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'Don't Talk to Me about Trump' and other things Voters are Telling Us in Pennsylvania & Ohio [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-15
No state was immune (well, we didn’t talk to enough voters in Montana to say this 100%), but Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers just couldn’t get away from conversations about Donald Trump. More than one voter observed that ‘Trump must be loving this,’ being the center of attention or at least the political conversation.
Here’s the thing (and i suspect lots of people will not like it): lots of voters we talked to on Saturday didn’t want to talk or even thing about the indictment of Donald Trump. Hope Springs volunteers talked to almost ten thousand voters (9,819) last weekend and most of our canvassers ran into voters who were on the “No Trump” train — meaning they had no interest in starting their Saturday morning talking about TFG. “It just makes me so mad!” one voter said. “I’ve moved on,” another voter told a volunteer. And we all want to.
2024 Senate Battleground Map
Voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio understand the stakes in this election. In Ohio, especially, they understand just how critical the results of their votes next November will be. In Pennsylvania, a lot of voters we have talked to think they know who the nominees will be, in other words, they have said they think the GOP primary is pre-determined. The non-Democrats we have engaged indicate they are waiting to see what David McCormick proposes and runs on. What is most interesting to me is that the Pennsylvanians we’ve talked to this year don’t believe that the incumbent (Bob Casey) has an inherent advantage because he is the sitting Senator. And it’s not because they think McCormick is a strong candidate (he lost the primary in 2022), or even that he is rich enough to fund his own race. Pennsylvania has a history of tossing out incumbent senators running for re-election, or at least a memory of doing so.
So maybe a quack presidential candidate (& former occupant of the Oval Office) just doesn’t measure up to the voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio. They’ve got more important things to think about. Or maybe our volunteers just ran into more Exhaustion than Exhilaration there. It’s hard to speculate how long Trump will continue to be the center of the conversation, but one conclusion i drew from the data and feedback from Pennsylvania and Ohio was that voters in those two states were having none of it. And yet, Trump still made the Top Issues list! A lot of the feedback i see, of course, is driven by the observations of the volunteers, which means it is determined by the attitudes of the volunteers, as well.
One last observation before i dive right into the numbers: in Ohio, we had more people mention the Canadian fires/smoke even though that had really passed than wanted to talk about Donald Trump.
But voters in both states did want to talk about their senate elections. Whether Democrats maintain 50 votes and controlled by who leads the Senate as Vice President will be determined in 2024 by them. Maintaining a Democratic majority in the Pennsylvania state House and increasing Democratic presence in the state senate, as well as protecting Democratic seats in Congress is also a driving force. And our volunteers are not shy to admit why they are knocking on doors. They buy into this system.
361 volunteers came out to knock on doors in 12 canvasses around Pennsylvania last Saturday. The grey Congressional Districts represent most of where we are targeting, but we also walking on the Mainline and in minority neighborhoods in Philadelphia as well. Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 26,208 doors last Saturday and talked to 2,112 voters. 1328 of those voters answered questions to at least part of the Issues Survey.
Worries over Economic Uncertainty was the most frequent response to our question about voter’s top concern on Saturday in Pennsylvania. Reproductive Freedom and control over our Bodies was the second most frequent response this week. Issues concerning Defending Democracy was third, including the potential for violence after Trump’s appearance before the judge. But it also sounded like someone from Pennsylvania was just sentenced in the January 6 trials.
Biden Approval among the Pennsylvanians we talked to was at 55% last Saturday and 8% expressed some measure of Disapproval. 64% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Casey was doing while 6% expressed Disapproval. 54% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. Shapiro was doing a good job, 6% said they Disapproved. Remember that each week, we are hitting doors in different neighborhoods, which can account for sharp deviations in results.
188 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. We send completed CSRs 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.
Volunteers registered 25(!) new voters in Pennsylvania (most of whom had turned 18 in the past year) and re-registered 43 voters in compliance with Federal (HAVA) law. 2 voters filled out an Incident Report (in Philadelphia) about issues they witnessed in a prior election.
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.
402 volunteers showed up to knock on doors in Ohio on Saturday. They knocked on 28,682 doors on Saturday and talked to 2,139 voters. 1343 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey.
The perception of a Credit Crunch or the availability of Credit was the Top Concern. This manifests itself when a voter comments about not being able to buy or sell their home, or the cost of College Loans. Strangely, we haven’t talked to any recently graduated college student about this, this seems to be a concern of parents and voters who graduated awhile ago — or want to go back to college. Concern over New Laws was the secondly most mentioned concern. New laws or bills in the legislature about restricting Reproductive Rights was the largest component of this, but by no means the only thing mentioned. Political Stability was the third most frequently mentioned concern, and sometimes in those very words.
Joe Biden’s Approval numbers among the Ohioans we talked to fell to 55% last Saturday; his Disapproval number rose to 13%. Senator Brown’s Job Approval was 58% with 9% of the voters we talked to on Saturday expressing Disapproval. Approval of Governor DeWine, meanwhile, was 40%; Disapproval was 11% last Saturday. We have had a lot of comments about DeWine’s numbers, and his numbers definitely went down as we expanded our canvasses. But he does get quite a bit of support from voters who identify as independent or unaffiliated.
Hope Springs from Field volunteers registered 18 new voters. 51 more voters updated their voter registration to comply with federal law. We differentiate between new voters registered and existing voters re-registering because we plan to continue our New Voter Postcard effort, and even add Voter Video Chains this cycle.
115 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. We send completed CSRs to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if there are no Democrats who can further the request, and 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 knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters. At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand. The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.
But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary. Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.
Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022). There is a lot of work to be done! Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.
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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