Dems tout turnout efforts as polls close

If Democrats lose control of the Senate Tuesday night, they want you to know it wasn’t for a lack of effort.

{mosads}The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is touting its field efforts as polls close in the midterm elections, saying volunteers and staffers reached more than 3.4 million voters overall.

That includes 1.7 million face-to-face contacts at the doors, and another 1.7 million made via phone calls, according to figures provided by the DSCC, which spent more than $60 million this election to turn out base voters.

The DSCC reached more than 700,000 voters on Election Day, according to its numbers.

The group’s biggest efforts came in North Carolina, where Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) is facing off against North Carolina Speaker Thom Tillis (R). More than 12,000 volunteers reached 390,000 people at their homes and another 240,000 on the phone.

Democratic early voting in North Carolina is up from 2010 by 24 percent and African-American early voting jumped 44 percent from that election, according to the DSCC, while Republican early voting rates increased by just 6 percent. More than 300,000 voters who didn’t vote at all in 2010 have already voted, and Democrats believe they favor Hagan by a 2-to-1 margin.

Democrats touted their efforts in other states as well. In Iowa, they say they won 60 percent of the 100,000 early voters who didn’t cast ballots in 2010, though that indicates Republicans have closed the gap in a state where Democrats have traditionally dominated field operations. In Colorado, more than 400,000 voters cast early ballots as the state shifted to a vote-by-mail system, and Democrats say they won that group as well.

Early voting was up by 150 percent in Alaska over the 2012 presidential election, a big jump, though the difference is just 10,000 voters overall in the small state.