“I’m not a Democrat. Why did you knock on my door?!?”
2018 was the first time i talked to a voter who was testy that his house was on our walk list because he assumed we were only knocking on the doors of Democrats. This was before Hope Springs from Field PAC actually existed, but in a Congressional campaign that flipped a red seat to blue i canvassed with my kid. So my main thought at the time was that i was glad *i* drew this side of the street because i wouldn’t have wanted my kid to have dealt with his aggressive responses.
It does happen. It’s not typical, or even something we deal with every week. In the height of the Summer, Hope Springs volunteers can knock out 12 to 13 thousand doors on a Saturday, and still not get this kind of pushback. But it does happen.
The electorate is changing, and has been for awhile. Since 2008, the year Democrats ran on Hope and Change, Democratic party identification has declined and unaffiliated or independent identification has increased. Republican party identification has been in decline even longer, when there was a surge of support for the GOP after 9/11.
But returning to this gentleman who was insistent on understanding why he was on our walk list (there was no other voter listed for that home, it was just him), i explained that he was listed as a D (in Virginia, a state where there is no official party affiliation for a registered voter) because he had voted in the Democratic primary in 2016. And participation in a primary is a good way to be modeled as a Democrat. But he insisted he wasn’t a Democrat and i marked him down as a 4 (someone unlikely to support our candidate).
But in the years since (but especially since Obama alums began Hope Springs from Field), this kind of response — almost offense at being suggested that a voter was a Democrat because we knocked on their door — has increased. We knocked on 6,296,605 doors last year and, outside of Ohio, we saw instances of this kind of resistance (frustration?) in every state we organized. In Montana, it could be especially jarring; at one door you could find a voter who thanked you for knocking and the next door a voter who was confused because they were on the list.
Hope Springs organizers (the volunteers who cut the turf) target Democrats (as identified within VAN) and independents; the query eliminates all-Republican households. Canvassers recognize this pretty quickly because you hit one house, but bypass others. It’s really obvious when there are MAGA signs in front of the houses you are bypassing.
Political independents continue to constitute the largest political bloc in the U.S., with an average of 43% of U.S. adults identifying this way in 2023, tying the record high from 2014. Independent identification has been 40% or higher each year since 2011, except for the 2016 (39%) and 2020 (39%) presidential election years. Equal 27% shares of U.S. adults identify as Republicans and Democrats, with the Democratic figure marking a new low for that party in Gallup’s trend.
Gallup does “push” respondents to pick a party. Most voters lean one way or the other, and the electorate that is truly independent has long been considered to be around 7%. This is why GOTV (Get-Out-the-Vote) is so critical — and why Republicans have repeatedly tried to narrow the electorate in the states they control.
Hope Springs volunteers, though, express more concern about possibility knocking on the door of some MAGA voter than anything else. “And they aren’t all Republicans,” i can remember one volunteer advising (in Pennsylvania).
Not sure that there are many Democratic MAGA voters out there (still), but it is not something that has happened. No volunteer has reported having to deal with a MAGA supporter at their door. Yet. We feel like that is a victory for our targeting model, especially in states like Montana and Ohio.
National trend lines are interesting, no doubt, but not especially useful for what we are doing, which is to win in November, both in these Senate races and to win the Swing States in the Electoral College. And we do have state breakdowns, both in party affiliation and political ideology.
But before we move on, Gallup also asks about political ideology as well. They use the common terms accepted, which in this case is Liberal, Moderate and Conservative.
In addition to measuring their affiliation with either of the major political parties, Gallup asks Americans in each survey to describe their political views on a liberal to conservative spectrum. In 2023, on average, 36% of U.S. adults described their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate and 25% as liberal. Ideological identification has changed little in recent years; the latest figures essentially match the averages over the past 10 years.
From a longer-term perspective, the notable change has been the increase in liberal identification, which was under 20% from 1992 to 2000 and in 2002 and 2004. Both conservative and moderate identification have dipped slightly over the past two decades, but there has been a larger drop for moderates than conservatives since the trend began -- moderates were the biggest group from 1992 to 2002.
But this is the political environment we find ourselves in, it is the benchmark we start from, independent of the work Hope Springs volunteers have done in the last 3 years and independent of the current political machinations we see every day.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since 2021 in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battlegrounds in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are taking those efforts to the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.
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/fistfulofsteel
Hope Springs from Field PAC understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. We believe that in-person voter contact that is interactive and volunteer-driven is key to success in 2024. But we need your help.
As i mentioned above, understanding the national trend lines is interesting in an academic sense but not very useful and the state and local level. Fortunately, we do have data at the state levels (here and here) that is helpful when we model the electorate to canvass. These are the breakdowns for the states where we canvassed last year:
When I initially looked at this data (at the beginning of the decade), Arizona was the high mark among these states (not including Montana) at 40%. You want to understand the effect that Trump has in his election nullification efforts, then look at Arizona’s decreasing percentage in Conservatives and increasing percentage among Moderates and Liberals (which was 19% 3 years ago).
“As Gallup has previously documented, the increase in liberal identification reflects big shifts in how Democrats describe their political views. Last year, 53% of Democrats identified as liberal, 35% as moderate and 11% as conservative. While similar to the level in 2022, the 53% liberal figure is up from 43% in 2013, 32% in 2003 and 25% in 1994 (the first year Gallup analyzed ideology by party identification).”
But what has most fascinated me is that our volunteers broadly reflect the Moderate to Liberal breakdowns we see in the state ideology survey. Except in Ohio (for the Abortion Referendums), we don’t really hear from volunteers who self-identify as Conservative. And the Ohio experience was really telling, because we had Republican Women who did identify as Conservative or Libertarian among our canvassing groups last year. For them, Abortion was a wedge issue that separated them from their “natural” (or pre-existing) inclinations. But i point that out because they weren’t silent or hidden; they would tell you, if you asked. A few even volunteered the information.
But people who have been following these posts from the beginning (during the first Georgia Senate Runoff) may have noticed that we stopped asking voters about their impressions of the Democratic Party. That data stopped being useful. It wasn’t giving us any predictive information — and depressed some of our volunteers who had stronger connections to the party than the voters they talked to did.
Swing States are swing states for a reason. So the data released by Gallup isn’t much of a surprise to those of us knocking on voter’s doors every weekend. But i reiterate: GOTV matters, in-person Voter Contact matters and the work that we do has proven to be decisive over the last three years. Field drives victories.
This year is even more important than ever. And we would appreciate your support.
If you are able to contribute to 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 do. We need your help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel
You can follow that link for our mailing address, as well (for those who would rather send us a check). Thank you for your support! This work depends on you!