Well, it had to happen. Several times i’ve noted that Hope Springs from Field PAC [website] volunteers weren’t hearing that the MidEast conflict or the Campus protests had risen to the level of suburban consciousness. But, then, last weekend, it did.
It’s one of the reasons i think canvassing is so important. We all have priorities that we think the rest of the country shares (or should share). But when you knock on doors and ask voters what they think, you get a much broader view of America and the electorate. For example, i haven’t had a single voter talk to me about Gaza since the NY special election, but i am only one of thousands of people knocking on doors for Hope Springs. Over the last two weeks (April 13th and 20th) we had voters in Georgia, Maryland and North Carolina raise some concerns, but there weren’t enough voters doing so to isolate their views from other concerns raised about Higher Education (Student Loans, the Cost of College, even the Admissions Process) in those states.
I would tell people about that and, to be frank, some people were dubious. How could our findings be accurate if we were missing “the most important issue of our day.” “People are dying!” But the smartest question i heard was, why hasn’t it broken through?
Americans typically don’t spend a lot of time thinking about U.S. foreign relations. Especially if they have no self-interest there. That’s just who we are. We haven’t seen foreign policy be a real issue in an election for a long time (9/11 wasn’t really a foreign policy issue). Those of us involved in the Howard Dean campaign learned that the hard way. It’s just not something Americans concern themselves about in large numbers.
But there are always voters who wish this wasn’t so. “People are dying!” In the Washington D.C. area there are always protests. I don’t think i’ve ever had a meeting in or around the White House campus that didn’t have protesters in Lafayette Square. There are days when there are protests on both the North (Lafayette Square) side and the South (The Ellipse) side of the White House. And every one of them thought the issue that motivated them was important and should be critical to how we vote. Rarely is that the case.
But we are now knocking on doors in Michigan, and people have been saying, “once you get to Michigan you are going to see how important this is.” Now we aren’t canvassing in the Blue Congressional Districts, we are knocking on doors in the swingy grey (and pink) districts (MI-3, MI-4, MI-7 & MI-8). We expect to be in MI-10 and MI-11 (if needed) before the Summer is out.
We are a month earlier than last year, but that’s mostly because our volunteers were eager to get started. I had one volunteer in MI-7 who would regularly text me the weather forecasts in his area every week of April. But, heh, Democrats aren’t motivated. Nope. “Start Me Up.”
428 volunteers came out to knock on doors in Michigan last Saturday in our first canvass there since last Summer. We had a lot of volunteers that had driven down to Ohio last year for GOTV and they were among the most eager to get started. Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 30,302 doors last Saturday and talked to 2,448 voters. 1,559 of those voters answered questions to at least part of the Issues Survey.
Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 2nd in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are taking those efforts to the doors of 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) 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.
(Higher) Prices was the most frequent response to our question about voter’s top concern on Saturday in Michigan. We hear the same thing in every state, questions about when prices will “return to normal.” There is a Swing State-wide expectation that prices are unnaturally high and will eventually come back down. And people will tell us that Biden will be punished if this is the “new normal.” Political Stability was the second most frequent response. Some of that was reactions to the charges brought against 15 Republicans who acted as fake electors for Mr. Trump in 2020. Seems like there has been extensive coverage of Trump and the fake electors in the local media last week. And the War in the Middle East/Campus Protests was third. A strong third, at that.
And this wasn’t just confined to MI-7 (where Michigan State is located). Concerns about the Campus Protests were across the state (where we had people knocking on doors). The people who raised this concern as their “Most Urgent Issue” had lots and lots to say about it, as well.
Biden Approval among the Michiganders we talked to was at 52% last Saturday and 7% expressed some measure of Disapproval. 57% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Gov. Whitmer was doing while 4% expressed Disapproval. Still hear voters talk about Michigan as being a “fly-over” state for Democrats and how important it is for Whitmer to be changing that.
127 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. We send completed CSRs to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican (and there isn’t a Democrat who could take on the request), 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.
Volunteers registered 5 new voters and re-registered 28 voters in compliance with Federal (HAVA) law. Again, we note that we differentiate between the new voters and existing voters because the former can often be forgotten (or clumped together with their family) during GOTV and first time voters need special care! And Hope Springs will again engage in special GOTV efforts aimed at getting young new voters to the polls next year.
1 voter filled out an Incident Report about issues they witnessed in a prior election. 2 other voter expressed concerns about the 2024 elections but did not fill out incident reports because they didn’t witness 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. Several of our Arizona organizers are also talking to Native American groups about replicating our Voter Matching service that Hope Springs provides for Black Churches. It’s a big year. There’s lots to be done, and, hopefully, we won’t have to suspect in-person voter contact because of a heatwave this year.
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!