evaporate on EDay, after a concerted Liberal attack by phone, voicemail, flyer drops, and re-canvas. That kind of assault is very damned hard to counter, without a lot of resources, and effective intelligence about oppo. timing and I will guess out loud is going to have an unprecedented impact this fall.

I haven't compiled much data on it, but if I had to guess, about a quarter of our local vote gets flipped to the Liberals on the weekend before EDay. If the Liberals go nationwide with this narrowcasting effort, then the GPC will be in much more trouble next time out.