Rochester, MN
A very long day, canvassing in cold and rainy Rochester, Minnesota. Rochester is in MN-01, where Dan Feehan is running against the invidious Jim Hagedorn for an open seat. It may well be the closest tossup race in the country.
- We had a Swing Left bus from Minneapolis-St. Paul via Northfield (home of St. Olaf and Carleton). Getting the bus was a real struggle: I was told repeatedly that busses were for New York and LA.
- We made 1375 voter contacts. That’s nearly the 2016 margin in the entire district.
- Nationwide, Swing Left knocked on 1,000,000 doors today.
- An interesting fact about MN-01 is that, although the district is not remote or obscure, it’s not the closest swing district to almost anyone who doesn't live there. If you're in the Twin Cities, MN-02 and MN-03 are closer. If you’re to the west, MN-07 (which we treated as a swing district) is closer. If you're to the east, you're probably closer to either MN-02 or WI-01. To the south, there’s IA-01 and IA-03. If you're to the north, you’re Canadian.
- Waiting for people to answer the doors, I’d glance down at their name and age in Minivan and tell myself, “give them time: they’re old folks.” Then I realized that they were scarcely older than I. Thanks, Time!
- I was paired with a really good canvasser, South Carolina Lydia. A number of the door knockers had expressly Christian symbols; when I saw those, I found myself letting Lydia take the lead. Thanks, Gamergate!
- A number of people told me that they didn't know who they would vote for, and didn't want any information and didn't want to talk about it: they’d decide Tuesday morning. My sense is that some of these people just don't want their opinions to be known because they'd be embarrassed to defend them — but, remember, these were all likely Democratic voters, and I’m from Swing Left..
- I did talk to a number of people whose background seemed to be Baltic (or Eastern European at any rate) who, I thought, might not want their opinions to be known because they're thinking ahead to Trump’s secret police — and they've got more experience of this than we do.
