So the question this week is whether abortion as a political issue breaks through the dominant topics that voters have expressed as their reasons or factors in for how they will vote in November. Of course, the midterm elections are 180 days away and there are lots of things that will happen between now and then that could change the course of the electoral outcome, including the actual ruling on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health.
We’ve been canvassing in the Reno Suburbs for 3 weeks now, and west of Las Vegas since Saturday, with an Issues Questionnaire that allows voters to tell us what is on their minds. And, since we started canvassing in Arizona and Florida in March, Inflation has been the biggest concern for most of the voters who have responded. For the first time, concerns over Reproductive Rights has crept into voters minds.
Not that we hadn’t heard this before. Every time the major news media (especially on television) have covered Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health before the Supreme Court, we have had voters mention this as a concern to us. But it never broke the top 3 (or 4 or 5) concerns expressed by voters to whom we talked. Until last Saturday.
Our very first priority in these Senate Swing State canvasses is making sure that everyone in the houses that opened their doors was registered to vote at their current address. Updating voter registration is just as important as getting unregistered people registered to vote. Voters who aren’t registered at their current address (as required by HAVA) risk being challenged at the polls by the right-wing nuts like MGT or True Vote poll watchers. A lot of people don’t realize this, and don’t mind being reminded that they need to update their address to stay (legally) on the voter rolls.
Inflation was the most popular response to the question, “What Issue is most Urgent?.” Education was the second most frequent response and Reproductive Rights was third (barely beating out concerns over the Economy or Jobs). And the economy/jobs was definitely the top concern raised in the Nevada specific question (number 3 on the issues survey above.)
But where Reproductive Rights really made a dramatically new appearance was the question we asked about sending a message to their Member of Congress. Responses to this is generally all over the place. If appropriate, we will send these along to the Democratic Member for that voter. So, for example, I recently sent out 8 messages to Congressman Bishop of Georgia out of the 1,343 questionnaires we had responses to from the last Saturday in April. We just don’t typically get a large number of responses that require more than summarization and counts.
But this week, we had a lot more direct questions. “Where do you stand on the Women’s Health Protection Act?” “What can you do to protect Women’s Rights if the Supreme Court strikes down our Right to Control our Bodies?“ “Will you oppose a federal abortion ban?” “Do you support the ERA?” And often these responses were unrelated to voters’ response to the questions about their views on urgent concerns before the country and Nevada.
Voter views of President Biden increased a little this week. Biden’s favorable numbers rose to 63% so that Almost two-thirds of the Democratic and independent voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden in Nevada last Saturday. Still, a mere 8% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. We continue to get feedback from voters wishing that Biden could or would do more about inflation and/or Ukraine.
We still did not get a lot of feedback on Senator Cortez Masto. 60% of the voters we talked to did not express an opinion of the Senator. A mere 2% (last week, it wasn’t even applicable) told us they had an unfavorable of the senator. 38% said that had a favorable view.
Governor Sisolak, on the other hand, got a better reception. More than 50% of the Democratic and Independent voters we talked to gave Sisolak a favorable rating. 12% said they had an unfavorable impression.
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, Arizona and Nevada) and there are opportunities. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are such opportunities. There is a lot of work to be done!
But we got positive feedback just from knocking on their doors. Which mattered given the trepidation of organizing here.
The work we are doing now is basically make-up work. In swing or target states, Democrats -- but especially the presidential campaigns -- will focus on voter registration efforts as kind of kick-off canvassing. It is a way to generate interest, enthusiasm and finding volunteers. Asking people if they are registered to vote (hopefully, asking if they are registered to vote at their current address!) is a lot easier than asking them to vote for your preferred candidate. But we couldn't do that in 2020. Covid-19 knocked us out of the ground game.
We also ask voters if they have any local infrastructure issues they would tell local elected officials about. We ask those who do if they wanted to fill out Constituent Service Request forms. 28 voters, mostly in Reno, raised some area that they wanted addressed. We pass these along to the relevant local official for the request. We use a generic CSR because cities and towns have vastly different methods and forms for dealing with this.
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.
We can't overstate the impact of not doing traditional voter contact/outreach by knocking on doors in 2020. In every single state where Hope Springs from Field PAC has canvassed, voters have thanked volunteers for knocking on their doors. We were missed in 2020, not just by those who would open their doors to canvassers but also by whole neighborhoods, who may not have opened their doors but witness canvassers in their neighborhoods, saw the literature left behind and talked to neighbors who had spoken to volunteers. The reinforcement by the process was missed. They told us this.
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. Far and away the number one issue that the voters we talked to in the Senate Swing States last year was inflation or price increases, and I imagine that concern has only increased.
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 to voter protection 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.
As you can see from the very first question in the Issues Questionnaire, making sure that voters are registered from their current address is a major function of early canvassing.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with Nevada’s voting laws, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine the Republican strategy of shaping the electorate.
If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, 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.
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The leaked, widely-mocked, Alito Dobbs opinion is still the only one circulating in the Supreme Court. Do You Think it will be Altered Significantly Before it is Released?
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The leaked, widely-mocked, Alito Dobbs opinion is still the only one circulating in the Supreme Court. Do You Think it will be Altered Significantly Before it is Released?
No. Isn't that why it was leaked?
Maybe. How can it leave in references to Cook and Hale?
Yes. The Alito Opinion is egregiously wrong from the start.
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