Last week, much was made of the New York Times/ Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College poll that
showed Mr. Biden trailing former President Donald J. Trump in nearly every battleground state, but he appeared to be in the roughest shape in Nevada, where he was down by 12 percentage points among registered voters.
In Nevada, two of Mr. Biden’s biggest problems — his weakness with Hispanic voters and pessimism over his handling of the economy — seem magnified. With the state’s economy slow to recover from the pandemic, 61 percent of registered voters in the poll said they trusted Mr. Trump to do a better job handling the economy, compared with 32 percent who trusted Mr. Biden. And Hispanic voters, whose support was crucial to Mr. Biden in 2020, said they preferred Mr. Trump to him by nine points in a head-to-head matchup.
This morning, we awake to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll that finds the two even in the Silver State. But Hope Springs from Field PAC [website] volunteers didn’t find much difference between the last two weeks. Or, really, even the last month.
Hope Springs volunteers use a canvassing approach that relies on voter-led discussions of the issues and voter-identified problems that could determine how they will vote. Up to this week, we paired that Issues Survey with gathering signatures to get a (state) constitu-tional amendment ensuring “a fundamental, individual right to abortion” on the November ballot. 27,484 verified petitions from valid voters in NV-01, NV-02 and NV-03 were included in the more than 200,000 submitted on Monday. Now we turn our efforts to winning in November. Nevada is a state in flux, and turnout is the key to success here.
And there are two other key considerations here. We have to re-elect Sen. Jacky Rosen to keep our Democratic majority in the Senate, and re-election President Biden. The data we collect from Nevada voters, both in terms of their re-elections and finding voters who will support that constitutional amendment in 2024 and 2026 (Nevada requires that it win twice in order to be added to the constitution) will certainly steer us towards those goals.
It’s hard to think of these three as separate. Sen. Rosen made signing the petition a public event and President Biden features his support in his messages to Nevadans. Still, Nevadans have other concerns. Nevada has the nation's third highest unemployment rate (5.3%) and Nevada home prices have jumped six times faster than wages since 2011, according to a recent study. “With its heavy reliance on tourism and business from conventions, Nevada’s economy was among the hardest hit in the country during the pandemic — making it slower to recover than many other states.”
But, still, Nevada is in flux.
And, like in Arizona, Latinos are expected to make up roughly one in four eligible voters in Nevada, making them well-positioned to tip the balance of power in the Senate and the Electoral College.
We continue to knock on doors in the Las Vegas area (NV-01 & NV-03) and the suburbs of Reno. 448 volunteers turned up to knock on doors in Nevada last Saturday. They knocked on 31,987 doors and talked to 2,802 voters. 1,728 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey.
The Top 3 Issues canvassers found in Nevada last weekend were, first, (Rising) Prices. Housing Crisis and Housing Insurance Costs were the Second most frequently cited concern. The housing crisis isn’t new, but it was made worse by the pandemic when rent prices skyrocketed and the pathway to homeownership steepened. Reproductive Freedom or Rights was Third. Like Florida and Arizona, we had voters in Nevada ask about signing the petition to get it on the ballot before volunteers opened their mouths.
Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors March 2nd in a grassroots effort to prepare the 2024 Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are talking to 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. In states where their are voter-driven petitions for Constitutional Amendments for Protecting Reproductive Freedom, volunteers carry those petitions.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up), GOTV and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization2024
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.
Biden’s Approval numbers among the Nevadans we talked to was at 50% last Saturday, with a Disapproval number of 12%. Senator Rosen had an Approval rating of 58% with 7% of the voters we talked to on Saturday expressing Disapproval. In the last cycle, Sen. Cortez Masto won her race by the narrowest margin of any Senate race, and Rosen may be in a tougher spot this year. Cortez Masto had roots in Nevada politics, having served as state attorney general before becoming a senator, while Rosen faces her first reelection bid. Rosen beat incumbent Sen. Dean Heller in 2018, beating him with 50.41% of the vote.
Approval of Governor Lombardo was 26% and Disapproval was 28% last Saturday. Las Vegas has continuously been more kind to the Governor than has the Reno area. (Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo was one of the first Republican governors to codify protections for abortion providers and out-of-state abortion patients. Though Lombardo describes himself as “pro-life,” he promised on the campaign trail to abide by the law allowing legal abortions up to 24 weeks.)
Volunteers registered 9 new voters and re-registered 19 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 we are finding lots of teens who just turned legal age whose parents (primarily mothers) are insisting they register.
111 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. We send completed CSRs to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if there are no Democrats who can further the request, and 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 Constituent Service Request forms 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 Incident Reports about issues they witnessed in a prior election. We continue to see voters who want to fill out an Incident Report but realize they didn’t actually witness something to report. Nevada and North Carolina seem to lead the states where we canvass in this regard. We have been building a database of Incident Reports, and reports we collected in Nevada have been used successfully to request a time extension for voters before a polling precinct closed.
Incident Reports are used to plan Election Protection activities, and will be combined with other, historical incidents and handed over to District and State Attorneys, Attorney Generals and the DoJ Civil Rights Division right before Election Day as a precaution against Election Day Incidents in November. Past polling place activity is a predictor of future voter intimidation or suppression activity.
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 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 the primary. 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.
Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022). There is a lot of work to be done! Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with some really, really onerous new voter regulations, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.
We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File.
Our biggest expense is the Voter File. But it is also a fixed cost. That won’t change as we raise and spend more money. Printing literature is our second largest cost. Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.
Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation. We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.
But here’s the reality: Identifying Single Issue Voters and Constitutional Amendment supporters and doing GOTV (Get-Out-the-Vote) costs us more money than our regular canvassing because this issue drives volunteer turnout higher and higher. Which means we have to buy more lit to distribute and other minor expenses (like water for volunteers). So please:
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/hopemobilization2024
If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page. Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!