Democrats in Pennsylvania want to win in November. And Democrats like their ticket. But we started to hear concerns at the door about Senate nominee John Fetterman due to his stroke. Here’s an interesting little factoid, though: the voters who have told our volunteers they were worried about the health of the Lt. Governor did not vote in the primary last month. It’s a long way from November, and there seems to be even more resistance from voting for “the third Senator from New Jersey.” Things voters say.
Hope Springs from Field PAC continues to canvass in swingy areas of the toss-up Congressional Districts Pennsylvania. This was the fifth consecutive week, building on our door-knocking last summer and fall, directed at trying to boost turnout among Democratic voters and like-minded independents.
201 volunteers came out to knock on doors in Pennsylvania in (northern) Montgomery, Bucks and Northampton county as well as western Allegheny county last Saturday. These are all in the three “toss-up” Congressional Districts (1st, 7th & 17th CDs).
Continuing to note that the reception we got from voters at the door did not indicate an exhaustion from voter contact during the primaries. There were some complaints about how many advertisements were on television, “but they were all from Republicans anyway.” This isn’t really true, but people noticed how many ads — and how much money -- there were for GOP candidates.
But they didn’t mind talking to us and this says something.
Pennsylvania is the most important race for the Senate not only because it is an open seat but also because it is a perennial swing state. You can never organize enough in swing states. I’d say this is a rule of thumb — we need to perennially, continually organize in swing states and states we think should be swing states. And we need to organize more in suburban areas, especially those with concentrated GOP field efforts. My two cents.
Our very first priority in these Swing Senate 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. 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.
Our major focus has been the Issues Survey. Normally, around 65% of the voters we talk to at their doors answer some or all of these questions although it was slightly lower on Saturday, and I’ve learned that a lot of voters get sucked into answering questions because the first question (really, second) is ‘What Issue is the Most Urgent.’ Lots of people want to tell us the answer to that one. The voters we talked to in Pennsylvania delivered an unusual mixture in answering that one. Gas prices was the top Issue mentioned by voters we talked to on Saturday, and no one can be surprised by that. Gun violence was second (it was the top issue the previous week) and Reproductive Rights was the third most mentioned issue. This was the first time (at least, as far as I can recall) where the three top “meme” issues were the top three voter responses. Republicans want to argue that Gas Prices and Inflation will top every other voter concern and that’s not what we see when talking to voters at their doors.
Voter views of President Biden were rose slightly this week. Biden’s favorable numbers rose to 56% amongst the voters with whom we talked. 14% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing (which is definitely out of the norm right now). But we did hear frustration from voters that they wished Biden could or would do more about guns and/or gas prices.
Since the primary, we have seen approval of John Fetterman fall. Some people asked if he would remain on the ballot. 51% of the voters we talked to had a favorable impression of the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate — something I expect to change as we get more clarity. There was lots of concern, either for his health in general or over what it means for the Senate race. “At least he’s from here,” one voter lamented.
Josh Shapiro, on the other hand, got a better reception. You can’t say he’s the most popular Democrat in Pennsylvania, but maybe he is right now. 57% of the voters who responded said that had a favorable impression of Shapiro, and only 6% had an unfavorable impression. Remember, these are Democrats and independent voters we are talking to, we try to weed out Republican households when we cut turf on Fridays.
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/2022senateswing
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. Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin are such opportunities. Pennsylvania is clearly our best opportunity in 2022. But there is a lot of work to be done!
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 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.
We specifically ask voters if they have any concerns about the upcoming elections. Voters who say they have experience voter intimidation or other problems with voting are asked if they want to file an Incident Report. We found 9 voters who wanted to fill out Incident Reports on Saturday. We collate these Incident Reports, to be shared with local, state and federal officials in charge of voting, as well as use them to plan out our Election Protection strategy in the fall. They could also be used in court cases.
We also use them to help us determine where we would place Election Protection teams in November.
We also ask voters who open their doors whether they want 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, as well. This week, we collected 63 CSRs in Pennsylvania.
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, and any questions we collect are forwarded to the appropriate campaigns (or elected officials).
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. Updating addresses, both in convincing voters to re-register, and within VAN itself, is another major function.
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/2022senateswing
Thank you for your support.