Well, the weather didn’t cooperate. While it was in the high 70s in Florida last weekend, our first canvass in Arizona started in the high 60s. Not exactly what we were hoping for.
In my last diary, I noted that inflation and Ukraine dominated responses to the question, “What Issue do you believe is most urgent facing our country at this time?” in Central Florida. Responses in the Phoenix suburbs were largely in line with that, except that Ukraine was of greater interest and Immigration or Securing the Border was a fairly close third. There is a reason for this, and I will get to that below.
Regardless, we were there, knocking on doors in Arizona, talking to voters, raising the Democratic banner and collecting data that will help Democratic candidates mobilize voters this November. Since this was the first time we canvassed in Arizona, our initial plans have met reality and forced us to adapt. Weather, of course, was one obstacle because the cooler weather meant that we had fewer people open doors and want to talk.
But we also realized after the remap, that the eastern suburbs of Phoenix couldn’t be our only target area. We will need to organize in the eastern suburbs of Tucson, as well.
Whenever we start in a new state or new area of an existing state, we have to focus on training. First of all, we expect a lot from the volunteers who knock on doors with us. We are sending them out with clipboards, about a dozen Issues Questionnaires, 3-4 Constituent Service Report forms, a couple of Incident Reports, some Q-slips, Voter Registration forms and lit that we leave at the door. It’s a handful and the first time working this system can be daunting. We focus on the data and you really only get a sense of the importance of the data that you collect knocking on doors after you’ve done it once or twice. So training volunteers before they start knocking in critical.
front of Arizona lit
And, as you’d expect, we got more than a few people who came out Saturday who had already canvassed before “and didn’t need to get trained.” But there are always volunteers who just want to get on with it (count me among those) and want to forego any formal training. Walking them (people like me) through these sheets in a compressed training is oh so fun!
But it is really simple for people who have never canvassed before. The Issues Survey means that instead of persuading voters to accept that campaign’s issues priorities, we are asking voters to tell us about their issues priorities. For volunteers who are nervous about canvassing, this approach really allows them to ease into it, and really takes the pressure off.
But this approach also means volunteers don’t have to be prepped to talk authoritatively about Democratic or Democratic candidates’ issues and priorities. In fact, we discourage answering these kinds of questions. One reason (but by no means the only reason) we walk with Q(uestion) Slips and Observation Forms is to keep the focus on the voter and their concerns, not the campaigns’ or candidates’. If voters have a question, we fill out a Q-slip and let the campaigns/candidates speak for themselves. And we discovered last year that, if we do somehow end up talking to a Trumpist of Fox News consumer, this approach really circumvents their “own a lib” strategies.
back of lit
The first thing we ask people who open their doors is whether they are currently registered at that address. If not, we explain that the law is now that voters have to be registered at their current address and that there are people out there who could challenge their vote if they are not. Then we ask if they are willing answer a few questions (from the Issue Survey) — and we train volunteers to show them the Issues Questionnaire as they ask that. This shows both that the survey is short and there are no trick questions that they should fear. Believe it or not, showing the survey form does increase response rates. Our response rate from Saturday was slightly higher in Florida than in Arizona, probably due to the fact that there were more experienced (in this approach) canvassers there. I know that getting volunteers in the practice of showing the survey to voters as they ask for their participation is a habit they have to develop.
We also ask voters who open their doors whether they need to fill out a Constituent Service Request form. And, when we start using this approach somewhere, we get a higher response rate on service requests than we do after we have been knocking for awhile. I can’t really explain why this is true, but it was true on Saturday. We had more than twice the number of service requests in our first experience in Arizona than we had in Florida last weekend, even though we knocked on more than double the amount of doors.
This being the first time we knocked on doors in Arizona, we didn’t really know what to expect with regards to views of President Biden. And while it was lower than in central Florida, in Arizona, it was still above 60% and more than three to one over voters who told us they disapproved of the job the President was doing.
Like in Florida, we were canvassing in suburban, largely White neighborhoods. But we don’t knock on doors of Republican households (although we do knock on the doors of mixed households), we are targeting Democrats and Independent households in swingy, suburban areas.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to increase awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights, and, in March, we will begin an even bigger effort. We are thinking about how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," both informing and helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. But the reason we won the Iowa Caucus in 2008 was because we registered voters and then turned them out! The approach we adopted was focused on listening, on connecting voters and their story to the candidate and our cause. Repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans did). We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be cured.
Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races in 2022 as well as districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year. As not every state has completed their re-maps, re-districting hasn’t yet made those opportunities/needs apparent. The Senate map started out clear. That may be changing. There are places we need to defend (Georgia and Arizona) and there are opportunities. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are such opportunities. We’d like to get into Nevada, too, and perhaps others that appear more competitive at that time — if we can generate the resources needed to do so. There is a lot of work to be done!
The reception volunteers received Saturday was more than pleasant. One volunteer was offered a “hot chocolate, because we just made some for ourselves” (I won’t comment on the whether hot chocolate is appropriate when its more than 65 out).
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. In our next printing of Arizona lit we will probably want to add something about Border Security but we have to get through that which has been printed first.
But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. We find that most voters who aren’t in a hurry or in the middle of something are willing to answer at least a couple of these questions, especially their top issue or concern and their views of President Biden. 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.
Constituent Service Requests are handed over to (hopefully Democratic) office holders with responsibilities for the area of the request. Q-slips will be sent directly to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. Comments from Observation Forms are entered into VAN, as well.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has a hybrid approach. We aren’t interested in competing with regular campaign field organizing. We are in the field before they get there and then move on when the Democratic campaigns start their intensive field work. Indeed, when we wind up the typical field work by Labor Day, we will encourage all the volunteers working with us to move over to the Senate campaigns in their states (and hope that our field organizers will be hired on by those campaigns). After Labor Day, we will begin organizing our Election Protection Project.
But we are also cognizant that Democratic turnout has traditionally dropped off more than Republicans in non-presidential years. So early, frequent voter contact is more important to our side. Equally important, though, is that starting early means that we can make up for our inability to register new voters in the presidential election because we took Covid and the health of our base seriously. Registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.
Finally, we got lots of positive feedback from our volunteers on Saturday. Even though it was chillier than we’d hoped, canvassers said they were glad to be outside. The reception was encouraging — which always helps. Most of our volunteers were experienced in going door to door, but none of them had ever participated in something like this, or been involved in the first round of a traditional five round canvass system.
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. There’s a lot of work to be done, but fortunately, the three states that are making it most difficult are also states in which you can knock on doors at least 10 months out of the year. And, with your help, we will be there, getting our people to super-comply with these restrictive provisions.
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/hopemobilization
Thank you for your support.
