(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Weekly Canvass DataDump: What We Found at the Doors in AZ, FL, GA, MI, MT, NC, NV, OH, PA & WI [1]

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

Date: 2023-06-17

These diaries are always the most fun to write; granted, part of that is because i write them concurrently with the state reports that include more “street” observations about canvassing in the state about which i am writing. Alas, they are probably the least read (apparently because they are uploaded on the weekends). Regardless, they allow those interested to get a weekly overview as Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers knock on doors across the vital swing states to the 2025 Senate and 2024 Electoral College.

2024 Electoral College Battleground Map

June 10th was the second week we had volunteers knocking on doors in Michigan and Montana (Montana being a pure Senate play; Michigan being critical in both the Senate and Electoral College elections) — and, in both, we made big steps in volunteer turnout. Which is important since both have shorter canvassing seasons than those in the south. But the nice weather last weekend definitely did not hurt. No hot weather (where we start to see falloff in volunteer turnout), and the ubiquitous presence of Trump on the news and TV certainly encouraged people to take some time out of their precious Saturday.

Since March 4, Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors (as weather and primaries permitted) in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin; our efforts in Virginia (which has critical state legislature races in a closely divided (and split) legislature) has been suspended until our primaries are over (after June 20th). These all are critical states that will determine who is our President and who holds the Senate majority in 2025.

2,964 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday. We are now canvassing in 10 states with our systemic Deep Organizing, conversational approach designed to engage voters at their doors and elicit valuable information that will help Democrats during our Fall 2024 GOTV efforts. We also feel like this approach is a great introduction to canvassing for those who have never knocked on doors before, and especially for those volunteers who are intimidated by the activity.

Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 211,185 doors. We had reached our first milestone of 100,000 doors the week before Memorial Day, something that had been delayed because of rain in different states in May. Now, of course, we are aiming for 250,000 given our very ambitious goal for the number of doors knocked this (off-election) year. Our philosophy — often different than that of campaigns now — is to give volunteers large pieces of turfs in the very walkable areas (as opposed to having them keep coming back for more).

Volunteers had conversations with 16,026 voters this week. Anywhere between 55% to 65% of the voters we actually talk to will agree to answer questions on our Issues Survey. Others will have a question they want to ask, or a public service they want to request. Some of course just take the lit. But i have noticed awhile ago that one reason we get people to talk to us is because of the pre-canvassing training we do, and our focus on some really simple things.

Our number 1 piece of advise (something all our organizers are supposed to start with) when training volunteers 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.” We also warn them that they should expect to talk to no more than 8 voters that afternoon (more than that is exceptional). When people voice that this think this is lower than expected, we ask them if they think phone bankers talk to more than 8 people a session. 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 volunteers walk with an Issues Canvass, where we ask voters what they think and whether they had a message for their elected officials. 9,819 voters answered questions from the survey, in whole or in part. 10,000 voter responses to the Issues Survey is another goal or milestone we anticipate reaching this week.

By far, the highest response numbers always are in the second question, about what issue voters think “is most urgent” at this time (Q2). The “send a message to your Member” (Q5) is also very popular. And we are getting a lot of responses to the “Is there a single issue that will determine how you vote” question (Q7), too — something we added in 2022 because we were finding voters answering differently to the Top Issue question than to what was actually driving their vote. This is incredibly valuable information for those who do persuasion canvassing next year!

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.

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 is doing. After the primaries, we also ask about the Democratic Senate and nominees. Almost every state we canvassed this week saw President Biden markedly improve his numbers.

In Florida, 56% of the voters we talked to who responded had a favorable impression of President Biden. 13% of voters approved of the job Senator Scott was doing. 9% had a favorable impression of Governor DeSantis last week. We are basically knocking on doors of households with Democratic and Independent voters; although we have started to include households that have mixed households, with Republicans in them. This change is an outgrowth of our experience dealing with mixed (Dem/GOP) households in the Georgia runoff and GOTV in Jacksonville.

In Arizona, 53% of the voters we talked to who responded had a favorable impression of President Biden. 7% of voters approved of the job Senator Sinema was doing. We also ask about the likely Democratic nominee for Senate and Ruben Gallego’s job approval was 44% this week. Gallego’s number may have topped out in May. We don’t know (yet) if Sinema will really run, but we assume she will. Arizona is a critical race for both the Presidential and the Senate next year. 44% also had a favorable impression of Governor Hobbs last week.

In Georgia, 55% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing. Georgia doesn’t have a Senate election this cycle, our efforts there is a pure Electoral College play. 37% approved of the job Governor Kemp was doing. Because we are now knocking on doors in the Atlanta metro region, and Kemp’s approval has risen markedly since we are (percentage wise) knocking on fewer African-American doors.

We began knocking on doors in Michigan on the first Saturday in June. It’s a brand new state for us, but Michigan has an important, open Senate race in 2024 and remains a critical Electoral College Swing State. Among the voters we talked to on the 3rd, 51% had a favorable opinion of President Biden. 57% had a positive view of Gov. Whitmer.

We also started canvassing in Montana this month. 43% gave Biden positive marks there. Voters we talked to in Montana gave Senator Jon Tester a favorable job approval of 64%. Voters had a 19% job approval rating to (new) Governor, Greg Gianforte.

In Nevada, 54% of the voters Hope Springs from Field volunteers talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing. 61% had a favorable impression of the job Jacky Rosen was doing. 19% of voters approved of the job Governor Lombardo was doing. There is definitely a difference between the results we see in the Reno area than we find in the Vegas area; seems to be greater approval there left over from his time as the county sheriff.

In North Carolina, 53% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing. 51% of the voters we talked to approved of the job Governor Cooper was doing. North Carolina is also a pure play for the Electoral College. It has no Class I senators, which is kind of unfortunate given what the North Carolina legislature is doing with it’s GOP supermajority. But we are trying to protect Democratic seats in the House, given the North Carolina Supreme Court ruling overturning the 2022 Congressional Map. There’s a lot of fear about what will happen.

In our sixth week of canvassing in Ohio, 53% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden was doing. 58% approved of the job Sherrod Brown was doing. 40% approved of the job that Governor DeWine was doing.

Part of our focus in Ohio, though, is the possibility that Ohio’s Congressional Map may be redone. “New Ohio Statehouse and U.S. Congressional maps are due this year, just like they were last year. But political scientists in the state aren’t holding out hope that major changes are coming.” “In-fighting among Republicans has made any agreement at all uncertain” but we definitely want to protect the small gains we made there last year.

In our fourth week of knocking on doors in Pennsylvania, voters gave Biden a 55% job approval rating. 64% of the voters we talked to approved of the job Bob Casey was doing in the Senate. Governor Shapiro received a 54% approval rating last week.

Last weekend was our fourth week knocking on doors in Wisconsin. 53% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden is doing. 63% of them approved of the job Tammy Baldwin is doing in the Senate. 52% of voters approved of the job Governor Evers is doing.

Top 3 Issues

We ask voters what is the “most urgent issue facing” us today. There is great derivation in responses most week but the Trump Indictment was all over the responses we heard last weekend. Montana did stand out, in that it had two issues we had not seen before: Retirement Worries (‘will I be able to afford to retire,’ etc) and concerns about the economic health of their hospitals and even their schools. Summer Concerns, mentioned in three states, were also interesting. “Can we afford a vacation? (or send our kids to camp?)” “If we fly, can we count on getting back without issue?” That kind of thing.

If support grassroots efforts to register voters, or protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel

89 people filled out new voter registration forms for their states during last weekend’s canvassing. I write forms but most often these are completed on a tablet from their state’s election administrative website. Another 433 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 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 883 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, 26 voters filled out Incident Reports, detailing acts of voter intimidation or voter suppression they witnessed in a prior election.

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/fistfulofsteel

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

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/17/2175953/-Weekly-Canvass-DataDump-What-We-Found-at-the-Doors-in-AZ-FL-GA-MI-MT-NC-NV-OH-PA-WI

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/