Narberth, PA Canvassing Report

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/6/1389/06404/251/468596">Cross-posted at DailyKos if anyone feels like recommending it there.

As promised, here is my latest canvassing report. I drove up from DC this morning and arrived at the Obama headquarters in Wynnewood, PA, right outside Philadelphia, around 2 PM.

They sent me to Narberth, which is in Montgomery County, less than 10 minutes from Philly. As I said in my previous post, I went to high school right around there, so I know the area pretty well. Most of the people I talked to today were white, upper-middle class, ages 30-55.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, especially after http://purplestatepundit.com/blog/election08/on-the-ground-in-the-philadelphia-suburbs/">getting not such great vibes at the ACME in Narberth 2 weeks ago when I was there doing voter registration (this was when the media was still playing Reverend Wright ad nauseum).

But I am pleased to report that of the people I talked to today, I identified 8 Obama supporters, 3 undecided, and only 1 Clinton supporter.

Unlike 2 weeks ago, I didn’t meet anyone who said they were a lifelong Dem who would vote for McCain if Obama was the nominee (though I met one woman who said a few of her friends might, because they did not trust Obama on Israel).

A few of the people I met were already volunteering, mostly through the Center City office in Philadelphia. One man who works in Center City said that he had several coworkers on the fence, and many of them had decided to vote for Obama after hearing his speech on race relations.

I met one woman who was undecided and said that she really wished she could vote for both of them. She said that the fact that she was even undecided now was a tribute to Obama, because she had initially been firmly in Hillary’s camp.

The campaign office said they had already identified 63% of the supporters they needed to identify in Lower and Upper Merion, and that they had gotten more volunteers today than they had expected, so they anticipated getting further ahead of the goal after today’s results were tallied.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up by even entertaining the notion that Obama could win Pennsylvania, but let’s just say today’s results are encouraging. It definitely feels like something has shifted over the past two weeks.