Ongoing Tracking of MAGA Canvassing in the Swing States

by snowbored

Community

(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday, Oct. 01, 2024 Tuesday, Oct. 01, 2024 at 9:03:05am PDT

Hope Springs from Field PAC [website] has been collecting sightings of MAGA canvassers since MAGA groups started claiming they were fielding canvassers in light of the changes in the kind of coordination it was allowing the campaigns and outside groups. We reported what we found in the field every couple of weeks thereafter.

But we changed our canvassing or campaign model after Labor Day. Our mantra all along had been Hope Springs won’t compete for volunteers or turf with the official or coordinated campaigns. And there’s an important reason why: they have a plan for victory and no one should interfere with that. We use that change in F.E.C. regulations to interact with the campaigns about their plans and work to fill the vacuum where we can.

You can see that the number of volunteers under our program has fallen significantly. That turf has been taken over by the Harris and/or Coordinated Campaigns. But having ceded turf, volunteers and even organizers to the official campaigns has not meant that volunteers and organizers are not reporting back sightings of MAGA canvassers out in the field. We actually have had volunteers who never canvassed with us before report sightings. Not exactly sure why. This is definitely self-organized and i am merely reporting back what we are hearing. It shouldn’t be a secret; the fact is much of the media reports about MAGA canvassing is designed to raise money for those independent groups or scare the bejesus out of Democrats and progressives. So what we know, we will summarize here. At least Democratic volunteers want to track what MAGA canvassers are doing.

TPA = Turning Point Action AFP = Koch Groups (not Libre)
LI = Libre Initiative AFW = America First Works
CfG = Club for Growth HA = Heritage Action
TF47 = Trump Force 47 (official campaign)
FFC = Freedom First Coalition CWA = Concerned Women
APac = Musk’s America PAC

First, it is important to realize that volunteers don’t always find evidence of MAGA canvassers whenever they go out to knock on doors. It’s a pretty rare occurrence. For some of our Hope Springs volunteers, it became a game to find MAGA canvassers because it was so rare. Others didn’t want to be anywhere near them — they had no interest in running into them. But we document it when we do.

We started to run across MAGA canvassers and evidence that MAGA canvassers had been in the neighborhoods we were canvassing on Saturdays in June. Hope Springs from Field started tracking that in July. The evidence was generally through door hangers or other lit they left behind, but we occasionally had volunteers come across MAGA canvassers in their own turf. These numbers represent what volunteers saw and the groups they saw. So if a volunteer sees multiple groups of the same group of canvassers, it is still just a single sighting.

You can see from the tables/graphics that MAGA canvassing has been growing in these 10 states where volunteers have been reporting on sightings and lit. Not really a surprise, but perhaps not the coverage they have been claiming in the press.

Publicity before Door Knocking, i guess. Millions have been claimed to have been donated to these MAGA orgs long before we began to see evidence that they were knocking on doors in the swingy areas where Hope Springs volunteers had been knocking for months.

Now remember that these volunteers have numbered in the tens of thousands over this period since Labor Day. About 68% of these reports have come from Hope Springs volunteers (at some point in time); the rest have come from organizers (who have probably followed these report).

A reminder: you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find a MAGA canvasser at the same doors that we knocked on. Hope Springs focused on Democrats and unaffiliated households and while there are times we have found that the unaffiliated voter doors are in both our and their universes, it hadn’t been that typical until last month. Hope Springs volunteers rarely came across MAGA canvassers in person before Labor Day. We mostly found lit left behind. And lit can accumulate weeks.

Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 2nd to set up a favorable “battle space” or foundation for Democrats in 2024. We target 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. The voters we talk to in these 12 Swing States tell us they come away more invested in governance and feel more favorably towards Democrats in general because of our approach.

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/hopemobilization2024

Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. 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.

A little explanation, these numbers represent what our volunteers saw these weekends. When volunteers start to come across MAGA lit or canvassers, they tend to come across more — they are walking the same area as the conservative activists. So if a volunteer sees multiple sightings of canvassers from the same group, it is still recorded as a single event. So even if we found a large group of MAGA canvassers huddled together, we didn’t attempt to count their numbers. That would be too obvious. Our experience tracking poll watchers (where MAGA volunteers got very squeamish when we tried to document their names) made us leery in this regard.

But people wanted to know what we were seeing on the ground. Who was actually out there and where were they knocking. It’s easy to conclude that we undercount, just because it is something that not all our volunteers got accustomed to recording. And some of our volunteers had an avoidance strategy.

One of the weirdest things, though, is the fact that the official campaign (designated as Trump Force 47 by Trump’s campaign) had so little presence outside of a couple of weeks around the Republican Convention.

Turning Point Action claimed to be the largest MAGA voter contact effort. TPA had been claiming it would begin an aggressive field program and had gotten lots of media for that claim. It’s business model (paid canvassers) is different from our own and has raised money on such claims without being evident in the field (fraud is, apparently, the MAGA model, so).

Turning Point, affiliated with the influential and controversial activist and commentator Charlie Kirk, has been the most vocal of the outside groups on the right about its ground program, which is targeting low-propensity conservative voters: those who support Trump but didn’t participate in one or both of the last two presidential elections.

But the tables above report fewer and fewer Turning Point Action sightings and more and more sightings of Elon Musk’s America Pac canvassers. But canvassers in TPA gear have been seen in more than 7 states now.

The Guardian reports:

But while the Trump campaign once predicted having multiple Pacs doing get-out-the-vote work, with six weeks until the election, only America Pac has a material presence of 300 to 400 paid and part-time people knocking on doors in each of the seven battleground states, the people said.

America Pac also remains the only entity – Trump campaign or otherwise – with a target to do three “passes” of homes of likely Trump voters in every battleground state before election day.

But TPA and America Pac are not alone. Far from it. “Since May, his campaign has quietly been in talks with more than three dozen conservative groups to outsource parts of its voter turnout operation.” Another group purportedly relies on “3,000, at least” paid canvassers, “financed with unlimited corporate dollars and untraceable dark money from political nonprofits that are otherwise off-limits to a federal campaign.”

Here’s the thing: MAGA and conservative orgs have been competing to get the funding from large dollar donors, and, indeed, we are seeing this competition on the ground. Hope Springs volunteers have come across evidence of canvassers sponsored by Club for Growth, the various Kock-related efforts, Concerned Women for America, Freedom Forum and Heritage Action (Heritage is the “author” of Project 2025). Close encounters have been less frequent in 2024 than i remember for 2022, but i could be wrong.

TPA = Turning Point Action AFP = Koch Groups (not Libre)
LI = Libre Initiative CWA = Concerned Women
CfG = Club for Growth TF47 = (campaign) Trump Force 47

One other observation: none of our volunteers actually witnessed a MAGA canvasser at some one’s door talking to a voter. Which, again, doesn’t mean much given how infrequent it was. But we did have multiple reports of MAGA canvassers talking to each other in the streets.

Still, running into another group of canvassers is pretty rare. We have different target or walk lists. When we find evidence that we are knocking on the same doors, we always note that because that is the very definitely of a swing voter. Some of the evidence that volunteers bring back to organizers is not actually Saturday evidence but from the weekdays. It is one of the differences between MAGA canvassers and our Hope Springs volunteers: the MAGA canvassers we have encountered have all been paid canvassers. Now there are Democratic orgs that pay canvassers (Fair Fight, for example). That’s just not what we do.

TPA = Turning Point Action AFP = Koch Groups (not Libre)
LI = Libre Initiative CWA = Concerned Women
CfG = Club for Growth Unk = Unknown MAGA

AFAIK, Hope Springs from Field is the only Democratic or Progressive group on the ground week in and week out, year in and year out, as weather allows. In fact, that was one of the biggest reasons why Obama alums came together to create what we envisioned to be a pop-up PAC for the Georgia Senate runoffs. There are a number of MAGA or conservative orgs who have done (and are doing) the same thing for years (even decades) before Hope Springs began. But that makes us uniquely able to judge the MAGA ground game.

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022). But that’s where the MAGA canvassers are, as well. There is a lot of work to be done!

Printing literature to leave at voter’s doors is our largest cost (although that was not the case last year). Our second biggest expense is the Voter File. But it is also a fixed cost. That won’t change as we raise and spend more money. Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.

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/hopemobilization2024

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the ActBlue page. Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!