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Weekly HOPE DataDump from 2022 Senate Swing St. Canvassing (AZ, FL, GA, NV, NC, OH, PA & WI) [1]
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Date: 2022-09-03
Since March 5, Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors (as weather and primaries permitted) in Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin — all critical states that will determine the Senate majority for the next two years. And nothing is more important this election than maintaining a Democratic Senate and even expanding upon it.
3,570 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday. As you can see, we are seeing the effects of Labor Day approaching, organizers moving to regular campaign jobs and schools starting up again. Regardless, our volunteers knocked on 260,528 doors, and had conversations with 19,318 voters. Some of our volunteers have really taken to heart the numerical goals we originally set out. We have now surpassed our original 2 Million Doors Knocked by Labor Day goal and are shooting for a new 3 million doors knocked goal by Labor Day. Even if we don’t get there our volunteers are now invested in “the game:” doors knocked, conversations, predicting whether there is anyone home (and whether they should even pause in response to a knock or doorbell) before they knock, because they see how it makes them to be more productive. And they really like these goals. This is even true in Georgia (which has been producing a phenomenal number of volunteers in areas we were told would never knock on doors), where both organizers and my own observations suggest that they are taking more time at the doors.
I was reminded by someone who reads these posts that my number one piece of advise (something all our organizers are supposed to start with) is, Smile! When I lead trainings, I tell them to “Smile, because no one you talk to today will remember a single thing you say. But they will always remember the impression you left.” Some people have told me that this takes the pressure off, because they think they have to memorize the script. We don’t have a script, although most campaigns do (although I don’t know of any campaign nowadays that use what had been tradition, a five round canvass). But I always end that segment of training with this thought: it may be the only smile they see today. And isn’t that just sad. Other Leads, of course, train volunteers differently.
We walk with an Issues Canvass, where we ask voters what they think and whether they had a message for their elected officials. 11,949 voters answered questions from the survey, in whole or in part.
By far, the highest response numbers always are in the second question, about what issue voters think “is most urgent” at this time. The “send a message to your Member” is very popular, as well. But we are getting a lot of responses to the “Is there a single issue that will determine how you vote” question, too — far higher than I expected.
The ‘what is their opinion of the job Biden is doing’ question also receives a lot of responses. 7,149 voters (59.8%) told us that they have a favorable opinion of the job Biden was doing as president. 4,025 voters (33.6%) didn’t express an opinion of the president at this time. 775 voters (6.4%) said they had a negative impression of the job the president was doing last Saturday. Remember that we are knocking on doors of Democrats and Independent or Unaffiliated households. While it is not impossible to reach a Republican through our targeting of these households, we exclude GOP households by and large.
While we are not tracking the “what single issue will you vote on” responses, these are entered into VAN (the Democratic database — which happens to be our biggest expense every month), just like all this data. But it is (probably) the most important piece of information for Democratic candidates who access VAN in the Fall. In more than one Senate Swing State, though, the top response to the single issue driving voting decisions question have been Reproductive Freedom.
The Economy was the Top Issue this week, according to the voters we talked to last Saturday. Concerns over Schools was the top response in Nevada, and Health Care Costs was Number 1 in Georgia this week.
Schools/Education was the clear Number 2 Issue this week. Jobs was Second in Florida; The Economy was Number 2. The Number Three Issue was Concerns over Health Care Costs/Premium Increases. Schools was the third issue in Florida; Fair Elections was Number 3 in Georgia (shocked, right?) and Reproductive Rights was 3rd in Nevada and Wisconsin.
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 ask voters who talk to us whether they approve or disapprove of the job the president, their incumbent Senator (up for election this year), and how their governor (if they are up for election this year) is doing. After the primaries, we also ask about the Democratic Senate and nominees.
Florida (top) & Arizona graphs
In Florida, 58% of the voters we talked to who responded had a favorable impression of President Biden. 78% of voters approved of the job Val Demings was doing while only 14% approved of Senator Rubio. 3% had a favorable impression of Governor DeSantis last week. Remember that we are only knocking on doors of households with Democratic and Independent voters in Central Florida; we don’t include households that only have Republicans in them.
In Arizona, 58% of the voters we talked to responded they had a favorable impression of President Biden and 79% had a favorable impression of Senator Kelly. 13% of them had a favorable impression of their retiring Governor Doug Ducey while 45% had an unfavorable view. Again, we are talking to households identified in the VAN model as Democratic and Independent voters. We do our best to eliminate Republican households although we do get mixed addresses, where someone is a Democrat (usually a female or younger voter) and someone is a Republican (usually male).
Georgia (top) & North Carolina graphs
In Georgia, 65% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing. 82% approved of the job Senator Warnock was doing. Both have consistently polled high because we are canvassing in largely rural (southern) Georgia, targeting African-American (mostly) Democrats with predominately young Black educated volunteers. While Georgia doesn’t have partisan registration it does identify voters by ethnicity (and I believe it is unique in doing so). Only 11% approved of the job Governor Kemp was doing. 65% of the voters we talked to last week had a favorable impression of Stacey Abrams.
In North Carolina, 59% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing. 55% of the voters we talked to approved of the job Governor Cooper was doing. Since the Democratic nominee for Senate is now official, we also asked about Cheri Beasley, the former Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court. 75% of the people we talked to had a favorable impression of Justice Beasley.
Nevada (top) & Pennsylvania graphs
In Nevada, 59% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing. 52% had a favorable impression of the job Senator Cortez Masto was doing. 55% of voters approved of the job Governor Sisolak was doing. 6% of the Nevada voters we talked to had a negative impression of President Biden (the week’s high), 9% had a negative view of the senator and 8% had a negative view of the governor. There is definitely something happening in Nevada, independent of the Democratic candidates to a large extent. The death of Harry Reid, the movement of conservative Hispanic voters towards Trump and the persistent organization of conservative orgs like the Libre Initiative are all making Nevada more competitive than we’d like it to be (notice the different toplines of the two graphs).
In Pennsylvania, 61% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing. 77% had a favorable opinion of John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. People are eager to see him back on the campaign trail. 75% had a favorable view of Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania governor. But Fetterman has really recovered, in more ways than one!
Wisconsin (top) & Ohio graphs
In Wisconsin, 59% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing, 7% disapproved. 3% approved of the job Senator Johnson this week while 58% of the voters we talked to disapproved of their senator. As you can see, the “approval” numbers for Johnson have been remarkably consistent. In fact, his numbers have been the most consistent of any candidate we have asked about. 73% of voters we talked to approved of the job Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes was doing. 58% approved of the job that Governor Evers was doing; 7% disapproved.
In Ohio, 58% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing. 8% disapproved. 80% approved of the job Tim Ryan was doing. 24% approved of the job that Governor DeWine was doing. 21% of the Democratic and Independent voters we talked to last Saturday disapproved of the job DeWine was doing. I find it interested that the approval numbers for Ryan and DeWine appear (reversely) synced. I would feel better (more secure) about the Ryan numbers if we had been able to canvass in the Columbus area.
Approval of the Democratic Party
Each week, we ask the voters we talk to if they approve or disapprove of the Democratic Party. The point here is to identify strong partisans and weaker independents. As you can see, voter responses for this is all over the place, what I would call a roller coaster. Only 4 percentage points separate Biden’s approval ratings in Nevada (week’s low) and Florida (week’s high). Florida had previously been the low rider, but Nevada has taken over that roll. Georgia had previously consistently been the high mark, but that changed when we more than doubled the number of counties we were in. Remember that we don’t knock on doors of Republican households even though there are definitely doors of mixed party households we canvass. But we are getting interesting feedback from voters, even from those who don’t seem inclined to support the president.
The Disapproval rate is also pretty wavy. There is a 6 percentage point divergence between North Carolina (week’s low) and Nevada (week’s high). But you can see why I am more concerned about Nevada than any other Democratic incumbent’s political environment. It bares watching closely because Democrats are not being viewed well there. What is interesting now (this didn’t used to be the case) that you can really identify Fox viewers with this question, not from their answers, per se, but from their response to the question. Our volunteers ask about the Democratic party, but we do have voters who will seek to correct them, saying something like, “You mean the Democrat Party?” We don’t correct them (if because it isn’t a discussion worth wasting time over), but many of the volunteers will make a note of it. And it is interesting because we see this more in Ohio than in, say, Arizona. So if you see Tim Ryan advertising on Fox News (sic), you will understand why.
128 people filled out new voter registration forms for their states during last weekend’s canvassing. Another 643 voters updated their address, as required by HAVA. We differentiate between the two because brand new voters are often ignored by campaigns and we hope to compensate for that somewhat by having volunteers send them post cards before the election and they are also getting robocalls thanking them for registering. You might notice the significant top out at the end of June; this was the result of over-excited organizers and volunteers in Phoenix who encouraged re-registration because voters wanted to get on the Active Early Voting List. You can see that the number of voters registered is not a function of the number of volunteers present or doors knocked. Clearly, they help, but there’s no guarantee that more doors equals more voters registered. Even though registering voters is a primary rationale behind early canvassing, it is not the only one. Just wanted to point that out.
We collected 1,119 Constituent Service Request Forms last week. In general, we send these to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along. For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the CSR and let them know they are working on the issue. This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.
We continue to walk with Incident Reports, and we ask people who say they are concerned about the upcoming general election if they want to fill one out. Last Saturday, 47 voters filled them out.
We pass along Incident Reports to the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and NALEO (those that correspond to Hispanic precincts), and send copies to state Democratic Party committees. But our purpose is to combine this information with the two independent databases of voting incidents to look for patterns before the election and use that information for warning district, state and U.S. attorneys’ offices that we could see those patterns resurface on election day. We will also use it to target Election Day Protection activity.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions in some states, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them. There’s a lot of work to be done, but fortunately, the three states that are making it most difficult are also states in which you can knock on doors at least 10 months out of the year. And, with your help, we will be there, getting our people to super-comply with these restrictive provisions.
I am aware of the volume of data presented in this post. But it is the result of the data we collect at the door, to be entered in VAN and accessible by all Democratic candidates who utilize VAN this Fall. The focus on the “horse-race” aspect of this data is unintentional, because the data is what the it is. It is useful for Democratic candidates and provides paths to victory for data-driven candidates (which most campaigns are these days).
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/2022senateswing
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!
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