Wisconsin is the state that suffers from ghosts. The ghost of Scott Walker, his recall election and 2016 all abound. Whenever you think Wisconsin has turned the corner they seem to arise.
This analogy was brought to my attention by one of our “super volunteers,” someone with whom i had canvassed for the Walker recall (as well as this decade!) and who periodically asks me for updates about the active Russian suppression tactics in 2016.
Volunteers organized by Hope Springs from Field PAC [website] have been knocking on doors in Wisconsin since 2021 and we started up again in April. This election seems more consequential, in part because of the work we did last year in election Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court.
Despite the state being a battleground in national races, Republicans, aided by heavily gerrymandered maps, have controlled both of the state’s legislative chambers since 2011. They now hold about two-thirds of the seats in both the Senate and the Assembly.
But Democrats look likely to pick up seats under the new maps, which will be used during the November election. The maps outline an almost even split between Democratic- and Republican-leaning districts: 45 are Democratic-leaning, 46 are Republican-leaning, and eight are likely to be a tossup, according to an analysis from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Several incumbents are being drawn into each other’s districts, The Associated Press reported.
Like Arizona, Wisconsin is a state that is a battleground state 3 times over. But Wisconsin did not need an abortion amendment on the ballot this November to be one. Under the threat of a new Wisconsin Supreme Court decision, “the new maps were passed in both chambers of the Wisconsin legislature last week, largely aided by Republicans who did not want the liberal-controlled court to determine them instead.”
The new maps give Democrats a realistic chance to win legislative control (with one caveat I will explain below). They don’t significantly boost the number of competitive seats. But because they put legislative power in play, they make legislative elections consequential again. The new maps make the overall outcome contingent on the kinds of things that we normally think of as deciding elections: candidates, campaigns, conditions, voter turnout, swings in public opinion.
Moving forward, good election years for Democrats will generally produce Democratic majorities in the Legislature (and the same for Republicans). The majority party won’t be able to take its power for granted.
The stakes have definitely led to an increase in the numbers of volunteers who show up week in and week out to knock on doors each Saturday.
437 volunteers came out to canvass in Wisconsin on Saturday, our second canvass of 2024. Like last year, we continue to canvass in Milwaukee (where we are canvassing in African-American wards with primarily Black volunteers) and its suburbs (the WOW counties), as well as Kenosha and Dane counties. The key Democratic and swing areas of this Senate Swing State. And, like 2022, we will ease out of our canvassing efforts as the WisDems pick up their’s in these areas.
In everybody’s minds, Wisconsin is one of the most important states in the Electoral College and maintaining a Democratic majority in the Senate. On Saturday, volunteers knocked on 32,643 doors and talked to 2,898 voters. 1,788 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey.
The Economy was the Top Concern among the Wisconsin voters we talked to on Saturday. The House and Housing Insurance was the second most frequently cited concern. Political Violence was third, and voters raised a host of issues in this regard. Trump, Right-wing Extremism, Campus Protests.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since March 2nd 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 are talking to 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), GOTV 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.
Joe Biden’s Approval numbers in Wisconsin fell to 50% last Saturday; his Disapproval number was 8%. Tammy Baldwin’s Job Approval was 56% (this is about ten percentage points less than she was doing last year) with 6% of the voters we talked to on Saturday expressing Disapproval. Approval of Governor Evers, meanwhile, was 50%; Disapproval was 12% last Saturday.
Hope Springs from Field volunteers registered 8 new voters; 31 more voters updated their voter registration to comply with federal law. We differentiate between new voters registered and existing voters re-registering because we plan to continue our New Voter Postcard effort later this year, which we are going to announce this week!
125 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. We send completed CSRs to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if there are no Democrats who can further the request, and the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along. For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the Constituent Service Request forms and let them know they are working on the issue. This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder. We increasingly have local Democratic elected officials and prospective candidates join our Saturday canvasses just because they are hearing about these CSRs.
Wisconsin is a state where we have had a lot of positive comments about the Constituent Service Request forms.
2 voters in Wisconsin completed Incident Reports, specifically in Milwaukee. Four other voters expressed concerns or apprehensions about the 2024 elections but did not fill out an incident report because they didn’t say they witnessed voter suppression or intimidation (they just expressed concerns or worries about them). Incident Reports are used to plan Election Protection activities, and will be combined with other, historical incidents and handed over to District and State Attorneys, Attorney Generals and the DoJ Civil Rights Division right before Election Day as a precaution against Election Day Incidents in November. Past polling place activity is a predictor of future voter intimidation or suppression activity.
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.
But the main focus of our canvassing is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary. Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican. (We also make Issues Surveys, Incident Reports and Constituent Service Request forms available at the churches we visit, but we don’t include numbers for those, in part because we don’t always get counts back, but also because we like to compare like to like.)
Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional 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). There is a lot of work to be done! Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with some really, really onerous new voter regulations, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.
We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File. Our 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 literature is our second largest cost. 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.
Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation. We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.
But here’s the reality: Identifying Single Issue Voters and Constitutional Amendment supporters and doing GOTV (Get-Out-the-Vote) costs us more money than our regular canvassing because this issue drives volunteer turnout higher and higher. Which means we have to buy more lit to distribute and other minor expenses (like water for volunteers). We just paid off the printers for last year’s Ohio lit that we distributed there. So please:
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 page. Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!