I look over most of the reports I receive from organizers in the evenings and one of the things I am looking for is what is really worth pointing out about the weekend canvass. The takeaway, as it were. This week, voters made it easy. There wasn’t a single mention last Saturday about John Fetterman’s health — and his numbers improved markedly. And so we start.
94 volunteers came out to knock on doors with Hope Springs from Field PAC in (northern) Montgomery, Bucks and Northampton county as well as western Allegheny county last Saturday. Small groups, but lots of local conflicts, including town parades, this holiday weekend. These are all in the three “toss-up” Congressional Districts (1st, 7th & 17th CDs).
Hope Springs from Field PAC continues to canvass in swingy areas of the toss-up Congressional Districts Pennsylvania. This was the fifth consecutive week, building on our door-knocking last summer and fall, directed at trying to boost turnout among Democratic voters and like-minded independents.
Pennsylvania is the most important race for the Senate not only because it is an open seat but also because it is a perennial swing state. You can never organize enough in swing states. I’d say this is a rule of thumb — we need to perennially, continually organize in swing states and states we think should be swing states. And we need to organize more in suburban areas, especially those with concentrated GOP field efforts. My two cents.
Our very first priority in these Swing Senate State canvasses is making sure that everyone in the houses that opened their doors was registered to vote at their current address. Updating voter registration is just as important as getting unregistered people registered to vote. Voters who aren’t registered at their current address (as required by HAVA) risk being challenged at the polls by the right-wing nuts like MGT. A lot of people don’t realize this, and don’t mind being reminded that they need to update their address to stay (legally) on the voter rolls.
Our major focus has been the Issues Survey. Normally, around 65% of the voters we talk to at their doors answer some or all of these questions although it was slightly lower on Saturday, and I’ve learned that a lot of voters get sucked into answering questions because the first question (really, second) is ‘What Issue is the Most Urgent.’ Lots of people want to tell us the answer to that one. Once again, the voters we talked to in Pennsylvania delivered an unusual mixture in answering that one. The Economy was the top Issue mentioned by voters we talked to on Saturday, and voters are thinking about the prospect of a Recession. Health Care or Insurance Costs was second and Reproductive Rights was the third most mentioned issue. We also heard a lot additional comments about Reproductive Rights and Gun Violence in the “Anything to add” or message to Congress query.
Voter views of President Biden were stable this week. Biden’s favorable job approval number was again 57% amongst the voters with whom we talked. 13% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing (which is definitely out of the norm right now). But we did hear frustration from voters that they wished Biden could or would do more about guns and/or gas prices. Still, it was the first time that Biden has had higher numbers than both other Democrats about whom we are asking.
Since the primary, we had seen approval of John Fetterman fall. But this week, they returned to the norm of what we are seeing with Democratic Senate nominees. 71% of the voters we talked to had a favorable impression of Fetterman this week.
Josh Shapiro’s numbers also increased. 66% of the voters who responded said that had a favorable impression of Shapiro, and only 6% had an unfavorable impression. Remember, these are Democrats and independent voters we are talking to, we try to weed out Republican households when we cut turf on Fridays.
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/2022senateswing
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 did). 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.
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. That may be changing. There are places we need to defend (Georgia, Arizona and Nevada) and there are opportunities. Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin are such opportunities. Pennsylvania is clearly our best opportunity in 2022. But there is a lot of work to be done!
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.
We also ask voters who open their doors whether they want to fill out a Constituent Service Request form. And, when we start using this approach somewhere, we get a higher response rate on service requests than we do after we have been knocking for awhile. I can’t really explain why this is true, but it was true on Saturday, as well. This week, we collected 18 CSRs in Pennsylvania.
Constituent Service Requests are handed over to (hopefully Democratic) office holders with responsibilities for the area of the request. Q-slips will be sent directly to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. Comments from Observation Forms are entered into VAN, as well, and any questions we collect are forwarded to the appropriate campaigns (or elected officials).
Hope Springs from Field PAC has a hybrid approach. We aren’t interested in competing with regular campaign field organizing. We are in the field before they get there and then move on to voter protection when the Democratic campaigns start their intensive field work. Indeed, when we wind up the typical field work by Labor Day, we will encourage all the volunteers working with us to move over to the Senate campaigns in their states (and hope that our field organizers will be hired on by those campaigns). After Labor Day, we will begin organizing our Election Protection Project.
But we are also cognizant that Democratic turnout has traditionally dropped off more than Republicans in non-presidential years. So early, frequent voter contact is more important to our side. Equally important, though, is that starting early means that we can make up for our inability to register new voters in the presidential election because we took Covid and the health of our base seriously. Registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.
As you can see from the very first question in the Issues Questionnaire, making sure that voters are registered from their current address is a major function of early canvassing. Updating addresses, both in convincing voters to re-register, and within VAN itself, is another major function.
If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022senateswing
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!
