Phone Banking and Caucus Night

When we got to the campaign office today, the place was buzzing with activity. Everything that had been upstairs was now downstairs in the basement, and we were joined by several new volunteers. My first activity of the day was phone-banking, a process which involved calling undecided voters and gauging their support for Hillary Clinton. Most people I called were not home, so I left many, many answering machine messages. Those who did answer were generally still undecided (as so many New Hampshire voters tend to be, even though there are only a few days left until the primary contest) but I did reach quite a few who had made the choice to support Senator Clinton. Still, many people who were home and did answer the phone hung up as soon as they found out I was calling from a campaign. At first I thought it was a little rude, but then I realized that these people are being called by every campaign in town, and have been receiving these calls for some time now.

After a few hours of phone canvassing, I was asked by the staff if I would mind driving the van out to the Nashua dump; all that moving and reorganizing from the morning hours had produced more garbage than could fit into the trash can outside. Always a team player (and perhaps a little exhausted with phone calls), I quickly agreed and raced up the stairs to the van. Adam came along, and we had the van emptied in no time.

When we returned to the office, we scooped up the rest of our USF team (Steve, Debbie, and Damaris) and the five of us wandered down to Martha’s Exchange, a very nice restaurant that the candidates tend to frequent while in town. Upon returning to the office, we jumped back on the phones and contacted a few dozen more undecided voters. Shortly thereafter, we were asked to do “lit drops”, a process where we went to voters’ homes and left flyers on their front doors. The flyers advertised a rally event planned for Friday morning where Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea were scheduled to arrive from Iowa. After completing this task, we headed back to the hotel to meet with Professor McLauchlan and the class to watch the Iowa caucus results. It was a little disappointing that Hillary did not take first place in Iowa, but we were not too upset; I am confident that the voters of New Hampshire will give Hillary a victory.