To say that we worry about the weather, especially in the southern parts of the country, is an understatement. We obsess about it. When it’s above 92° we make arrangements for water and cooling vehicles to transport and track volunteers when they are out in the field. We will advise prospective volunteers to bring a change of clothes (at least an extra t-shirt) and pair of socks when they come out. And here’s the weird thing: volunteers will tell us they feel safer when it is hot because cooling vehicles are supposed to check on them every 20-30 minutes. Granted, especially in Ohio, we have more women knocking on doors, and cooling vehicles reinforce our mission of “Safety first!”
We decided to knock on doors in Virginia, especially in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach region, because of the importance of the state legislature elections. We are also hoping that it will it will put VA-02, where a Republican beat a Democratic incumbent, in play next year. Virginia is the only state in the South that has not, in the year since federal abortion rights were overturned, narrowed access to abortion care. All 140 seats in the state legislature are up for election for the first time since redistricting. And it is the first time that the maps in Virginia were designed by a 16-member commission made up of 8 legislators and 8 non-legislator or citizen members. “The independent experts drew the new boundaries from scratch, stripping incumbents of their old districts.”
Many of these targeted areas, but especially in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area, have not only new constituents but also new residents to the area.
For its part, Virginia Beach is the single most populous slice of a broader, similarly swingy region: Hampton Roads, which includes Norfolk, Newport News, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk and a handful of other jurisdictions.
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Of the three largest metro areas in Virginia – the other two being the Northern Virginia suburbs adjoining Washington, D.C., and the state capital region that includes Richmond – Hampton Roads is “the most competitive,” says Bob Holsworth, a former Virginia Commonwealth University political scientist who’s now with the Richmond-based firm DecideSmart.
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The second factor is Democratic control of the state Senate, which was bolstered in a special election earlier this year, when the Democrats flipped what had been a Republican-held seat in Virginia Beach thanks in part to heavy messaging on abortion.
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Of the 140 seats being contested, only a handful in each chamber are poised to be highly competitive between the parties. Still, enough seats are competitive that just about any combination – a GOP Senate takeover, a Democratic Senate hold or a Democratic flip of the House – is conceivable. To gain Senate control, the GOP would need to flip two Democratic-held seats, forcing a 20-20 tie that would be broken by Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears.
If the Republicans do flip the Senate in November, Youngkin would be under immense pressure to enact an aggressively conservative agenda, especially given his presidential ambitions, which could be boosted by a series of conservative policy victories in a Democratic-leaning state. (Because Virginia governors can serve only one consecutive term, “every governor I ever covered has had whispers about running for president,” says Warren Fiske, a veteran journalist who recently retired after a career covering Virginia politics.)
316 volunteers came up to knock on doors in Virginia last week. They knocked on 23,605 doors and talked to 1,855 voters. 1,141 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey.
The Top Issue volunteers found this week in Virginia was Jobs (again). I was talking to a DKos commenter last week about this, and surmised that “Jobs” had replaced “Recession Concerns” as a prominent response to talk about concern over the Economy. Voters just aren’t confident about where we are going in the economic realm, but they recognize that their fears haven’t been realized (as, apparently, they expected they would be). The second most frequent concern was Reproductive Healthcare. Voters recognize that Abortion is critical to this election, and their responses reflect this. Third was Climate Issues. Concerns over Air Quality, Climate Change and the Heatwave are definitely on voter’s minds.
In Virginia, 53% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing; 8% Disapproved. 66% approved of the job Senator Kaine was doing while 4% disapproved. 17% approved of the job that Governor Youngkin was doing. 34% disapproved of Youngkin’s performance. In Virginia, governors can’t run for re-election, which is why Gov. Youngkin’s been sniffing around the presidential race. But he needs a “victory” in November to show GOP primary voters that he can win over voters who are dismayed by the recent turn of their party. Democratic and Independent voters continue to bring that up to our volunteers.
Volunteers registered 10 new voters and re-registered 41 voters. We differentiate between the two because brand new voters are often ignored by campaigns and we hope to compensate for that somewhat by having volunteers send them post cards before the election and they are also getting robocalls thanking them for registering. But registering voters is a primary rationale behind early canvassing, and turning out voters, especially those that have just been registered is a core mission for Hope Springs from Field. Just wanted to point that out.
72 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. In general, we send these to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along. For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the CSR and let them know they are working on the issue. This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.
2 voters filled out an Incident Report as they witnessed an act of voter suppression, or voter intimidation, in a prior election. In this case, a voter reported 3 white men with guns patrolling “in a menacing manner” outside their heavily African-American precinct. I followed up with that voter last night, and he seemed surprised that, after we complete the form, it will make it’s way up to the Department of Justice Civil Right division before the election. One of the reasons why we collect this data on acts of voter intimidation is to prevent future occurrences. Voter Suppression is historical, as a pattern of success encourages repeated actions. Hope Springs volunteers are working to reverse that trend.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since March in a grassroots effort to prepare the 2023 and 2024 Electoral Battlegrounds in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are knocking on the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel
Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do.
In North Carolina, GOP determination to suppress voters who don’t think like Republicans are matched by our own, and we are witnessing voter eagerness to return to normalcy. “These people are crazy.”
This is Hope Springs third year knocking on doors in North Carolina and we are witnessing the effects of GOP voter intimidation at the doors (and from our partner Black churches in the state). The new voter photo ID laws are shocking to many voters we talk to. This month we added more than a dozen Black churches who wanted to join our efforts to get their voters free Photo IDs.
So far, we have found 931 voters at the doors who told us they need photo IDs at their doors. 85% of them are Black voters and 90% are non-white voters. 59% of these voters are older and many will need help in collecting the documentation needed.
That is not the only issue we face. We know that many Republican legislators want to re-district (again) in this cycle to take away Democratic seats in Congress. So Hope Springs from Field has expanded our door to door efforts in North Carolina, even as we continue our focus on NC-01, NC-06, NC-13 and NC-14 in an effort to protect those seats.
298 volunteers knocked on doors in eight North Carolina counties last Saturday. They knocked on 21,873 doors and they talked to 1,507 voters. 883 of these voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey.
The Top 3 Issues canvassers found in North Carolina were first, The Economy. Concerns over degrading Infrastructure was second. Voters want to know if their Members of Congress are fighting for new Infrastructure monies in light of their declarations they want to cut federal spending. Grocery Prices was third, with voters talking about how they notice some prices have fallen and others seem to stay higher than they desire.
Biden’s Approval number among the Democratic and unaffiliated voters we talked to was 53%; remember, try to weed out Republican households in our walk lists, so these numbers basically don’t include any Republicans. Disapproval was 10%. We also continue to find more than 40% of the voters we talk to on Saturdays have no idea who their senators were or had any kind of impression of them (while we are asking about voter approval of senators not on the ballot, we aren’t really tracking these numbers).
55% of the voters we talked to on Saturday approved of the job Governor Roy Cooper is doing; 6% expressed disapproval.
Volunteers registered 3 new voters and re-registered 34 voters to comply with the HAVA laws. 58 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. These are passed along to Democratic office holders, when possible, but to the appropriate office, if not we get them to the appropriate office holder. 1 voter completed an Incident Report detailing what they could remember from an incident they witnessed of voter intimidation or suppression. We follow these up to fill in whatever blanks voters leave in the report.
We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters. At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand. The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.
But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after Labor Day. Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.
If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel
Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!