copyright 2009, The Washington Post- Thousands of campaign staffers and volunteers fanned out across Virginia on Saturday, knocking on doors and making phone calls to urge that voters go to the polls Tuesday and cast a ballot for Republican Robert McDonnell or Democrat Creigh Deeds in the closely watched race for governor. Republicans, excited by the prospect of winning after eight years of losses, said they have embarked on their largest-ever get-out-the-vote program in Virginia, reaching twice as many people as they did during last year's presidential race. They said they had phoned nearly 2.5 million residents since April and knocked on more than half a million doors as they tried to ensure that their enthusiasm translates at the ballot box. Democrats, down in every poll since June, are staging a last-ditch effort to energize voters, the sort of highly organized operation that helped them elect two consecutive governors and two U.S. senators and to deliver the state for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in more than four decades. They said they expect to contact 620,000 Virginians -- most of them voters who registered last year to back Barack Obama's presidential campaign -- 14 times in the final two weeks of the campaign. More than 200 Republican volunteers cheered McDonnell as he addressed them Saturday at a rally in Springfield. 'Now the TV's been done. The radio's done. The slick glossy fliers are in the mail. The signs have been printed. ... But now it's up to you,' McDonnell said. 'It's up to voter turnout.' McDonnell also rallied volunteers in Fredericksburg, Williamsburg and Richmond, where the he appeared with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a possible 2012 presidential hopeful and chairman of the Republican Governors Association. Deeds stumped at several events in southwest Virginia with U.S. Sen. James Webb, D-Va., and Gov. Tim Kaine, who is also chairman of the Democratic National Committee. 'We've got four days, and this race is ours to win,' Deeds said Friday at a rally at the King Street Blues restaurant in Alexandria. 'We just have to drive every single vote out.' Both candidates spent Saturday evening at a Halloween parade in Leesburg. Much of the nearly $15 million that the Republican and Democratic national committees poured into the off-year election has been for sophisticated get-out-the-vote programs that include recorded phone calls, glossy mailers, online ads and Twitter and Facebook messages. Each party has opened 30 offices around the state. Other groups, too, are trying to reach supporters to encourage them to vote. Virginia New Voices is targeting 60,000 immigrants in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. The Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee transported people who had completed their Friday prayers to locations where they could vote early by absentee ballot. The National Rifle Association has sent out a last-minute batch of mailers for McDonnell, and the AFL-CIO is making recorded calls for Deeds. Republicans said they have contacted 4 million Virginia voters this year, in person and through more than 10.1 million pieces of mail and phone calls. The party boasts of 5,000 volunteers in Virginia; about one in five is estimated to be helping out for the first time, party officials say. About 500 college Republicans from across the nation are being housed at hotels around the state, where call centers have been set up in ballrooms, McDonnell campaign manager Phil Cox said. For the first time, door-knocking volunteers in Northern Virginia have lists of targeted houses on their BlackBerrys and other mobile devices. Gary C. Byler, a longtime party leader in Hampton Roads, said Republicans have been working for months to create an accurate list of GOP-leaning voters by identifying those who consistently vote in primaries, reviewing voter registration lists from other states to identify new voters and targeting precincts where Republicans received at least 60 percent of the vote. Democrats are targeting a much narrower group -- half a million voters who became engaged for Obama last year but do not regularly vote in off-year state elections. Campaign workers will knock on the doors of 175,000 voters this weekend and 200,000 doors on Election Day, campaign officials said. Over the last weekend of the campaign and through Election Day, they aim to make 700,000 live and recorded phone calls. In the final days, the message from the campaign to those voters has been clear: Do it for your president. Obama, who campaigned for Deeds in Norfolk last week, appears on all of Deeds's final mail pieces and on door hangers that will be left on stoops by volunteers. The state party this week sent 300,000 letters to voters signed by Obama urging them to vote for Deeds. Staff writers Derek Kravitz and Sandhya Somashekhar contributed to this report. 