Poli Sci people: A question about GOTV?

In 1994, when I was an officer in the county Dem party, we went very heavy on GOTV (get out the vote) to try to fight the House banking scandal and Gingrich's "Contract on America". Our efforts were good in getting new people to the polls, but subsequent analysis showed that we actually hurt our candidates because, even in the most Democratic precincts, the new voters supported the Republicans more than the Democrats.

The confluence of events in 1994 resulted in an electorate who was in a foul mood against incumbency, mainly because of Republicans talking up term limits, plus the scandals, and other things. It was like a perfect storm and Republicans swept into the majority with eight new Senate and 52 new House seats.

I see similar (but different) forces in action this year, this time heavily favoring Democrats. Yet both parties are apparently again pushing GOTV.

Finally, Novakula said yesterday that he's predicting a Dem House sweep of 25 seats and that a "prominent Republican vote counter" has told him 26-30 seats. If true, this is near tsunami territory here.

Here's my questions:

<Q> Can GOTV efforts globally help Dems this year like it helped Republicans in 1994?

<Q> Isn't the same kind of sweep that occurred in 1994 possible this year?

<Q> What do Dems have to do to insure that such a thing happens?

On edit: Please, let's factor out the voting machines here. I'm really interested in these specific questions without the voting machine issue.

----- I don't know about "25 - 30" seats,... 18 or 19 would be fine by me. And remember, GOP apologists love to overstate their problems early on, in order that it always appears that they did "surprisingly" better than expected. Consider the spin they've employed with the budget deficit, for example.

----- As for the GOTV efforts you've mentioned,.. in my experience, the best and most reliable GOTV measure may be described as a variation on "the buddy system." If every democratic voter resolves to be personally responsible for getting at least one other voter to the polls on election day, then that is all you need. And if the democrats can pick up 25 House seats,... then I can't see why that sort of voter mood would not also give them a good shot at the 7 or 8 Senate seats they need to take the Senate.

-----Incidentally, no less a PNAC'er than Bill Kristol is also predicting that the democrats will re-take the House of Representatives, though he gave no numbers. And he didn't seem particularly worried about it, either.

Were your GOTV efforts aimed at voters you had identified as supporting Dems or just at Democratic precincts in general? If the latter then I could see how you turned out people in a general anti-incumbent mood, which in '94 was self-defeating.

As for this year, I do think there is a widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo which works against incumbents and a '94 like sweep is possible. What do we need to do to ensure that it happens? Work like hell. GOTV is going to be critical I think.

We had support from the national Dem party and had a GOTV expert on board. We did multiple targetting, including those precincts which vote most strongly for Democrats.

None of it worked for us.

I'm curious because the largest part of every GOTV effort I've been involved with specifically targeted those voters that had been previously identified as supporting Dem candidates. The idea of course being you only turn out those voters that you know are going to support your guy/gal.

The tactic of targeting precincts that lean heavily Democratic (instead of individual voters) has always struck me as less useful, and as you saw in '94 at times even counter productive.