Mitt Romney's New Hampshire HQ Packed; Gingrich's? Not So Much

In the middle of the afternoon on the last weekend previously the election only about a dozen people were at Gingrich's HQ. Only a few were manning the phones. The hum of activity you would expect wasn't there.

Meanwhile, down the street the Mitt Romney headquarters was packed. For the moment 50 people were manning the phones during scores of others were being shuttled in and out for neighborhood canvassing operations. Staffers ran hastily about trying to keep the operation moving.

That doesn't necessarily tell us everything. For openers communications innovation and social media are slowly usurping the need for these kind of old-school campaign operations. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology for instance now makes it possible for volunteers to do phonebank operations from their own homes. Large groups of volunteers don't always equal votes either. Just ask President Howard Dean.

The sheer number of volunteers at Romney's HQ

The sheer number of volunteers at Romney's HQ was impressive although. This tended to be an older crowd, as a general rule middle-aged and ethnically very diverse. The common answer for their support of Romney was his background as a successful businessman. These were the kind of moderate New Englanders who had been volunteering for campaigns for people like Romney, Scott Brown, William Weld and others for many years.

The phonebanking was less rewarding, he said. "Most of the time it just goes straight to voicemail and instead talking to a real person, you have to read a script. It gets tiresome."

Lionel Addo, a Boston poli-sci high school teacher, said the staffers seemed overwhelmed with the sheer number of volunteers they had. "I expected to see one person in charge calling the shots. Instead I don't think the right hand knew what the left hand was doing," he said.