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Spring Wrap-up: What Hope Springs Grassroots Vols Did in AZ, FL, GA, NC, NV, OH, PA, WI & VA [1]

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Date: 2023-06-05

Want to hear a DKos success story? Three years ago Hope Springs from Field PAC didn’t exist. In November, 2020 former Obama staff who had also staffed the Biden campaign (and were then involved in the transition) were decidedly unhappy about the results in Congress and the lack of coattails. The Georgia Runoffs were in the offing and Democrats in Georgia were discouraging people from outside the state coming to Georgia to help. And, yet, the prospect of gaining a majority in the Senate (however slight the majority would be, as well as the prospects) was just too tantalizing. Not just for the (incoming) administration, but for the grassroots as well.

What can we do to help?

2024 Senate Battleground Map

This was the theme of the conversation i had with several former Obama alums, including those going into the Administration in November of 2020. In that first meeting, a spreadsheet of field staff from Florida, North Carolina, Alabama and Texas Biden and senate campaigns was laid out — and Hope Springs from Field PAC was born. I moved to Georgia, had intensive conversations with the coordinated campaign across the street from Rev. Warnock’s church and we identified some holes where people could step in. Once i was in Georgia, i never got the kind of push back that people said they had received from outside the state. If i could get them there, they’d be scarfed up. So, from day one, our job was to get people here and then get them placed where the campaigns most needed help. Volunteers flocked to these new organizers; they felt like rock stars.

I took on this role assuming it would end on January 5th. The technical term is a “pop-up” PAC, a one-off entity for a specific purpose. For 3 calendar months, it was a role i was willing to assume. But then we won. Both seats. And our terrific volunteers in Georgia, our donors and the Obama Alum network all wondered: What can we do next?

All of this has been documented on DailyKos. Commentors, donors and volunteers all declared an interest in continuing the kind of Deep Organizing we did in Georgia and it seemed to take on a life of it’s own. “This is what I’ve been talking about,” Kossaks kept saying.

From the beginning, I wrote about our results, good or bad (to me, they are just facts, and even the dips lead to the ultimate results). “This is how we win,” people keep saying. Because there isn’t any other group out there doing this particular type of Early/Relational Organizer, every voter we talked to is someone who wouldn’t (but should) have had this type of early voter contact — early and often.

We went into 2023 (as we did in 2021 and 2022) with the mission of 1.) field organizing for Special Elections; 2.) Early/Deep Organizing in Senate Swing States, and 3.) GOTV for the same. We have expanded into Electoral College Swing States for the Presidential Election. This diary documents the results of our second item during our Spring Canvassing, Deep Organizing canvasses in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin during the Spring and Summer. Our attempt to expand into Michigan got delayed because of weather, a problem which resolved itself last weekend!

Volunteers who canvassed ea week

We completed 7,552 volunteer shifts from March 4th through May 27th in what grew to be 8 Senate Swing States in May, as well as Virginia for their swing state legislature races (where abortion is on the ballot). We knocked on half a million doors (531,897), which we consider a pretty good start to Summer! Even before we started our (the Obama campaign called them “Super”) volunteers made it a mission to double the volunteer-driven 3 Million Doors knocked from last year.

We didn’t make that (3M). Last year, Hope Springs from Field volunteers only knocked on 2,984,214 doors. It was an ambitious goal, and, yes, we were only 16,000 doors short. But that disappointment has made some of our Super Volunteers even more determined. And the most important point to remember here is that this year’s 6 million doors knocked goal is entirely volunteer driven. They set it for themselves, “Hope Springs for Democracy.” Or Reproductive Rights. Or Racial Justice. Volunteers have all kinds of reasons for coming out on their Saturday and we honor them all.

Doors Knocked Ea Wk

Hope Springs from Field volunteers had conversations with 47,623 voters this Spring. This was an open rate of 8.9%. But we felt every where we went, voters wanted to talk to us, were even eager to talk to us. Some voters even called their neighbors. And this made our volunteers happy.

We are running into Republican and conservative canvassers (and canvassing teams), especially in Virginia and Arizona. I expected to see that in Nevada and Pennsylvania, as well, and we have had volunteers in the Atlanta area tell us they expect it there. For the most part, we have seen them on the streets, and we haven’t had any volunteer reports that they have seen literature left behind at our target doors by the other side. For the most part, we aren’t knocking on the doors of GOP voters, but we will knock on doors of “mixed” households (where, for example, the wife was a Democrat and the husband was Republican). Some of our volunteers tell us they aren’t comfortable knocking on doors where there is Trump-related signage, and you really can’t blame them.

Opens = Voters Contacted Ea Wk

We walked with an Issues Survey, where we ask voters what they think and whether they had a message for their elected officials. This Spring and Summer, 25,443 voters answered questions from the survey, in whole or in part. Because we make showing the survey to the voter as we are saying hello, we get a pretty good response and using the questions as jumping off points, voters really self-direct through the process.

We did not correlate responses to the “what single issue will you vote on” responses, but they are all entered into VAN (the Democratic database — which happens to be our biggest expense every month). And it is (probably) the most valuable piece of information for Democratic candidates who access VAN in the Fall from all the work we have done.

Top 3 Issues Each Week

Every week we asked voters what they thought the most urgent Issue facing us was. For the first 4 weeks, we were only canvassing in Florida and Arizona (although the first week of canvassing in Arizona had to be delayed because they didn’t meet our temperature threshold!). But our responses started to show real issue diversity as we added more states, and on May 20th we canvassed in 9 states before the Memorial Day weekend. (Volunteers got to decide if they wanted to canvass over the holiday and not every state did so.)

You can see that Inflation and Economic Concerns were the biggest Issue week in and week out, but we didn’t go into a recession (and, hopefully, we won’t!), even though voters really started to worry that Republicans in the House would drive us into one the last two weeks of May.

What stands out to me, but perhaps because that is where i grew up, are the repeated mentions of Disney governance and how DeSantis’ pressure on Disney makes them worry about the Central Florida economy. But all the oldies but goodies cropped up in the Issues Survey. Realize that not all voters we talk to respond to the question, although it is one of the most popular question.

Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since March in a grassroots effort to prepare the 2024 Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are canvassing Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

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/fistfulofsteel

Hope Springs from Field PAC understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do.

But you can really see that voter attention wasn’t nearly as uniform as Republicans in the House desired. For Republicans to be successful next year, their wedge issues (for example, Hunter Biden’s laptop) need to reverberate among (especially) the “Independent” or unaffiliated voters (which make up at least half of the voters we target each week, and, in Arizona, for example, significantly more). You see some of that in Arizona, where Border Issues comes up, but (for example) in a state like Florida, where the governor keeps trying to make it a big issue, it doesn’t break through.

Biden Job Approval by State

We also ask voters how they felt about the president, their governors and their senators. The one thing that was obvious, though, as we go into Summer was that voter opinions about the president and the other politicians were not closely connected.

Presidential Approval does seem to have more variation than we observed last year. You can definitely see how, when we expanded into the Atlanta metro region, that Georgia is no longer an outlier (it consistently had higher Biden approval ratings when we were knocking exclusively on doors of mostly African-Americans in southern Georgia). Last weekend, Georgia had the highest Job Approval ratings for Biden (55%), but only 6 points higher than the lowest (Arizona, at 49%).

Voter Registrations

We found 270 people at the door who wanted to complete new voter registration forms this Spring. Another 1,538 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. Voters registered at the door at only a part of our effort. We have also been involved in helping partnering (Black) churches in registering their members. Those are not included here.

We collected 2,589 Constituent Service Request forms in these 9 states this year. Last year (in fewer states), we had 12,521 CSRs. 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 (so far) we collected 58 from people who say they are concerned about the upcoming general election and have witnessed something. Last year, 869 voters filled them out. These reports are the basis for Phase 2 of our GOTV efforts that began after Labor Day.

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.

We are also asking voters in Georgia and North Carolina whether they have the required photo ID they will have to present to vote. We don’t just ask voters this at their door, we are also working with Black Churches in these states to help spread the message and to organize Voter ID days in their local Registrar’s/BOE office. These stats (below) reflect the numbers Hope Springs volunteers have found at the doors.

In Georgia, Hope Springs from Field conducted 56 Voter ID days from June 12th, 2021 to October 2022 and helped 18,478 voters get the photo ID cards they needed to vote. We have scheduled 4 Voter ID days in June in the Atlanta metro area and 2 June days in southern Georgia. So far, canvass volunteers have found 261 voters who told us they need a photo ID to comply with current law. This does not include any voters from the Black Churches we have partnered with in this regard.

In North Carolina, where the law was recently altered by the state courts, we have found 318 voters at the doors who told us they needed the necessary photo IDs. No Voter ID days have been scheduled yet because we have yet to verify that the county Board of Elections have the supplies needed to provide them yet in the counties where most of these voters live.

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.

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/fistfulofsteel

Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/5/2173380/-Spring-Canvass-Wrap-up

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