Everyone, it seems, from the president’s campaign all the way down to the lowliest volunteer wants to know, since we won on Tuesday, what does it mean? Here’s the thing: we don’t have all the data, we have what pollsters call toplines and we await the voter-level data to be able to fully understand any correlation between the work that the grassroots did and the results.
That doesn’t stop newspapers and the cable news stations from telling us what they think. So you can’t be too surprised that conventional wisdom (or “day after” analysis) is often different from what the data shows. And you could argue that conventional wisdom has its own impact. What i will try to do here is to compare what we do know from Tuesday with the data we developed in the field as a kind of interim understanding.
The Base was Energized: Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers knocked on doors in suburban Ohio from May 6th until Election Day (Tuesday). We had 19,427 volunteers show up on those Saturdays (& Sundays, during GOTV (get-out-the-vote) Week, although an overwhelmingly large number of those volunteers were both repeats or “super volunteers” (to use the Obama campaign nomenclature) and 67 percent were women of all ages. They knocked on 1,439,949 doors in Ohio suburbs with a systemic Deep Organizing, conversational approach designed to engage voters at their doors and elicit valuable information. in all, when we include those voters where volunteers continued to contact people whose doors they had knocked on the prior weekend, Hope Springs volunteers had conversations with 199,765 voters this year.
Hope Springs from Field targeted Democratic and independent households, although we did not exclude households that had Republicans in them. But we weren’t reaching out to Republicans (we are in the field in Ohio to help out a Democratic senator); but here’s the thing: we discovered that we had a handful of Republican women among our volunteer base. They told us so, some of them meekly and others declared their intention to re-register as non-Republicans. In all but two of the counties we were organizing, we tended to be knocking on doors that were 40% Democratic and 60% undeclared or unaffiliated with the two major political parties.
We canvassed in every one of the green areas in the NYT map to the right except in Athens County, as well as the Orange (majority No) counties of Greene, Madison, Sandusky and Warren. The major urban areas were left to other groups who supported Issue 1.
Using these time tested techniques, we identified 176,394 Reproductive Freedom or single-issue Abortion Rights voters in the major metropolitan suburbs in total, over the course of canvassing in the past two years here. These were voters who told us they supported Abortion Rights, or would support Issue 1, the constitutional amendment guaranteeing Reproductive Healthcare Choice to all women in the state, and became to core of our GOTV universe in Ohio.
But Reproductive Healthcare Freedom was not the biggest issue we discovered by talking to Ohio voters. The Economy, even among those who identified themselves as Abortion Rights single-issue voters, was the most prominent “Urgent Concern” among Ohio voters.
Still, “the abortion-rights side did particularly well in the types of suburban counties that were key in determining the results of the 2016 and 2020 races and will be crucial again in 2024.” We succeeded in these suburban areas because Hope Springs volunteers were focused on getting the full text of the constitutional amendment in front of as many people as possible, while asking voters for their opinions about government and elected officials, as well as using it as an opportunity to collect requests for public services.
A Politico analysis of 80 counties that reported complete results shortly before midnight found that the Yes side exceeded Biden’s 2020 margins by an average of more than 10 percentage points in counties the Democratic president lost. The Yes side overperformed Biden’s 2020 results in blue counties too, but the margin of improvement was actually smaller.
The unofficial results also suggest that the counties with the highest turnout in Tuesday’s election were actually jurisdictions that had favored Trump in 2020.
Democrats Engaged: Whereas in 2020, Democrats conceded the field to Republicans because of concern for our voter’s health and safety, we not only knocked on doors in “Trump country,” but we found and mobilized Democrats and independents there. One of my takeaways about my last visit to Ohio was the lack of visible signs in the rural areas that i have seen in other years. Some of our volunteers commented about how depressive it had been in 2016 and 2020 with all the Trump paraphernalia “everywhere.” Voters would tell us, at their doors, that they were the only Democrat on their block when there would be another Dem only a few doors away. But “Yes!” signs were dominant in the suburbs and bled into the countryside. And this was after Republicans had received their signs before Democrats did!
People like to say that signs don’t vote (i’ve used that phrase before) but signs are definitely reassuring. Especially when all your elected officials are on the other side. And this helped our volunteers as the election got closer. Our voter participation rate in our Issues Survey went up as the ads started to dominate the airways. And we found volunteers at the door, some who had never canvassed before. One told us they had a “quiet confidence” we would win, but she “just wanted to make sure.” We had volunteers in some of the outer “suburban” counties who would return from knocking on ~75 doors and wonder if they were just canvassing Democratic households because their responses were better than expected. One group of volunteers in a Trump county started a “bring a friend” effort because they were having “a delightful experience.” I wrote an entire diary about voter reaction to Constituent Service Request forms and how they amplified the message that Democrats Deliver!
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in swing states since March 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 canvass Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only do Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.
2023 was the warm-up to 2024. Both the Senate and the White House is on the line, and our voter outreach in these swing states both takes the measure of voter attitudes there and provides direct evidence that Democrats Deliver! 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/hopemobilization
Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical to favorable election outcomes. 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. Both volunteers and voters rave about this systemic approach/outreach. We need your help to have the greatest impact in 2024!
Message Discipline Works! There aren’t a lot of elections where you can say that Democrats had a very disciplined approach to voter communications while Republicans were all over the map. But, let’s face it, Republicans really never settled on an approach that could lead to message discipline. In Ohio, leaders settled on a freedom message that drove a wedge into the Republican approach. Let individuals decide for themselves. We focused on shared values of personal freedom and liberty from government intrusion that was already engrained into the Ohioan psyche. This wasn’t much different from the message that won Kansas, and, quite frankly, this approach transcended abortion. “Every individual has a right” became a mantra for us.
And this was an approach that really appealed to the independent voters we talked to. What was really interesting was that their were Issue 1 opponents who objected strenuously to the “every individual” approach. They passed out literature that noted that “the word ‘woman’ does not appear in this entire amendment.” Now i can’t speak for you (or anyone), but why would the absence of gender matter here? Issue 1 supporters were consistently freedom-affirming while opponents just seem very confused.
We Won Independents: Just like in Kansas, Issue 1 supporters won over independents who voted. This is really evident in the NYT map of Ohio above, where the shaded green areas represent Trump counties that voted to add the Issue 1 amendment to the constitution. And while Hope Springs volunteers could not talk to every Democrat or independent voter in the suburban counties, we were able to talk to 199,765 this year. And talking to voters — really, listening to voters — mattered. One group of our volunteers thought we should have had “I’m listening” t-shirts made up (this was rejected because of the fear of copyright concerns) for canvassers. One voter told me that he thought it was interesting that “they are yelling at us [voters] while you are asking me what I think. I’ll remember that.” Now he didn’t expose a position, or even if he intended to vote in this election, but it definitely highlights the contrast between the approach of the governor, sec. of state, etc among Ohio Republicans and our approach to win this election.
Democrats are already focused on the 2024 presidential race and looking at Tuesday's results as an indicator of the national mood. It did serve as an indication that “The political potency of abortion rights proved more powerful than the drag of President Biden’s approval ratings in Tuesday’s off-year elections.” The Kentucky gubernatorial results really was a better demonstration of that, though, than Ohio. If anything, what we saw in Ohio is that voters are really becoming cynical about the claims from government, especially when they are trying to take rights away from us. Will this help Joe Biden?
Ohio is still dominated by Fox News and Sinclair stations. We won in Ohio because we had a simple, consistent message that already fit with how voters thought about themselves. We were appealing not to their better selfs but to how they already saw themselves. I’m not sure i see how Biden runs on a freedom affirming message, per se, even as he attacks TFG for wanting to take Rights and Freedoms away from us.
But we can see how the 2024 elections can seem more than just about Joe Biden. And that does help us. Afterall, how long will Trump be on trial next year? How will his inevitable convictions claw away his support, or just send his supporters underground? Everywhere i went in Ohio, i tried to reinforce my belief that our Diversity is our Strength AND we need to see all parts of the Democratic coalition on the November 2024 ballot. Voters need to be able to see themselves when they go and vote. Which means we need to get a lot more women and minorities to run for office — any office — and help them seep into voter’s consciousness. Biden is at the top of the ticket, but the entire ticket that voters see matters.
If you are able to donate to our efforts to fight against Issue 1, identify abortion rights supporters, protect our voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, please help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization
You can follow that link for our mailing address, as well. Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!