After Arizona, Pennsylvania is the state Hope Springs from Field PAC has been canvassing in about which i feel most confident. Not coincidently, both have an 8 point spread in the 538 polling averages. As a long-time student of political campaigns, I remember where Lee Atwater would theorize that election results are determined by 5 things: 1.) candidate, 2.) money, 3.) electoral environment (things that you can’t really change in a election cycle), 4.) electoral climate (things that can change within an electoral cycle, and 5.) organization. And Pennsylvania is a great example of this.
Volunteers have been canvassing in 8 Senate Swing States for 16 months, preparing the electoral battlefield for the 2022 elections. Over those 16 months, those volunteers have knocked on over 330,000 doors and talked to almost 25,000 voters in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metro areas. Over that time, we have definitely noticed real change in the Pennsylvania electorate that strongly suggests that the Democrats at the top of the ticket in 2022 are incredible candidates and campaigns with the ability to compensate with strength when one of those 5 areas shows weakness.
So when John Fetterman went down before the primary, his campaign picked up the slack, trolling the Turkish citizen relentlessly. Voters nary missed a beat, and his approval ratings picked up before the candidate even returned to the campaign trail. Let’s face it, this isn’t exactly been a fair fight. Not that Republicans were going to fight fair anyway. But here’s what we are finding at the doors: Democrats and unaffiliated voters love the Fetterman campaign’s “spunk,” their fight. “About time,” one voter told me when I canvassed with our volunteers a couple of weeks ago.
When we started this Deep Organizing project, a lot of people thought it was a lost cause. After Afghanistan, we saw a lot of moping. “Do Something” is a motto we learned at the doors, and there was a lot of frustration out there. That’s not what we see more than a year later. Instead, we not only see excitement and optimism, we find the voters are eager and determined to get to the polls, whether it is to preserve Democracy or Reproductive Freedom. “Just can’t come soon enough.” Things voters say.
206 volunteers came out to knock on doors with Hope Springs from Field PAC in (northern) Montgomery and (western) Allegheny county on Saturday. We lost more than a few organizers (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) to official candidate campaigns but there was a determination to carry on over Labor Day weekend. This was the sixteenth week canvassing this year, building on our door-knocking last summer and fall, directed at trying to boost turnout among Democratic voters and like-minded independents. So we’ve had a little practice. Some of these people have been with me since 2008. We are all much older now!
We canvass with an Issues Questionnaire that allows voters to tell us what is on their minds. We use it as a conversational check to guide volunteers through their dialog at the door. It makes it easy on our volunteers as provides us with vital data that will be entered in VAN (the Democratic database) after the primary.
Our very first priority in these Senate Swing State canvasses is making sure that everyone in the houses that opened their doors is registered to vote at their current address. This is even more critical as we’ve seen GOP or conservative group canvassers out there (especially in western Pennsylvania) in preparation for their True the Vote tactics on Election Day.
We ask voters whether they have a primary issue concern. What we are looking for is to determine whether they are “single issue” voters. We use open-ended questions because we are really looking for quick, immediate responses. People know what issues they will be voting on, and if they can’t think of any, that doesn’t defeat the purpose. The Economy topped our list of concerns with the voters we talked to on Saturday, but just barely. Comments about a potential Recession are lower but still prominent. Schools was the second most frequent response, perhaps because of the coming school year for both K-12 and college and we do hear concerns about whether Covid will re-emerge in the Fall. Reproductive Freedom and the potential for Republicans to take that away was third. We also hear a lot additional comments about Reproductive Rights and Gun Violence in the “Anything to add” or message to Congress query. Pennsylvania is the state where we get the most “Reproductive Rights” response to the “Is there a single issue that will determine your vote this fall.” About 28% of those who respond to this question volunteer that answer in Pennsylvania.
Voter views of President Biden were stable again in Pennsylvania this week. Biden’s favorable job approval rating continues to rise; this week it was up two, 61% amongst the voters with whom we talked. 8% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. For weeks, people would tell us they wished the president would show more anger, but we don’t hear that anymore. Democrats feel like we are back in the game!
73% of the voters we talked to said they approved of the job John Fetterman was doing this week. People are still keeping an eye on Fetterman’s recovery, but now voter concerns about his recovery seem to mimic press coverage on the subject. You’d imagine that the Oz campaign will bring it up as often as they can because what else do they have? It’s hard to run from New Jersey.
76% of the voters who responded said that had a favorable impression of Josh Shapiro, and 5% had an unfavorable impression. Remember, these are Democrats and independent voters we are talking to, we try to weed out Republican households when we’d cut turf on Fridays.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First Round of a traditional Five Round Canvass. 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 understands that 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.
We updated (or corrected) the addresses of 33 voters on Saturday. No new voters.
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 42 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).
As I’ve noted previously, volunteers in Pennsylvania are feeling incredibly confident about their chances in November. They seem to like how Fetterman is pushing back and that aggressiveness seemed to take the steam out of the questions about Fetterman’s health. The voters we talked to seem to think Fetterman is in control of this race. Let’s hope so!
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!