87 volunteers came out to knock on doors with Hope Springs from Field PAC last Saturday on our holiday weekend canvass. Saturday was our eighth week of knocking doors in Wisconsin this year; we still have not reached the consistency we were having last summer and fall. We continue to canvass in Milwaukee (where we are canvassing in the African-American wards), as well as Waukesha and Dane counties.
Our very first priority in these Swing Senate State canvasses is making sure that everyone in the houses that open their doors are registered to vote at their current address. Updating voter registration is just as important as getting unregistered people registered to vote, and only slightly more important than removing bad addresses from the VAN (the Democratic database). Removing bad addresses from VAN will make canvassing in the fall more efficient and productive for those who follow.
I believe this is the first week we have actually talked to someone where a voter had died of Covid live there. It was a mixed household; the surviving widow was a Democrat and her husband refused to get vaxxed. The volunteer wrote out a Q(uestion)-slip asking if that needed an additional response. While it wouldn’t surprise me if we had knocked on doors where people had died during the pandemic, it was not made known to us.
We knocked on doors with our Issues Questionnaire, which we use as a conversational device to make it easier for both volunteers and voters. But it is also a prop. We train volunteers to share their clipboard (with the Issues Survey) with voters we are talking to so they can see the questions and know that we will not be taking up much of their time. And we find that, by sharing it this way, many voters pick out the questions they want to answer — sometimes even moving directly to those questions. But this tactic means that we tend to get about 65% of those who answer their doors to provide at least 2 answers to the survey, and generally answer at least 6 questions.
This week, Public Safety concerns were the most popular response to “What Issue is most Urgent?” The Economy was the second most frequent response and concerns about Crime was third. We heard a lot additional comments about Reproductive Rights and Gun Violence in the “Anything to add” or message to Congress query. We found lots of anger out there, not directed at the same person or thing, but all focused around one person: the sitting senator of Wisconsin.
Voter views of President Biden have been pretty steady so far in Wisconsin. 56% of the voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden last Saturday. 12% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. And, once again, we did get feedback from voters that they wished Biden could or would do more about inflation and gun violence in their area.
The Wisconsin voters we talked to on Saturday have lots to say about Ron Johnson. Some were not so nice. 4% of the voters we talked to had a positive view of the senator (doubling his approval from the prior week). This week, only 51% told us they had an unfavorable opinion.
Governor Evers, on the other hand, got a better reception. 51% of the Democratic and Independent voters we talked to gave Evers a favorable rating. 9% said they had an unfavorable impression.
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.
Milwaukee Walk Lit
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. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are such opportunities. There is a lot of work to be done!
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.
We can't overstate the impact of not doing traditional voter contact/outreach by knocking on doors in 2020. In every single state where Hope Springs from Field PAC has canvassed, voters have thanked volunteers for knocking on their doors. We were missed in 2020, not just by those who would open their doors to canvassers but also by whole neighborhoods, who may not have opened their doors but witness canvassers in their neighborhoods, saw the literature left behind and talked to neighbors who had spoken to volunteers. The reinforcement by the process was missed. They told us this.
Milwaukee Walk Lit (back)
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.
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 — although we are very cognizant of the fact that voter turnout in Milwaukee dropped off in 2020, as well. 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. But we are also asking people who open their doors about whether they need services delivered to their neighborhood. 19 voters we talked to 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.
We specifically ask voters in the Issues Survey if they have any concerns about the upcoming elections. Voters who tell us they have experience voter intimidation or other problems with voting are asked to fill out Incident Reports. We found 1 voter in Milwaukee who wanted to fill out an Incident Report in Milwaukee on Saturday. We 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.
But asking — and collecting — Incident Reports has a second purpose at this time. We are reminding voters that we care about Election Protection, that if they witness something, they can say something and it will matter. It also assures them that we are ready to do something if they see something.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with Wisconsin’s voting laws, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine the Republican strategy of shaping the electorate.
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!
