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Democratic Excitement breeds Voter Support. And Pennsylvania is Raring to GO! [1]
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Date: 2022-08-30
As we approach the end of summer — and the end of Hope Springs from Field PAC’s canvassing efforts (we are transitioning over to Election Protection and Ballot Curing after Labor Day) — volunteers keep asking about what is next (specifically, who’s going to lead the Fall canvassing in their area). And the answer is always the same, no matter where you live: look it up at mobilize.us for volunteer opportunities in your area. I know that i will repeat this a lot, but mobilize.us is a central volunteer hub for Democrats. Just like VAN, mobilize.us is a Democratic solution to a common problem.
I visited our Philadelphia area canvasses on Saturday (the Dolphins were supposed to be on live at 7pm and this is the closest swing state to me). We have volunteers here that I have known, trained and knocked on doors with since 2003. It was like old home day there. But we have been knocking on doors outside the two metropolitan areas here for more than a year now, and our volunteers are getting a little sentimental. “Don’t worry,” I tell them, ”we will start back up in the Spring!” This was greeted with some cheers and some concern. “In the spring?!?” Some people want a moment before thinking about 2024, and other people are already excited.
But don’t tell anyone that Democrats are excited about our candidates, our policies, our president and the chance to prove that 2020 wasn’t stolen. It’s a secret!
One last note before I get on to why you really stopped by! Pennsylvania was the first place where our volunteers really started seeing the importance of Reproductive Rights to Democratic success this year. It is also where we really saw the bifurcation of the “Most Urgent Issue” and the “single issue that will determine how you vote” this Fall. Even when inflation was raging, we continued to see voters tell us that they were voting on Reproductive Freedom this year. When the media lost interest, we’d still have voters tell us that, this year, it was all about Reproductive Justice. We didn’t hear slogans, we just consistently heard determination ever since the Alito draft release. This is the Alito election. Especially here in Pennsylvania.
446 volunteers came out to knock on doors with Hope Springs from Field PAC in (northern) Montgomery, Bucks and Northampton counties as well as western Allegheny county on 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 fifteenth 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. And, yet, there is still turf to cover!
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. On Saturday, 1,410 voters answered questions from the Issues Survey. I can’t tell you how much our volunteers like this technique and how much *they* learn from knocking on doors.
The last two weeks, for whatever reason, our volunteers have really stepped up in Pennsylvania. 459 came out last week and 446 came out this week. We have knocked on 281,512 doors in Pennsylvania this year, and found 493 houses that were empty when we knocked on them (bad addresses in the voter file), 12,316 other voters who have moved and re-registered 573 voters who needed to update their voting address (as required by HAVA). Re-registering voters has given these volunteers real motivation to find and correct voter addresses at the doors who talk to them.
Which is why 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.
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. Comments about a potential Recession are lower but still prominent. Education 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. Health Care Costs and the potential for rising premiums was third. People seem to be scared that they don’t know how to budget for this yet. We still 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.
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. 6% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing, his lowest for the year. We got a couple of comments this week about Afghanistan (presumably the inartful pullout from a year earlier), but not concerns. That moment has passed. And for weeks, people would tell us they wished the president would show more anger, but we didn’t hear that this week!
Talking about moments passing, 77% of the voters we talked to said they approved of the job John Fetterman was doing this week. You can see that Fetterman continues to recover. Because the moment has passed, I can tell you that some of my “neighbors” across the Potomac would occasionally ask if they could “see that number early.” People were keeping an eye not only on Fetterman’s recovery but also voter concerns about his recovery. But that moment has passed. And John’s a great candidate with a great team behind him. (My wife insists we acknowledge the other Fetterman, as well.)
75% of the voters who responded said that had a favorable impression of Josh 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 registered 14 New Voters last Saturday and updated (or corrected) the addresses of another 79 voters. I continue to be surprised at the latter number just because these aren’t transient neighborhoods and I wouldn’t expect that much movement. On the other hand, we knocked on 33,271 doors last weekend, so I suppose that 79 isn’t that much in relation to the number of houses we touched.
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 112 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!
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