ODP Presentation Now Underway

Ohio Democratic Party Chair Chris Redfern, Executive Director Doug Kelly, and Director of Targeting John Hagner are giving a presentation to the press on the party's strategy for 2008. Here's a tiny bit of Redfern's introduction:

UPDATE: Doug Kelly and John Hagner did a powerpoint presentation about Ohio and ODP strategy. In broad terms, the party is working very hard on developing a knowledge base about Ohio voters and a micro-targeting strategy to deliver a fine-tuned election message. One surprising slide showed that 49% of the Democratic vote in 2004 came from counties that touch or are north of the Ohio Turnpike, which runs across the northern edge of the state -- I had not thought about it that way before.

Another display identified the Ohio congressional districts with an odd number of delegates (OH-03, OH-06, OH-16, OH-17, and OH-18). In those districts a candidate can win more delegates than his or her opponent by winning only 51% of the vote, as compared to about 60% needed for a net delegate gain in districts with an even number of delegates. Looking at the display, the travel schedules of the candidates and their surrogates suddenly made more sense.

John Kerry won 16 counties in 2004 and lost 72; Ted Strickland flipped those numbers perfectly in 2006 by winning 72 and losing 16. The Strickland map of counties won has a beautiful big expanse of blue across the middle and right-hand side -- except for Holmes County, which sticks out like a big red thumb.

The GOP had a massive advantage in knowledge about voters in 2004, but no state party has spent more money than the ODP in 2006 and 2007 on micro-targeting, Hagner said.

Kelly said that he expects Ohio to be "a very close battleground state -- we'll win 51% to 49%."

Hagner said that the ODP learned a great deal from the 5th Congressional District special race between Bob Latta and Robin Weirauch. He conceded that the GOP was able to demonize her on the immigration issue. However, the race validated the ODP's "numbers" on the effectiveness of door-to-door canvassing, and thus encouraged them to focus their efforts upon it.

Asked about what Ted Strickland and Sherrod Brown could have taught John Kerry on the subject of how to win Ohio, Kelly asked "How much time do we have?" Then he commented on Strickland running ads on Christian radio. He said that this "drove Ken Blackwell crazy," since Blackwell considered Christian radio "his turf." Hagner, who worked on the Brown campaign, said that the big lesson was to "focus everywhere." Also, what really nailed the campaign for Brown was when he focused in on "Isn't it time somebody put the middle class first?" as his message.