At both the national and state levels, there have been developments this week that suggest progressive political groups, bouyed by their success in the November elections, will seek to build on the grassroots connections they developed.

First, of course, came the news that the President Obama's campaign team will transfer its high-powered netroots infrastructure to a new group to be called "Organizing for Action" that will be headed by 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina. The idea will be to try to mobilize the president's legion of small donors and massive email and social media contacts to create a political force to lobby Congress for support of the president's agenda.

In a similar vein, the network of community-based groups in California by the name of California Calls announced this week it intends to build on its successful efforts to target new and occasional voters.

In a press release, the coalition of 31 community-based groups including the Ventura-based CAUSE on the Central Coast, announced that its analysis of voter turnout shows that 80 percent of the voters they targeted cast ballots in November -- a turnout rate 9 points higher than the statewide turnout.

"The expanding electorate - growing numbers of young voters, people of color, and low-income voters - was critical to Proposition 30's passage," said Anthony Thigpenn, the group's chairman. "We have consistently engaged these voters for the past three years. These results are not accidental."

The alliance says that of the voters it contacted and identified as Proposition 30 supporters, 433,000 turned out on Election Day, making up 6.18 percent of the statewide vote.

"We're proving that local organizing is turning the demographic shift into a political shift," said Marcos Vargas, executive director of CAUSE. "The electorate is changing and is beginning to more closely reflect the diversity of our nation."