Campaigns making final Election Day push

Iowans will elect a governor in just nine days. No matter what happens, the man who wins will have held the office before. Now, it's up to both campaigns to earn as many votes as possible during this final stretch.

Both parties are walking door to door, dropping materials in the mail and dialing up as many people as they can.

Sundays are typically a day of rest, but if you're in politics, it's just another day.

At the Linn County Democratic headquarters, a team of about thirty volunteers spends their Sunday afternoon reaching out to voters.

“As many ads as we put on TV, as many pieces of mail people get, voter to voter contact is what we're great at and it's what really makes the difference,” Iowa Democrats Communication Director Sam Roecker said.

Just down the street at the Linn County Republican headquarters, about twenty callers try to convince people to hang up on Governor Chet Culver.

“We have the possibility for change on November 2, to really make a difference and change the course of the way our country works right now,” Chair of the Linn County Republican Party Mark Hudson said.

While many polls show Republican Terry Branstad ahead of Culver, the parties don't let those numbers distract them from getting their candidate elected.

“They do a poll and the next day, it's out of date. The latest one that the campaign released shows Governor Culver only eight points behind,” Roecker said.

Republican Nick Wagner said, “Polls are polls. Really, the only poll that matters is the one on election day.”

Although both campaigns support very different candidates, many of the volunteers donate their time for similar reasons.

“I've got two school-age kids and I know Governor Culver has done so much during his term to improve education,” democratic Gretchen Lawyer said.

Hudson said, “We're out there making phone calls for our kids to make sure we're going to change this country.”

Campaigns use all kinds of different techniques and technology to get in touch with people, but they say nothing beats the power of a personal conversation.

Democrats told KCRG-TV9 they have about twenty similar phone banks all across the state of Iowa. Republicans have about ten phone banks.

Republicans say they've placed one-million phone calls. Iowa Democratic Party spokesperson Sam Roecker said on Monday that the party has made more than one million calls, not 300,000 as he stated on Sunday afternoon.

There are 645,887 registered republicans in Iowa. 700,111 people are registered democrats in this state.