(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Waking the Sleeping Giant: Poor and Low-Income Voters in the 2020 Elections [1]

[]

Date: 2023-06

Since its launch in 2018, PPC:NCMR has been insisting that the 140 million poor and low-income people in the country be at the very center of our national priorities. Even though more than 40% of the U.S. population is poor or low-income, the issues of poverty, low-wages and other policies that could lift the load of poverty have received little attention in political campaigns and debates over the past decades and multiple election cycles. Believing that unleashing the power of low-income voters could shift the political landscape, PPC:NCMR has challenged political candidates and parties to take up these issues in their platforms.

In 2019, we held the largest presidential candidate forum prior to the primaries. Nine presidential candidates, including then Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris, were engaged directly by poor and low-income people and eligible low-income voters on their issues. Every candidate commit ted to prioritizing issues of poverty in the political debates and platforms for 2020 and beyond. We noted that, in the 26 hours of televised debates that were held by both parties before the 2016 elections, not one hour was focused on poverty. In the lead up to the 2020 election, we continued to challenge candidates in town halls and other events to take up the issues of poor and low-income people in their platforms and outreach.

Given what was at stake for poor and low-income people in 2020, from August to November, PPC:NC MR undertook a massive outreach effort to contact nearly 2 million low-income voters with historically low participation rates. Our voter outreach drive targeted rural and urban eligible voters, across race, in 16 states: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. This was one of the only campaigns reaching out to voters bilingually (in both Spanish and English), as well as in American Sign Language (ASL). It was also entirely non-partisan. The purpose was to encourage the targeted population to vote on Election Day and to get involved with a “movement that votes,” particularly with PPC:NCMR and the priorities of poor and low-income people.

Over a period of six weeks, we trained over 1,000 volunteers from 48 states to engage voters using phone-and text-bank digital platforms. We also trained over 1,000 volunteers to serve as poll monitors on Election Day in 10 states. To expand the impact of these efforts, we held a voter participation and protection online event in September that reached at least 1 million people.

Working with TargetSmart, we used a regression analysis to make estimations on the difference be tween being contacted by PPC:NCMR and not being contacted for similarly situated potential voters across the 16 states. An average of that difference comes out to 2.3%, implying that someone contacted by PPC:NCMR was about 2.3% more likely to vote than a similarly situated person who was not contact ed. The effect is statistically significant (p<.001). It shows that, even if the voters we contacted likely saw a number of campaign advertisements, news stories and engaged in or observed political conversation about the election, PPC:NCMR’s outreach was a positively contributing factor to them casting a vote for the presidential race in 2020. While the data cannot be used to claim that being contacted by PPC:NCMR was the only factor that drove them to vote, we can say that our efforts to directly reach out to low-income, infrequent voters improved their turnout rates in these states.

Focus on Georgia

Georgia was a notable state in 2020: in addition to the presidential contest, there were two tight U.S. Senate races, which ultimately elected the first Black and Jewish senators from the state. Their election also brought the Senate under a slim Democratic majority. For the first time in over a decade, a Democratic President would begin his term with both chambers of Congress under Democratic party control.

Like the rest of the country, Georgia experienced a large surge in voter turnout as compared to 2016, with nearly one million more votes cast in 2020. Given that the final presidential margin in the state was just under 12,000 votes, any differential increase in turnout had the potential to swing the results of the contest.

As part of our voter outreach campaign, PPC:NCMR reached out to 175,000 low-income, infrequent voters in Georgia. While turnout among these voters remained low compared to the rest of the electorate, there was an uptick in low-income voters. Notably, we contacted 39,051 voters who cast a ballot in Georgia in 2020, but who did not participate in 2016.

Again, most voters in PPC:NCMR’s contact universe in Georgia also likely received candidate messaging, viewed some amount of news media, were targeted by partisan turnout operations and observed political signals in regular conversation. We cannot use these numbers to say that our outreach determined the election outcome. What we can say is that they show the potential that low-income voters can have on the electoral system if more directly engaged. Those 39,051 surge voters—who voted in 2020, but who did not vote in 2016—accounted for more than three times the final margin of victory for the presidential contest in Georgia. While this is promising, it is also true that over 138,000 potential voters who we contacted still did not vote.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/waking-the-sleeping-giant-poor-and-low-income-voters-in-the-2020-elections/

Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.