WILLOW GROVE, Pa. — It’s the biggest mystery of the midterms: Which groups of voters will turn out in the largest numbers?
It’s also, obviously, the most important question of all. Most, if not all, of the big Senate races are within what political pros call the “margin of field” — meaning that a superior turnout operation can mean the difference between winning and losing.
“It’s the only thing that matters right now,” said Molly Parzen, the executive director of Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania, an environmental group that is part of a coalition of liberal organizations running get-out-the-vote operations in the state.
On a sunny day here in mostly Democratic suburban Philadelphia, I tagged along as Parzen’s group plowed through its file of middle-class voters in the town where Jill Biden spent some of her early years. It’s painstaking work, knocking on doors and gently nudging people to vote for Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania’s heated races for governor and Senate.