Virginia Democratic gubernatorial contender Ralph Northam's campaign says its canvassers hit a high mark for knocking on doors on Saturday and Sunday, the same weekend members of the Democratic National Committee gathered in Las Vegas fretted about the possibility of losing the race.
Organizers and volunteers for Northam said they knocked on 212,000 doors three weekends out from Election Day. That’s a jump from about 143,000 doors knocked at a similar point in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign in Virginia, and 87,000 doors knocked during Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s 2013 campaign.
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Not every door knock leads to a conversation with a voter. The Democratic numbers also do not include canvass attempts from outside groups spending on field operations, including the political arms of Planned Parenthood and the Virginia League of Conservation Voters.
In all, Northam’s field army has visited almost 2 million different homes during the campaign, said spokesman David Turner.
Republican Ed Gillespie left) and Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam prior to gubernatorial debate in Washington, DC on September 19, 2017. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)
Northam’s Republican opponent Ed Gillespie counters that canvassers knocked on nearly a quarter million doors over the weekend and more than 2.5 million since its outreach effort began in earnest, according to spokesman David Abrams. He declined to say whether homes visited multiple time were included in that tally, which prevents a direct comparison to Northam.