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Relief in Pennsylvania: Knocking Doors, Finding Our Voters (A Senate Swing State Canvass) [1]
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Date: 2022-07-21
There are discernable signs of life from the candidate and volunteers showed up on Saturday in both our Philadelphia and Pittsburgh area canvasses with something to say about that. In our northern Montgomery Co canvass one of our canvassers was working on tonight’s event and had spoken to John Fetterman, creating considerable excitement as he told the other volunteers about that. At our Pittsburgh suburban canvass, we had several volunteers who said they were at a drop-in appearance by the candidate. You have to imagine how excited this has made our volunteers, who have endured questions about his health or listened to voter concerns, because, you know, they didn’t want a third Senator from New Jersey winning in November. It’s the little things.
241 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. We continue to canvass in swingy areas of the toss-up Congressional Districts Pennsylvania, the three “toss-up” Congressional Districts (1st, 7th & 17th CDs) in grey. This was the eighth week this year, building on our door-knocking last summer and fall, directed at trying to boost turnout among Democratic voters and like-minded independents.
We’ve been knocking on doors using the Issues Survey as guide for our discussion with voters. Normally, around 65% of the voters we talk to at their doors answer some or all of these questions, 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.’ Concerns about Health Care, Insurance and especially Costs was the top Issue mentioned by voters we talked to on Saturday, and many voters spoke specifically wanting to know how much their personal costs (premiums) would be going up. The Economy, including fears of entering a Recession 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 “single issue” or message to Congress query.
We registered 16 New Voters last Saturday and updated (or corrected) the addresses of another 76 voters. The latter is kind of a surprise since these neighborhoods are incredibly stable and don’t see a lot of moves.
Voter views of President Biden were stable again in Pennsylvania this week. Biden’s favorable job approval number was down one, 56% amongst the voters with whom we talked. 11% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. But we did hear frustration from voters that they wished Biden could or would do more about reproductive rights, gun violence and/or gas prices and people do tell us they wished the president would show more anger about the way things were going.
62% of the voters we talked to had a favorable impression of Fetterman this week. Josh Shapiro’s numbers continue to rise. 70% of the voters who responded said that had a favorable impression of Shapiro, and 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 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 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 66 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).
We also ask voters if they have any concerns about the upcoming elections. Voters who say they have concerns about voting are asked if they have experience problems, and those who say they have are asked if they want to fill out Incident Reports. We found 7 voters who wanted to fill out Incident Reports on Saturday — mostly from Pittsburgh suburbs. 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.
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!
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