With worn shoes, hoarse voices, and just hours to go, Democratic and Republican candidates made their final push before Election Day to win votes and deliver their get-out-the-vote messages.
State Democrats hope another appearance from Vice President Joe Biden sealed the deal for their candidates up and down the ticket. It’s Vice President Biden’s third appearance in Delaware since the primary, including a fundraiser he attended with President Barack Obama earlier this month in Wilmington.
[caption id="attachment_5068" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Vice President Joe Biden joins U.S. Senate candidate Chris Coons and U.S. House candidate John Carney at a Democratic rally the night before election day."]
Biden spoke to a crowd of Democratic partisans at H. Fletcher Brown Park in downtown Wilmington. With U.S. Senate candidate Chris Coons and U.S. House candidate John Carney joining him on stage, Biden rallied Democrats. "”This election is a choice. This election is not a referendum. And these guys, [the Republican Party] is what I call 'the new party of repeal and repeat': repeal all the progress we’ve made and repeat everything that they did before,” Biden said. But the vice president warned Democrats that they should not take Republican candidates, including those in Delaware, lightly. “This is not your father’s Republican Party. This is not the party of [former Republican Delaware Senator] Caleb Boggs. This is not the party of the people who ran this state for a long time,” said Biden. Carney's and Coons' opponents "are not typical—to say the least—Delaware Republican candidates. Just ask Mike Castle."
Vice President Joe Biden appeals to Delaware Democrats to get out to vote on election day.
U.S. Senate candidate Chris Coons (D) makes his final pitch to Delaware voters.
Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell claimed the vice president’s appearance in Delaware is a sign that O'Donnell is closing the gap with Coons. In a statement, O’Donnell spokesperson Doug Sachtleben said the Coons campaign was “desperately calling in the Vice President” because O’Donnell is “connecting with voters."
Recent polls offered mixed indictions on where the race stands. Last week’s Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll showed Coons ahead by 21 points. Monmouth University’s poll last week show the Coons lead at just 10 points.
The O’Donnell campaign’s final push with voters relied less on retail politics and more on media. The O’Donnell campaign bought 30-minute blocks of broadcast time on Delaware public access cable channel 28, based in New Castle County, to air an advertisement meant to give voters a more personal picture of O’Donnell. Sachtleben said the video was an effort to take the campaign’s case straight to voters—“past the filters of the mainstream media...."
The effort did not get off the ground well. The first two scheduled airings on public access channel 28 did not happen as planned Sunday night and Monday morning. The campaign said it was “unclear” what had happened, adding: "Our hope is that this is not another case of the liberal media or political dirty tricks trying to silence Christine’s message to the voters of Delaware."
Later the campaign apologized, noting that the mixup was an honest mistake at the station. With only hours left, the campaign still was trying to purchase air time in the crowded Philadelphia TV market and in Salisbury, Md., which reaches lower Delaware. As of Monday night, the ad is scheduled to air on WBOC- TV in Salisbury, Md., five times on Tuesday (7:30, 8:30 and 9:30 a.m., as well as noon and 1:30 p.m), and four times on public access channel 28 in New Castle County (10 and 10:30 a.m. and 3 and 6 p.m.). The campaign also announced ad buys in Philadelphia on the digital channels of WPVI-TV and WCAU-TV. The O’Donnell video is also available online.
The last-minute appeal to voters from both sides is aimed at getting out the vote, which could be the determining factor in several key Delaware races.
Last week, during his stop at the University of Delaware, former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean addressed what has been termed the "enthusiasm gap”—the difference in voter motivation this year between Republicans and Democrats. Dean predicted that Democratic voters are “not going to turnout the way they did in 2008,” but he suggested that turnout will not be “as dismal as people thought.” He conceded that Democrats are likely to lose seats in the U.S. House and Senate, though he said Democrats will still hold majorities in the House and Senate once all the votes are counted.
Dan Cassino, assistant professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University and survey analyst for the PublicMind Poll, doesn’t believe the “enthusiasm gap” in Delaware is as wide as it might be nationally. Based on FSU's most recent polling, he doubts that "Republicans are going to somehow come out of the woodwork and show up.” The PublicMind polls have yielded typical Delaware results, he noted: New Castle County, which has a stronger Democratic base, will account for 60 percent of the vote. Kent and Sussex counties, where there is stronger Republican support, will produce about 40 percent. If turnout tomorrow tracks with PublicMind's poll numbers, those proportions give statewide Democratic candidates a strong advantage.
It’s that advantage Biden urged Democrats to take advantage of as he concluded his 20-minute speech to the rallygoers on Monday.
“If we show up and vote, we win. It’s a simple as that,” the vice president said.
