TURNOUT WATCH: Behind The Scenes Of The 72 Hour Program

Michigan Republican chair Saul Anuzis e-mailed an overview of Republican early vote / absentee efforts in Michigan.

The highlights:

608,074 Absentee Ballots have been requested across the state

369,045 (60.69 percent) of those requests come from our primary or secondary target lists

Only 127,677 requests come from voters who have been identified as Democrats

435,252 ballots that have been returned (versus simply requested)

Our target Republicans account for 269,650 (61.95%) of all ballots returned so far

IDd Democrats account for only 21.5% of returned ballots (though there are undoubtedly many Dems among the 90,371 returns who fall into the unidentified category)

The full memo is after the jump.

Memorandum

To: Republican Candidates, Leaders, and Grassroots Activists
From: Saul Anuzis
Date: November 5, 2006
Subject: Absentee Ballots

Now that it is too late for the Democrats to react to this information in any meaningful way, I wanted to share with you the "inside scoop" on what the MRP has done with our Absentee Ballot program and also share the results of that program based on tracking to date.

Using a combination of the much-vaunted MicroTargeting and the MRP voter ID program we compiled a primary universe of the most likely Republican (based upon Republican-ness and propensity to vote) households across Michigan. That list totaled 1,235,142 households and more than 2,000,000 total voters. We also derived a secondary list of likely Republicans who do not have as high a likelihood of voting in non-presidential years. This list totaled more than 1,000,000 voters.

We then designed a program to deliver Absentee Ballot applications to these voters and to follow up repeatedly with additional mail and multiple phone calls. The messages - both mail and phones - were tailored using Microtargeting to ensure that the voters were receiving messaging based on the issues most likely to ensure they get out and vote. Millions of pieces of mail were delivered and more than one million phone calls were made to our target universe.

We monitored the impact of the mail and phone program by creating a sophisticated tracking, reporting, and analysis system. We were able to monitor and analyze exactly which voters in the state requested and/or returned their Absentee Ballots. The monitoring system covered 88.4% of all jurisdictions and voters in the state. And we did this every day. I have attached the most recent tracking/analysis report. The report is an Excel file. The main tab shows an overview of the results and there are multiple tabs you can click on to examine various charts and graphs that analyze various cross-tabular data.

What the report shows overall is the following (as of Nov 2):
608,074 Absentee Ballots have been requested across the state
369,045 (60.69 percent) of those requests come from our primary or secondary target lists
Only 127,677 requests come from voters who have been identified as Democrats
435,252 ballots that have been returned (versus simply requested)
Our target Republicans account for 269,650 (61.95%) of all ballots returned so far
IDd Democrats account for only 21.5% of returned ballots (though there are undoubtedly many Dems among the 90,371 returns who fall into the unidentified category)
These various analyses are a yardstick and not a precise measurement of what our actual vote among the Absentee Voters will be. But I am optimistic that the success of the MRP AB program is a harbinger of great Republican results in Michigan on Tuesday when all these votes are counted. Combined with the effort all of you are putting forth making phone calls, knocking on doors and talking to your friends and neighbors...we are ready to win this Tuesday!!!

Thanks again to the entire Michigan Republican team for all your doing....remember, we have about 47 hours until the polls close, the headquarters office is full of staffers, Victory Centers are still calling and we're getting ready for tomorrow's activities.

Victory bound!