Someone asked why people were knocking on doors campaigning this late – surely everyone has made their minds up by now.

One of the most important things a campaign can do is go door to door, identify which voters are going to support the candidate, and then make sure they have a ride to the polls. It’s not about convincing people to vote for your candidate at that point.

On election day, you call them again and remind them to vote and get them to the polls if they haven’t already. You have volunteers with cars (and donuts and coffee) to take them.

This is the Get Out the Vote part of the campaign that wins elections. The GOTV part of every campaign is important.

Trust me; I used to do this for a living. I was a campaign manager for a state rep in Boston way back in the 80s.

Here’s how it worked:

We had a list of registered Democrats. We’d go door to door, talk to them, and then put numbers next to each name. 5 meant they were definitely voting for our candidate, 4 meant maybe, on down to 1 meaning absolutely no way.

When you’ve contacted all the Democrats, then you start knocking on the independents’ doors.  If you get through them (highly unlikely; by this time, that’s a lot of doors), you can try knocking on Republicans, but there’s probably a better use of your time.

Then as the election gets close, you call them to remind them, starting with all the 5s. When you’ve finished the 5s, you go to the 4s, and so on.

And on election day, you do it again, to make sure they have voted and see if they need a ride.

That’s how you win elections.

Hillary has a strong GOTV organization. Trump has none. It will make a difference in close states.