I listened to the  thank you conference  call held for Organizing For America volunteers.  There were to be several shifts of these calls.  There were hundreds of listeners on the call I listened to.

I jotted down some numbers as I listened.  There was one item that was somewhat of a measure of the effectiveness of the volunteer effort.

On January 9, a survey was done to ask the supporters of both candidates how many were absolutely certain they were going out to vote.  The result was 73% of Brown voters said they were sure they would vote, 59% of Coakley supporters were sure they would vote,

Several days later (I forget how many) 86.6% of Brown voters said they were sure they would vote and 83.5% of Coakley voters said they were sure they would vote. Imagine what the pundits would be saying if Brown beat Coakley by 16%.  That is the 11% supporter gap closure plus the 5% he actually won by.  I know you can’t really put those numbers together, but it is a measure of how bad it could have been.

So even though we did not win, we shrank a 14% gap in supporters likely to vote by about 11 points.

Volunteers from all over America made over 2.3 million calls into Massachusetts in support of Coakley.

The organizers of the conference call were still in a little bit of a dream world by saying this was not a referendum on Obama, but only a contest between Brown and Coakley.

We volunteers are going to be sending in evaluation reports of our experiences using the tools they provided and our other efforts.  I will be sure to try to wake them up from the dream world they still occupy.