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This One is Close! But we Did the Work and North Carolina is Turning Blue! [1]
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Date: 2022-09-16
Hope Springs from Field PAC started knocking on doors in North Carolina on April 2nd. This was a continuation of the field work we had done in 2021. We started with 5 Obama alums as organizers. They brought to the effort lists with 9,426 names of people who had knocked on doors for them before, augmented by my own extensive list of previous volunteers there.
68 volunteers showed up for our first weekend, a bit chilly but eager to go. In total, 5,274 volunteers showed up for these canvasses, knocking on doors in the Research Triangle and other selected areas of the state. These were selected due to historical, excessive patterns of voter suppression and racial repression. And our efforts there were eventually augmented by volunteers from Black Churches and the Divine Nines. It was quite the eclectic bunch!
Over the Spring and Summer, they knocked on 378,047 doors. You might notice the early May bump in all these graphs. This was due to our special GOTV (primary) effort to encourage Democrats to vote in the primary, especially in the counties that had previously been identified with historically high rates of voter suppression. This included a hard core group of volunteers from Georgia, HBCU students from Albany State University — many of whom had previously come up to North Carolina to assist with our special Fall project to restore voting rights during the brief period we reached out during the Community Success Initiative pause.
More than 29,356 voters talked to our volunteers since April 2nd. Voters opened their doors at a 7.76% rate. (8% is a rule of thumb.)
17,862 voters filled out, in whole or in part, our Issues survey. Their data has been entered in VAN, the Democratic database, and is available to Democrats who use VAN in the area. This averaged out to a 60.8% response rate. I posted the Issues Survey every week, so i’ll forego doing so again. But the four main queries (outside of the Job Approval questions) were these:
Are you a registered voter at this address?
What Issue do you believe is most urgent?
If you could send one message to your Member?
Is there a single issue that will determine how you vote? What is it?
The voter registration question allowed us to register (or re-register) voters, which will be discussed below. The Urgent Issue data can be seen to the left. Some issues were obvious, but others were not. Nor were they consistent over time. For April, there were really three issues that people talked about (inflation, Ukraine and crime) but as we knocked on more doors, they got more diversified. Reproductive Freedom crept up in there after the Alito draft leak and never really left.
We heard a lot additional comments when we asked voters if they could send one message to their Member of Congress, what would it be? We got a lot of feedback in this question, but specifically about Reproductive Rights and Gun Violence. Whereas Reproductive Freedom didn’t appear that often among the Urgent Issues unless the issue was favored in the media that week. But these two issues became pretty consistent in the Message to Members query.
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.
The most interesting question on the Issues Questionnaire was, If there a single issue that will determine how you vote, what is it? After partisanship, the most frequent response was where candidates stood on Abortion Rights. 24.9% of those who gave a response to this question was on Reproductive Rights.
Questions about politicians were also popular. Voters seem to love sharing their opinions about whether or not the like or approve of their elected officials and candidates. Cheri Beasley’s support among the Democrats and Unaffiliated voters we talked to had a fairly consistent growth pattern over the Spring and Summer. It seemed totally disconnected to President Biden’s job approval numbers; Beasley is certainly well-known in the state.
President Biden averaged 58.69% approval over the Summer and Spring. In the Spring, Biden was significantly higher than average, and he finished slightly above his average. Biden averaged 12.52% Disapproval over this time. Beasley averaged 73.43% over this same time and it was a nice sign that she finished above that. You can compare what we found at the door from Democratic and Unaffiliated voters with 538’s polling average of the electorate to the left. It is certainly gratifying to see that the support we found for Cheri Beasley at the door was reflected in her polling average!
We registered 441 New Voters at the doors this year. We re-registered (or updated their addresses) 1,244 voters at their doors.
Over the six calendar months we canvassed in North Carolina, we collected 1,984 Constituent Service Request forms. These were mostly local problems on primarily public properties that voters believed needed to be addressed. 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 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.
We also collected Q(uestion)-slips, or questions that voters had for candidates and office-holders. In North Carolina, we collected 153 Q-slips which were sent directly to the campaigns of Democratic candidates (overwhelmingly for Beasley). We sent them to campaigns for them to respond to directly with voters.
Volunteers also filled out Observation Forms when they saw or heard something that could be useful in the upcoming campaign. These are things like presence of children, or military family, etc. These are entered into VAN, as well, available to any Democratic candidate who uses VAN in the area.
We also ask voters in the Issues Survey if they have any concerns about the upcoming elections. Voters who tell us they have experience voter intimidation or other problems with voting are asked to fill out Incident Reports. We found 209 voters who wanted to fill out an Incident Reports since April. 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.
But asking — and collecting — Incident Reports has a second purpose at this time. We are reminding voters that we care about Election Protection, that if they witness something, they can say something and it will matter. It also assures them that we are ready to do something if they see something.
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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