Midterm in 2022, election reform bills not going anywhere, Republicans passing possible election stealing bills for 2024….It’s going to be a tough next series of elections. And the people doing the consistent, longer term work for said elections are various organizations and some state parties, registering voters, trying out new campaign techniques, doing work in between election cycles, and all sorts of necessary background work.
I’d planned to write this series of posts back in Spring, to direct all of your money to voter organizations, state parties, and similar groups in swing states, plus explaining the demographics and trends that make them swing states. And than life got very, very messy, and the brief on this site started doing exactly this, but almost certainly reaching a bigger audience and being of more use: Please send to the organizations mention in it. but writing demographics is useful anyway,
O.k., O.k., Whatever. Which states need the money?
Glad you asked. To me, the obvious Swing States or getting close are:
-Georgia
-Arizona
-Wisconsin
-North Carolina
-Florida
-Pennsylvania
-Michigan
-Texas
-Alaska
The last two are still red right now, but have trended that way, with Texas seeming to be about where Georgia was around 2016. And there’s Florida, which I will sigh at/make fun of whenever the opportunity pops up, for reasons we all probably know.
Than we have the reaches, red states with some demographics or a trend that maybe possibly could maybe go perhaps bluish in the future. If the purpose is longer term party building and having solid parties and organizations everywhere, they are worth extra investment
-Utah
-South Carolina
-Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama
-Kansas?
Probably lower priority are the lean blues, states that generally have voted dem recently but closely enough that organization could be useful.
-Nevada
-Minnesota
-Maine
-New Hampshire
And Ohio and Iowa, former swing states that are going red, but maybe have some life left
-Ohio
-Iowa
I will be writing articles about all these states, unless things go bad,
Great, I know where to send money. But what demographics are important? What strategy do Dems use? sunbelt or Rustbelt? Win back moderate white guys or register a bunch of new young and/or nonwhite people?
On those last two questions, answer is yes.
What? Why are you looking at m like that? *looks confused*
How to approach attracting voters? I’ll go for the Pickly Principles of…..picking people’s….something beginning with p. The seemingly obvious way to models voters and how to approach them is:
-1. Politicians want to win using whatever combination of voters does the job
-2. In almost all races, one vote is as good as another. Even exceptions like the electoral college, within states a vote is a vote no matter where it comes from.
-3. With limited campaign resources, plus having to balance opposing desires, politicians want to get the most votes for a certain amount of resources. Or, be efficient in votes per resource.
-4. Swingy voters, or nonvoters/less consistent who lean towards you, are the most useful people. They are already kind of willing to support a party or politician, but take less effort to push to actually vote.
-5. Demographics are useful in telling you how someone tends to vote, or that certain collections of voters will tend to act a certain way. However…
-6. Voters are still individuals making individual decisions, demographics are not hive minds, there are at least a few persuadable voters in most groups. Hiring people familiar with almost all groups is relatively cheap, s o people familiar with every group of interest should be hired, and all demographics asked for votes at least a little bit.
-7. Issues specific to a demographic are cheap to pay attention to, since they almost never compete with something someone else wants to do. (I’m thinking things like water issues out West, or changing labor laws for certain types or workers, or such.)
What this adds up to is democrats should be looking for votes, and have a presence, in any plausible group that may have some people voting for democrats. (so maybe white rural southerners or evangelicals get generally ignored, but everyone else gets attention. And even changes in that first group are worth watching for.) It also means all areas of the country get attention.
The senate adds another reason to campaign everywhere. 25 states voted blue in the most recent election, with a mix of Great lakes and Sunbelt swing states, so keeping control will be a hard slog that’s almost impossible to do if some region gets ignored.
O.k., organize and campaign everywhere. But the filibuster crew is a problem what about them?
In spring I was planning to write about dems vs. republicans only, but moderates showing their ass the entire year, plus the mess of passing just about anything, including a very compromised infrastructure bill, points to needing to replace as many moderates as possible. So I’ll also write about replacing moderates with progressives.
I haven’t looked in as much detail at these demographics, I’m not sure what I’d find and will use more eyeballing, but should hopefully have some useful information there. Important for such replacement, and in general, are things like gerrymandering, state legislative races, etc., so I’ll write about those.
Cool, Lots of plans, yada yada. How many months until something comes out?
It already is. Read about Georgia, and Arizona comes tomorrow. Hopefully can do one of these a day.