by: Jennifer Ware, Mehgan Sellers & Philip Pirwitz

The past week in Texas has been a whirlwind of activity for the presidential candidates as well as for the numerous candidates in down-ticket races. With the Democratic presidential race in particular so closely tied, Texas was home to countless rallies, press events, canvassing efforts and house parties in support of each candidate.

The push for last minute support was palpable in Austin, and as Monday evening rolled around the candidates and their spouses focused their efforts to win the biggest state in the nation. Hillary Clinton rallied support at Austin’s Burger Activity Center, while Michelle Obama spoke to an audience of a few hundred at the Students for Obama headquarters on the UT campus. 

 And after days of election buzz and activity we somehow thought we would find a Texas-sized turnout at the polling locations around Austin on Tuesday. We expected to see supporters waving signs on highway overpasses and polling locations swarming with volunteers cheering their candidates on.

Instead we found the city pretty quiet.  Polling locations were far from packed and candidate volunteer visibility was low overall, likely due to the overwhelming amount of early voting in Texas. But after visiting multiple polling locations in different parts of the city we saw one consistent presence every place we went…from the Obama camp.

Early Tuesday morning some of our reporters visited a journalism class at the UT to talk about their experiences reporting and writing for our blog. Some of the UT students questioned the integrity of our site for having a heavy slant in favor of Obama. And while it might be true and it is a fair criticism, I believe the coverage is truly a reflection of what we have seen on the ground, in Texas and Washington State.

We don’t want to only write about one candidate. We want to represent both sides of a story but have honestly found it challenging, at times, to give campaigns the coverage we think they deserve. The Obama campaign and supporters have been consistently more accessible and more visible so it’s hard not to notice and report accordingly.

It was no surprise to find the UT campus awash with Obama volunteers on Tuesday, but we were surprised to find no other campaigns represented. Aside from Obama supporters, the only other political sign we found on campus was for Ron Paul.

An article in the Daily Texan’s election day edition stated that one possible reason for the high visibility of the Obama campaign is because volunteers were getting paid for their time, likening the campaign strategy to “Astroturf” rather than grassroots.

Several volunteers said that they had heard this, but absolutely deny it’s true.  One UT student volunteer for the Obama campaign said, “I’ve worked over 100 hours on this campaign in the past week and haven’t earned a cent.”

Tom McKay of Chicago has been following the campaign volunteering his time since the Iowa caucuses. McKay denied getting compensated for his service and said he has been putting in many hours canvassing as well as phone banking.

There’s no doubt, Obama supporters are everywhere, and there has been tons of talk and analysis of Obama’s ground-game. But as the results from the Tuesday primaries splash across newspapers nationwide many wonder if grassroots strength will be enough for Obama. 

It will be interesting in coming days to see if Obama’s grassroots strength will be used as a measure of Clinton’s ability to win despite his strong support system.

Clinton’s wins in Ohio and Texas will definitely rejuvenate Clinton’s campaign as well as increase the confidence of her donors. Certainly the results of yesterday’s contests suggest that Clinton can win despite the extremely high-visiblity of Obama supporters and volunteers.