Our Washington State Puget Sound neighborhood has 12 precincts containing 4300 registered voters. Ten months ago, we began a liberals group and recruited 260 members by July 1st. Then we began canvassing all households which had not previously been identified as Republican or Democratic voters. We have now identified a total of 1700 likely Democratic voters and recruited a total of 500 of them as members of our our liberals group. Beginning after labor day, we are going to visit each of these (except the 500 who receive our weekly newsletter)to distribute campaign liberature and monitor that they vote in our September 19th primary.
Our strength of now an average of 40 members per precinct enables us to canvass and monitor voters. Instead of primaily approaching previously identified Democratic voters, we focused upon expanding the number of identified Democratic voters. Our distribution of information and brochures about all six of our candidates is highly efficient. The recipients respect our information as being provided by a neighbor instead of a party or candidate. Our strategy is both long term and short term. We are building an organized and well informed group of liberals and also getting out the vote for our fall primary and general elections.
If we produce a larger than expected Democratic vote this fall, we hope that other neighborhoods will be stimulated to form their own neighborhood liberal groups.
Incidentally, by being a liberal rather than a Democratic Party group, our members include about 60% Democrats and 40% Independents, with a small but growing number of disgruntled traditional Republicans.