We have been focusing our canvassing efforts in North Carolina on the silver “Toss Up” Congressional District (NC-13; Open (R+3)) south of Raleigh but this Saturday we returned to Robeson County where we had previously been doing Voter Suppression Mitigation Canvassing last year. North Carolina’s primary is next week (tomorrow is the last day to vote during the one-stop early voting period) so knocking on doors also has the effect of reminding voters that it is approaching (even though mentioning the primary is not part of our script). Every one should vote, so we don’t fight it, and several people have asked volunteers either how to early vote or where their voting location is (this is the genius of walking with Q(uestion) Slips and Observation forms — we can get back to them on that.
[Note (for election geeks): Statewide, there were 141,850 Democratic ballots cast, 139,724 Republican ballots cast and 872 nonpartisan ballots cast as of Tuesday morning, according to NCSBE.]
201 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday for Hope Springs from Field PAC. It was a nice day, too, for it. So we knocked on doors in south Wake County as well as minority neighborhoods (and lands) with our Issues Questionnaire, Constituent Service Request forms and left our lit at every door on our lists. Unsurprisingly, Inflation remains the number one concern wit the voters we talked to. Crime was the second most frequent response and Schools was third. Pretty much a typical Saturday at voter’s front doorsteps.
We had the least input concerning abortion in North Carolina than any other state we canvassed last Saturday. One voter mentioned it as a “most urgent issue” and others mentioned it in other parts of our Issues Survey.
Voter views of President Biden rose this week. 62% of the voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden in Florida on Saturday. 14% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. We did hear questions from voters we talked to about whether Biden would commit troops to Ukraine. Governor Cooper (who is term-limited) had 58% job approval from the voters who answered their doors and responded to the questionnaire.
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. In North Carolina, this meant that Republicans registered 50,000 more new voters in 2020 than Democrats -- although the North Caroline GOP "lost close to 2% of its share of North Carolina voters." But this is a state where the share of voters who were registered as Democrats has declined every year since 2008 (primarily Democrats who were "Jessiecrats"). Democrats have "lost 128,787 registered democratic voters since 2016."
Perhaps the biggest factor, though, is the loss of African American registrants in North Carolina. "From December 2012 until May of this year, the number of African American registered voters dropped by 80,000 or 1.11%." This number is likely to improve, given the presence of former state Supreme Court chief justice Cheri Beasley (who lost re-election by a mere 401 votes, something we have found as extra motivating), perhaps the best known African-American politician in the state.
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/hopemobilization
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 dud). 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.
Like our Swing State canvassing in North Carolina last year, we walk with an Issues Questionnaire. Especially early in the cycle, where volunteers aren’t as comfortable with their campaign spiel, the Issues Survey allows for the voter to lead the conversation. Volunteers, then, are more focused on prompts, things that spur more thought and conversation so that we have a fuller picture of what motivates the voter.
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.
Door to Door canvassing is the most effective way to reach voters but it is doubly important now since Democrats didn’t really do in-person canvassing in 2020. And, yet, we have found that voters missed that kind of in-person contact and ability to have a conversation about political issues and concerns. Our own experience knocking on doors in Texas and the Senate Swing States last year was that many Democrats and Independents felt more confident supporting candidates who sent people out into their neighborhoods asking for their support.
But the main focus of the Issues Survey is asking voters for their input and concerns. We find that most voters who aren’t in a hurry or in the middle of something are willing to answer at least a couple of these questions, especially their top issue or concern and their views of President Biden. 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.
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. They may be changing. There are places we need to defend (Georgia and Arizona) and there are opportunities. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are such opportunities. We’d like to get into Nevada, too, and perhaps others that appear more competitive at that time — if we can generate the resources needed to do so. There is a lot of work to be done!
Especially in those areas, but really everywhere, we are also asking people who open their doors about whether they need services delivered to their neighborhood. 36 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms last Saturday. In general, we send these to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if 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.
And we continue to ask people if they have witnessed voter suppression or intimidation in prior elections. Those that tell us they have are asked if they want to fill out Incident Response forms. 7 voters, mostly in Robeson County, filled out Incident Reports on Saturday. We pass along Incident Reports to the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and NALEO (those that correspond to Hispanic precincts), and send copies to state Democratic Party committees. But our purpose is to combine this information with the two independent databases of voting incidents to look for patterns before the election and use that information for warning district, state and U.S. attorneys’ offices that we could see those patterns resurface on election day. We will also use it to target Election Day Protection activity. We also 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.
Voter Suppression and Election Protection will be our central focus after Labor Day in 2022. The reason we organized as a federal PAC is so that we can get poll watcher credentials for November 2022. But after next Labor Day, we also hope to hand off any field organizers we hire to these Senate or other statewide campaigns, in part to help them understand the data we’ve collected and placed into VAN for their use. All the data we enter into VAN are classified as public, which will allow any Democratic candidate who uses VAN to access it. Laws pertaining to election protection changed in the rash of new election laws Republican legislatures passed this year and we would like to get ahead of that next year.
Hope Springs from Field PAC is trying to reinstitute best field practices, such as canvassing with people who look like the voters we are talking to and targeting former voters thrown off the rolls. A lot of these got forgotten because of the Covid restrictions in the last cycle, and we have an entire cycle of campaign staffers who were trained without the benefit of actually getting to do field. That’s why it is so important to start knocking on doors now, and not wait until a month or so before the primaries. We have a lot of make-up work to do. Can you help?
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 donate:
secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!