Claiming pamphlets, phones, and feet as the tools of their trade, hundreds of Harvard students hopped on the campaign trail last year, dispersing across the Eastern seaboard to snag support for their presidential candidates of choice.

Republicans and Democrats alike canvassed neighborhoods, registered voters, and distributed campaign literature on street corners and in shopping centers. Observers say the closely contested election sparked the highest level of youth participation the nation had seen in decades.

“You know you’re doing something that could decide the election. It could definitely come down to us,” Christopher J. Crisman-Cox ’08, a first-time campaigner, said in October. “There are plenty of free weekends after November 2. Until then, you only have so much time. You have to make the most of it.”

ASCETIC AND PERIPATETIC

Expeditions organized by the Harvard Republican Club (HRC) and the Harvard College Democrats carried students to New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. There, they often slept on cold floors, subsisted on diets of caffeine and candy, and helped coordinate local operations—sometimes even compromising GPA’s in the process.

“It’s one of those things that pulls you right in,” says Anne M. Lewis ’07, an HRC member who worked at the Republican convention in New York last summer. “You don’t mind what you’re doing and you don’t mind that your friends are working half the time you are and getting paid.”

The groups coordinated their efforts with umbrella organizations such as America Coming Together and the national staffs of the John F. Kerry and George W. Bush campaigns. Together, they arranged rides for volunteers—usually involving a borrowed minivan—and provided neighborhood maps and voters’ phone numbers.

Most of the efforts centered on New Hampshire, which, with its border only half an hour north of the Yard, is the closest swing state to Boston. Students who had begun their volunteer work in the Granite State’s primary elections last year returned for another round of canvassing and phonebanking.

“It was the grass-roots side of politics,” says HRC President Matthew P. Downer ’07. “If all politics are local, then New Hampshire is quintessential political campaigning.”

Although the trips cast Harvard’s students far and wide, participants found the canvassing trips an opportunity to strengthen undergraduate organizations back on campus.

“It’s a great way to build your club and bond with your club,” says Mark T. Silvestri ’05, who served as HRC president during the campaign.

He says some Harvard Republicans were paid for their services.

According to Lewis, students were paid about $65 a day for their work on the Bush-Cheney campaign. Non-Harvard workers were also compensated, she says.

Although students flocked to support both major candidates, Harvard remains a blue-state school—73 percent of voting undergraduates supported Kerry, while less than a fifth voiced support for Bush, according to an Institute of Politics (IOP) poll taken four days before the election. Independent candidate Ralph Nader earned three percent of College support.

But the same poll showed Harvardians to be out of line with the political views of average American college students. Bush enjoyed support from nearly 40 percent of students nationally, with just less than 60 percent supporting Kerry.