Here's why we lost MO:

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The exit poll showed that about one-tenth of Missourians made up their minds over the final three days, and 53 percent of that group sided with McCain, compared to 41 percent for Democrat Barack Obama. Nationally, the late deciders were about evenly split. That allowed Obama to maintain his lead and win the presidency.

Missouri Republican Party spokeswoman Tina Hervey cited a targeted get-out-the-vote effort over the campaign's final 72 hours, a strategy that she said worked in 2000 and 2004, and worked even better this time.

"The difference (in Missouri) between us and the Obama campaign was they were going to try to touch every single Missourian. We spent the last three days just going after our voters," Hervey said.

"Really, it was just that personal touch, knocking on doors, answering questions."

Both sides pushed hard in Missouri, with frequent visits from Obama and McCain, their running mates and other prominent politicians from both parties. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was in Cape Girardeau Thursday and Jefferson City Monday. Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, was in suburban St. Louis on Thursday and in Lee's Summit on Monday. Obama was in Columbia on Thursday and Springfield Saturday.

University of Missouri-St. Louis political scientist Terry Jones believes the Palin appearances in particular excited conservative Republicans, especially evangelical Christians. Hervey agreed.

"I think the most important thing these visits did was motivate our volunteers," Hervey said. "It reminded them we were still in the game."

more . . . http://www.kansascity.com/383/story/876884.html

Also, the Bush family has one of their own living there by the name of Bucky. He was behind the scenes helping * get in office.

Also KC burbs were bad. Obama won 75% or more of the vote in the city limits but less than half in the suburban areas.

...and we'll each have our favorite. Mainly, though, Missouri (as is every other state) is diverse, with demographics unique and universal.

There's no need to pick a single cause.

we were told we'd be getting 100 out-of-state volunteers and we got 3, which may have made a difference. Please, I'm so happy he won, so quit dissing our efforts in MO.

P.S. That comment from the Republican spokeswoman is incorrect. We did NOT try to contact every Missourian. We only contacted those who were targeted by the Obama campaign initially.

But if you want to turn the state blue, it's important to analyze what happened.

I take it you didn't know that.

Unfortunately for many of us in Illinois, we had to make a call as to which neighboring states to invade. I went with Indiana as did many others. Another sizable chunk went to Michigan and Wisconsin.

They needed more bodies on the ground. Better turnout in the St. Louis area could have delivered the state for Obama.

And I would bet the legislature would be easy to convince on this issue.

not all of them....but some of the swingers. I'm sorry, but my home state can be awfully redneck at times.

They split more for McCain than in most places.

We've been working like crazy for Obama in Jefferson City, MO and Columbia. I never once saw or spoke to an actual McCain volunteer in this entire campaign. The only evidence I ever saw of McCain volunteers even existing was two days before the election when I went out to hang some doorhangers and encountered a grand total of 2(!) McCain hangers.

Granted, I was mostly running the office's phone banks so I wasn't canvassing as often as most of our volunteers, but yeesh.

"Really, it was just that personal touch, knocking on doors, answering questions."

Please. The McCain camp had no ground game here. No. Ground. Game. Whatsoever.

Sarah Palin's visit on the 3rd was a small disaster for us, but it had nothing to do with McCainiacs "knocking on doors" and "answering questions", and everything to do with the fact that our local paper gave her three consecutive days of front-page coverage while Biden's rally barely received any.

The single factor that contributed to our loss in Cole County (Jefferson City's county) was racism and racism alone, not some phantom McCain ground game.

Our GOTV effort was absolutely massive compared to theirs. (I realize this was a bit of a rant, but this just touched a nerve, heh.)

in all of Columbia. (see my other post below)

Hatred is so entrenched in these folks' psyches that the McCain camp didn't need to run anything resembling a competent ground operation to win Cole county. I'm extremely heartened by all the wonderful, caring Obama volunteers I met and worked with throughout the campaign, however. There's hope for us yet!

Blue Springs, Lee's Summit, etc. We saw nothing from the McCain people except yard signs and a few door hangers. Our GOTV efforts were MASSIVE, and extremely well organized. Many volunteers commented on the efficiency of the campaign. Even though we lost MO, I wouldn't trade a minute of the time I spent working for our candidate and appreciating the efforts of our teams.

And just a snarky side note--I'm kind of glad MO lost its vaunted "bellwether" status (if we had to lose the state), and I can say to those who voted against Obama "Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. He won anyway!" (Okay--I'll only say this in my head!)

and the complete lack of a McCain "ground game" was stunningly pathetic here!! Even with those several late desperation visits by Dumb & Dumber, they had literally next to nothing in terms of field organizers, and the result was a total lack of GOTV effort.

I find it beyond comprehension that a campaign would perform like a Swiss watch in one state, while just ONE CRUCIAL STATE OVER, it would go into complete Keystone Cops mode. Sorry...not buying it! I think we just have to chalk it up to just enough of a racist redneck element present in varying amounts through the state...

which tells me that many of the same people who voted for a Dem governor voted for McCain. This I don't get!

Unfortunately, Missouri is a very redneck state in many respects. This time around we elected all Democrats to our statewide offices, except for Lieutenant Governor, and we won the Governor's seat by a huge margin; so how else did we fail to get a majority for Obama? I live in Jefferson City and there are some indescribably stupid people here.

That said, there are stupid people everywhere, even in the bluest states. I learned from my mother that yesterday that my sister (they both live in California), who I believe to be a very intelligent and progressive person, actually voted for McCain because of Sarah Palin--she wanted a woman to be elected.

that had said they were going to vote for Obama. They stressed to us that we were not to go to every house, but only to those on our lists that had been analyzed by the campaign.

We had 70% turnout in Boone County. In 2004, Kerry lost the county by a couple hundred votes, in 2008 Obama won it by 10,000.

IMO, it was racism pure and simple. I understand that there is racism everywhere, and I applaud IN, VA, and the rest for a job more than well done. I just think there's very little margin for error when it comes to race in MO. Obama won 4(?) counties in the whole state, it's hard to win when you have no chance in so much of the state.

Lamar (birthplace of Harry Truman, integrator of the US military). I have memories of the area as highly racist and suffering from an excess of fundy religiosity.

Ironically, only about 100 miles from a place called Hope!

NC had it, MO didn't. If MO had early voting, I guarantee that MO would have gone blue. And, vice versa, if NC didn't have early voting, NC would have remained red.

It's just packaged as "absentee." The folks in the county clerk's office aren't even supposed to ask for a reason why you can't vote on election day. Of course my friendly neighborhood Deputy Clerk (who looked more like someone who'd live in East Texas than Missouri-- no offense to non-batshit-nuts Texans) did give me 20 questions because I'm an 18-year-old first-time voter. Anyone who wants to vote early in Missouri is able to, just not in your normal polling place (call your County Clerk's office for the location).

It's really all bullshit though, designed to appease the masses who want early voting without actually having to adopt it.

My conversation with the deputy clerk was fairly entertaining, but it has nothing to do with the topic so feel free to skip it...
"I'd like an absentee ballot please." She scowled at me, "Are you going to be out of town tomorrow?" I thought, gee, thanks for targeting me, lady! You're nearly as classy as our fantastic County Clerk himself! "No, I'm working all day." More scowls. "ALL day?" "Yes, all day." "The WHOLE day?" "Yep." She just looked at me for a long time, so I said, "I'm holding down the fort at a campaign office," with an effort to be vague regarding the specific campaign office. "Oh. So you're working THERE." And she sneered and handed me a ballot. I was surpised it corresponded to my district. Other young people I know who voted absentee had the same experience, but age 30+ whites weren't asked anything. The story that pissed me off the most was from one of our sweetest volunteers (an immigrant from India) who they gave the same runaround to then demanded photo ID (declared an unconstitutional practice in the state of Missouri) and terrified her in general.

I expected it to go heavily for McCain. I consider myself to be living in a purple state at the moment.

That was crazy close. For a Democrat, that's pretty awesome.

ashamed of myself, ashamed that I live here, and I need to get over it and just work harder.

(edited to mention the great effort in Boone County.)

Boone County did great!

Me included.

It was an incredibly close race, he lost by .2%, less than 6000 votes (not having counted provisional or absentee ballots as far as I know). That's better than we did in '04. At least we're not a terminally red state.

the fact that Obama came so close there is incredible!

Every four years means another chunk of people who are too old to change their ways leaving the electorate the hard way. The trick is ensuring that those who replace them are not equally unteachable.

Why would you take her word over actual Missouri volunteers we have here on DU. Also read here
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/on-road-st-louis-county-missouri.html

Of course the Obama campaign only targeted supporters in the GOTV phase!

"The difference (in Missouri) between us and the Obama campaign was they were going to try to touch every single Missourian. We spent the last three days just going after our voters," Hervey said.
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I did volunteering for the Obama Campaign all three days of their 72 hour GOTV project and we didn't go to every Missourian. In the weeks prior to the election, they had narrowed the canvassing list to ONLY Obama supporters and we just had to go make sure they voted and give them rides.

This lady is talking out of her ass.

EDIT: The more I read through this, the more pissed I get. Our ground game was better, we did more than they did so quit fucking blaming that. Blame racism, cause thats all that caused this. Jay Nixon won the Governorship by a huge margin, so it had nothing to do with Dem or Repuke, it had to do with black or white.

Per the MO SOS site, turnout in Kansas City and St. Louis, our two biggest Dem strongholds, was comparatively low on 11/4. Only 61% in STL and 66% in KC. Compare that to 73% in my county, Cole, where the state Capitol is, and 77% in the highest turnout county, St. Charles.

If turnout had been even slightly better in the cities, Missouri would be unquestionably blue right now.

http://www.sos.mo.gov/enrmaps/20081104/

I worked Pagedale (inner suburb, tier 1) on E-Day, with a pretty well-targeted list. We could have used a few more feet on the ground--in the early afternoon I covered a turf that had only been partially done in the morning, alone. That said, the doors I knocked fell into three classes: maybe a quarter of the folks there had already voted, often as whole households. Another group, less than a quarter, were expecting to vote soon (waiting on ride, babysitter, etc). But more than half the households weren't home in the morning and weren't home in the afternoon because (drum roll) they WORK.

I think there was a negative word of mouth on the lines at the polls too. They were very long in the morning (my wife waited two+ hours), but by 5ish were in many cases gone entirely. I only know that because that's when I finally voted...it would have been great if the comfort station folks at the polls (Great Idea, BTW) could have gotten that info into HQ and back out to the canvassers.

Early voting, by adding flexibility, would have done it. I'm sure of it. I'm also sure the GOP-controlled legislature knows it too, so any change will have to get started out of Jay Nixon and Robin Carnahan's offices.

right in and vote. My polling place only had 4 voting machines, but the polling place had 3 precincts assigned to it. I volunteered at another polling place in a predominately white and Republican area (likely one of the few Republican wards in STLCity) and they had 6 machines and only 2 precincts at the polling place. In addition to that, they had more poll workers working for each precinct. At my polling place, there were only four workers for each precinct. Needless to say, there were more for each precinct at the polling place I volunteered at.

I think the GOTV in the inner city could have been better. The long lines actually turned people away. I heard folks saying while I was standing in line that they had to 1) go to school; (2) go to work and had to leave. There was some voter suppression at work here.

Missouri's SoS is Democratic. The City of St. Louis is Democratic. The Board of Election Commissioners is (I believe) bi-partisan. There's actually no one obvious to blame here. I think they simply weren't prepared for turnout upswings in the mostly black precincts, even though they thought they were.

I don't know how it was created in other states--through legislation? It seems to have had a beneficial effect, nationwide, for increasing turnout. The possibility that it somehow favors Democratic turnout (though why that would be I'm not sure) certainly helps. It would also help if Election Day was a national holiday.

Of course, I was canvassing major urban neighborhoods, with large AA populations -- there was so much enthusiasm. And yes, we were only targeting known supporters by that point and we had very specific directions -- some doors were hanger only (if someone had talked to a voter there in the previous couple of days) and some were knock+hanger (if nobody had talked to the voter). Plus, each hanger had that precinct's polling information.

I was shocked turnout was comparatively low in St. Louis. Still, I do think that, frankly, it was racism. I think nationally, Obama's race was a wash or even a net positive. In a handful of states, however, his race was a net negative. Missouri, unfortunately, was one of those states. Southern Missouri is practically an entirely different state from St. Louis and Kansas City. Both those cities are firmly midwestern (St. Louis actually fancies itself an "eastern" city -- a legacy of the city's historical importance), but the rural parts of the state (esp. south of the Missouri river) are entirely Southern in character -- similar to Arkansas, Oklahoma and rural Tennessee.

While I would have loved to have it in our column, I'm sick of all the "This state indicates that" and "If this football team wins, that party loses" crap that we have to hear on the news every freaking election year.

Missouri is no longer the great bellwether. It's just another state that votes every election.

David

with almost the same thought.

And I'm sorry Hypnotoad didn't win this time. Next time.

1/2 way through Bender's Game! Was so exhausted last night I didn't finish it.

David

I mean they had 13 EVs in 1960 when Florida had 10, today it's 11 in MO and 27 in Florida, so it might have decided the outcome more than it reflected it (as Florida seems to do now).

And the myths of that one county picking the president for the last 50 years is gone.
I can't stand those 'bell weather' places that the media pushes. This election broke
a lot of those myths.

Missouri was in play and it was close. I expect with the organization that Obama has in place
it will become bluer in the 2010 election and a Presidential Win in 2012

Common error, I just learned that recently!