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Survey Says, "Thank You for Polling Me!" [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-06-12

“No one has ever polled me before!” Grassroots volunteers have gotten the most surprising Thank Yous since we started knocking on doors 3 years ago. “I feel so SPECIAL!” “What made you ask me?” “You want to talk to me??? ME?”

We really don’t explain that what Hope Springs from Field is doing is NOT POLLING. There’s no attempt to be equal or fair, to collect the opinions of Republicans or MAGA voters. This is raw data, designed to help Democrats win. We target swingy areas (for example, those almost 90 precincts in Georgia that voted for Kemp and Warnock last November), and within those areas, Democratic and Independent households. Sure, we can end up talking to a Republican (481 have told us they were Republicans (or once were) when we asked them how they identified themselves politically) but we are not intentionally doing so. So there is nothing statistically significant about what we are doing. But it is politically significant. Very.

Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors and talking to voters every Saturday over the last 3 years as weather permits. Over that time, we have knocked on 3,887,131 doors and had in depth conversations with 172,765 voters in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin and Virginia. This is our first year in Michigan and Montana, we have only canvassed one year in Texas and Virginia (this year, for critical state legislative races). We haven’t tracked our progress in the special elections we have participated in, nor in our efforts to cure ballots (where that is allowed).

Volunteers are not asked to record the excitement of voters who respond in this fashion. There is no place in VAN to do so, and most of our volunteers who do this use our Observation Forms. But some (those who walk with paper walk lists) will write it out on their walk list or odd scratches of paper. Many will tell their organizers. At least one person told me when i called her later in the week (i call 10 volunteers a week). But what prompted this diary is the volunteer i spoke with last week who was canvassing in Montana. She told me that a voter told her, “We never get asked. I mean, never. No one cares what we think. But you do. I can’t believe it.”

Every week, we “train” volunteers about our systematic approach to knocking on doors, explaining what we are trying to do, why we are doing this and what we (and other Democratic candidates) will do with the data they are collecting. This can take anywhere from 5 minutes (when everyone who shows has knocked on doors with us before) to ~40 minutes (in a new state like Montana). And something all our organizers are supposed to start with is this: Smile! Leave a positive impression, most of all by not talking too much. We are there to listen, determine what is driving the voter to take their time out to go to the polls in an election.

We all do it differently, of course, but 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.” And i would bet that almost every voter we have talked to who think they were “polled” were thinking something more positive about Democrats. The difference between knocking on doors and phone (or text) banking is that we aim to leave a positive impression no matter what.

Hope Springs from Field isn’t doing persuasion. We leave that for the campaigns, who know what they want their message in the field to be. So we are all about listening to the voter, no matter what they are saying, with the intent of recording their political feelings and identity for use during GOTV — not necessarily by us (but we have when the campaign didn’t target for GOTV the voters we have talked to), but (hopefully) by the campaign or the coordinated committee. This is one of the reasons why we want the campaigns to hire the organizers who have (so far) volunteered for Hope Springs. They know the data, they understand the data and they have ideas about how to use it effectively.

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.

Given our (temporary) entrance into Montana, we’ve been think a lot about how to reach voters outside our normal suburban (and, sometimes, urban) environs. We have to expand our reach in a state like that to be successful, recognizing that it wouldn’t hurt in the rest of our swing states, either. But in more rural states (and more rural areas in other swing states), door to door is much, much harder to do. There can be miles between doors and there aren’t exactly neighborhoods to walk.

We already knew that we needed a website. We have a domain name, but it has been difficult for us volunteers to create one as we focus on our core mission: canvassing. We have had people volunteer to help create one, but that hasn’t gotten very far. But now we need to focus on finishing that project because we want to use it beyond simply being a billboard and fund-raising. Now we need a website for data collection and outreach. Things that will add to our abilities to amplify the Democratic message and fulfill our purpose.

Generic CSR form

Not only can we duplicate the Issues Survey form online, but we can also duplicate the Constituent Service Request form and the Incident Report form online. This requires expertise that no one who is canvassing with us has told us they possess. Not necessarily creating or posting the form, but pushing it to VAN so that it is available to all Democrats who use VAN.

This is doubly important (or maybe triply?, given the requests from DKos commenters who have pointed out this weakness in our approach from the beginning) as we now have local party leaders who want to use this approach to expand Democratic voter contact efforts in their area.

We are going to need a bigger boat!

As we enter the presidential campaign season, we are also hoping to expand beyond our robocalls using “local celebrities” to turn out new voters we registered canvassing (or our partners registered using our access to VAN) and volunteers sent multiple postcards to last year. We have the technology and we need to use it during the rest of the year (non-GOTV season). Interactive Voice Response allows us to passively collect data that we can use for GOTV just as we do in campaigns that use their phone banks to follow up voters we did not talk to after canvassing their neighborhood.

Finally, beginning next year, we would like to incorporate the Video Chains concept into a separate Persuasion / GOTV effort. Remember (above) when i said we weren’t doing persuasion? Well, we still won’t be. In the Fall of 2024, when we have stopped canvassing (and encourage volunteers who knock on doors for us to move over the the campaigns or coordinated campaigns), we will be working on these personal viral videos for interested, probably mostly young, Biden and Democratic Senate nominee supporters to send out to their friends. They will voice their support, along with that of local celebrities et al in a manner where their friends can add their own voice of support.

What Are We Doing with this Data?

When we are training volunteers, it is not uncommon for this question to arise. I would ask it. But it is important to explain to every volunteer who canvasses because it is not rare that a voter will ask it. Hope Springs is entering the survey data into VAN, which serves as the Democratic database. The data then will be open to any Democrat who uses VAN in the general election. We are using the data to drive our own GOTV efforts, especially that aimed at the new voters we registered at the door or through their churches. And we encourage presidential and senate campaigns to use it to drive their GOTV, too. This is one reason why we encourage those campaigns to hire our volunteer field organizers, because they have experience with this data and can expose those campaigns to the value therein.

Incident Report form

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.

But there’s more! As part of our systematic efforts to register voters, clean up the voter rolls and capture essential data that can be used for Democratic GOTV activity, we ask voters (as a part of our Issues Survey) whether they have concerns about the upcoming elections or know of incidents in prior elections designed to deter our supporters from casting their votes and having their votes count. We do this two different way: collecting Incident Reports and organizing Voter Photo ID days at their local elections administrative office. Super compliance works both ways.

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 upon you!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/12/2174846/-Survey-Says-Thank-You-for-Polling-Me

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