FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - At first Marc Broklawski's problem was an easy one. Whenever another volunteer trickled in - the lawyer from Washington, the small business owner from Annapolis - he just plugged them into the network of poll workers and door knockers he'd already assembled to help Democrat Barack Obama win votes in the largely Republican exurb of Stafford County.
But at 10 a.m., the volunteers started coming by the van-load. A coordinator in Northern Virginia called to say he was sending 50 people, maybe 75. By noon, the county was awash in transplanted volunteers, and Broklawski was burning through the minutes on his cell phone and the gas in his Honda Pilot trying to keep them all busy.
"I'm being inundated," said Broklawski, chairman of the Democratic Committee in Stafford, about 40 miles south of Washington.
"But you know what, this is what's going to make the difference."
Something made a difference. Obama led Republican Sen. John McCain by 51.3 percent to 47.7 percent in Virginia early this morning with 98 percent of the votes counted. No Democratic presidential candidate had won Virginia since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
And while support from the state's traditional Democratic regions in Richmond and suburban Washington gave Obama the bulk of his tally, Democrats were also crediting an unprecedented vote-by-vote volunteer effort in regions such as Stafford. Four years ago, Democrat John Kerry won 37 percent of the vote there. Yesterday, Obama won about 47 percent.
Obama supporters flooded the largely white county of 72,000 registered voters with as many as 2,000 volunteers yesterday, many of them migrants from safe Obama territories such as Maryland, Delaware and New York.
They staffed each of the county's 24 voting precincts with at least one attorney and teams of greeters and observers. They took down names of voters they recognized, constantly revising a master list of likely Obama supporters who needed to vote.
At the campaign's county headquarters, volunteers printed updated maps showing supporters who hadn't voted yet. Then canvassers grabbed the lists and drove off, knocking on doors to offer reminders, encouragement or maybe a ride. As they left, they brushed past a sign that read: "12 doors knocked = One Obama vote."
From start to finish, the process sometimes required the work of five or six volunteers to get one additional person to cast a vote. And the volunteers considered it a fair deal.
