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Voters Keep Telling Us They Want "Normal:" Weekly Canvass Report for Georgia & Florida [1]

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

Date: 2023-07-19

563 volunteers came out to knock on doors in Georgia last week. We continue to knock on doors of voters in the Black Belt in Georgia and the suburbs of Atlanta, and we now have more volunteers in the Atlanta area than we have out knocking on doors in southern Georgia. They knocked on 40,310 doors. You might want to read that again. Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 40,310 doors and talked to 2,761 voters. I bet you already know that exceeding 2500 doors open was a milestone we were shooting for. In a large part, i have to admit, because our volunteers (especially in Georgia) have become competitive. 1743 voters answered at least some of our questions on the survey this week.

It might shock you to learn that we sent out volunteers into two precincts represented by the infamous MTG. And most of the voters we talked to were incredibly pleasant. “You’re in a Kemp-Warnock precinct,” we explained to those who asked.

The Top Issue volunteers found in Georgia on Saturday was the resumption of payments on Student Loans. And, like the last time this came up, it was more from parents of students who had taken out school loans than the students themselves (we don’t really talk to that many under 30-yr olds.

The second most frequently cited concern in Georgia this weekend was Grocery Prices. Think of this as the “Costs at the Grocer are just too damn high!” complaint. So voters will say, ‘sure, the price of eggs has fallen, but my bill is still a hundred dollars! Where did all the money go?’ July 4th had a little hangover effect as well, as voters celebrated but then realized how much they had spent. “And I didn’t spend it all on fireworks!” Yeah, that one stood out.

The third most frequently Issue this week were Concerns over Extremism. A lot of this has to do with Trump and the talk about a Georgia indictment coming soon. We do hear voters wondering if Trump will unleash his “hoards” if that occurs. “I know Proud Boys,” one voter said. He didn’t say that proudly. Mostly out of fear.

Biden’s Approval numbers among the voters we talked to was at 54% last Saturday, with a Disapproval number of 6%. In comparison, Approval of Governor Kemp was 31% and Disapproval was 32% last Saturday. Kemp has the greatest variation in his approval numbers that i’ve seen since we started canvassing in the state. There is no senate race in Georgia this cycle (and a number of Georgia voters have told us “Thank God” there isn’t because they are exhausted!) and while we ask if voters approve of the job their senators are doing, we are not tracking that.

Volunteers registered 21 new voters and re-registered 126 voters. 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. But we are finding lots of teens who just turned legal age whose parents (primarily mothers) are insisting they register.

208 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. 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.

11 voters completed an Incident Report. Five other voters expressed concerns about the 2024 elections but did not fill out incident reports because they didn’t say they witnessed voter suppression or intimidation (they just expressed concerns or worries about them). Incident Reports are used to plan Election Protection activities, and will be combined and handed over to District and State Attorneys, Attorney Generals and the DoJ Civil Rights Division right before Election Day.

We continue to find voters who say they need a photo voter id (which is surprising since that was required to vote in the 2022 elections) — even in the Atlanta suburbs — and are already working Voter ID Days with Registrars offices and our partner Black Churches in both southern Georgia and the metro Atlanta area. We consider it a core mission to help voters in need obtain the required document to vote in November 2024. So far we have found 261 voters who need help get obtaining one before the next election. This effort arises out of the group texts among Albany State organizers who had worked with me in the first Georgia Runoff (and who have now moved on from college to young, working adults who have not given up on helping those in need “where they came from”).

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 and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

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

Hope Springs from Field 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 for what we are doing.

356 volunteers canvassed came out to knock on doors in 7 Florida counties on Saturday. In several locations, volunteers showed up after it had sprinkled and returned before it rained. Again. It was notable that volunteers said they came out because they had missed the last couple of weekends. Most of us would call that the July 4 holidays, but thanks! They knocked on 26,130 doors and talked to 1,836 voters. 1,133 of those voters answered questions on at least part of the Issues Survey.

We are still wondering what will happen with the Florida redistricting court case. Some people are more hopeful since the Supreme Court upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Not everyone is convinced that’s a magic bullet here, but — at this point — we just don’t know if this is the Congressional map we will be running on in next Fall.

The Top 3 concerns of the voters we talked to last Saturday were, first, The Economy. Voters continue to express concern about recession fears and whether state government was slowing down the economy. Tourism has been a lot slower this Summer, due to both Ron DeSantis’ attacks on major tourist properties (in Polk County, a couple voters talked about minor league baseball!). Worries over Social Security was the second “urgent” concern, and we had voters who realized that their Social Security increase would not be as large as last year (due to the inflation or COLA bump). Voters are talking about the poor presidential campaign start of the governor, and some expressed worry that it will have negative effects on Floridians if DeSantis has to return with his tail between his legs. “You think Trump is vengeful?” one voter advised, which makes the potential for a DeSantis Backlash enter as third on Floridians’ list of their Top Issues. This is not just a Central Florida concern any more.

Biden Approval among the Floridians we talked to was 55% last Saturday; 8% expressed some measure of Disapproval. 17% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Rick Scott was doing while 34% expressed Disapproval. We continue to be asked (by Democrats, apparently) if Scott was going to run for president, something that people have talked about since he was in the governor’s mansion.

Speaking of the governor, 10% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. DeSantis was doing a good job, 41% said they disapproved of the job he was doing.

Front of Lit

42 Florida 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.

Our very first question on the Issues Surveys is whether the person we are talking to is registered to vote at their current home address. We also ask if there is anyone living there who needs to be registered as well. In Florida, given the current laws, we offer up a tablet with the Secretary of State website up so that voters can register or update their information themselves. Part of this is making sure that voters are registered in compliance to the new, confusing and frustrating Election law that is particularly onerous for people who change residences more frequently than normal. But registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is also critical to our approach. Arizona has a much more friendly voter registration system, including the ability to opt in to permanent early voting. Of course, canvassing is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.

Back of Lit

In Florida, though, the new law requires voters to provide, in addition to their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number OR their driver license OR state ID card number to make an address change. Which is par for the course this year, but here’s the part that is likely to stump people who move around. You have to remember which one you provided, because you have to provide the same one every single time you interact with your local Supervisor of Elections, or your request won’t be granted. Supervisors of Elections won’t have access to other databases, so they can only "verify” a request by the information the voter has provided. But this is something we have learned to track so that if the voter registration was not successful, we can go back.

5 new voters and 29 voters updated their voter registration addresses in Florida on Saturday. We use the Secretary of State website to register voters in Florida, in order to meet Florida’s difficult restrictions there.

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. We also ask voters if they have an problems that local, state or federal governments need to address in their neighborhoods.

But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. We find that most voters who aren’t in a hurry or in the middle of something are willing to answer at least a couple of these questions, especially their top issue or concern and their views of President Biden. 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. That includes making sure that out-of-state workers at Disney know to, and how to, obtain a State ID card if they don’t want to give up their out-of-state DL but still want to vote in Florida. 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 upon you!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/19/2182156/-Voters-Keep-Telling-Us-They-Want-Normal-Weekly-Canvass-Report-for-Georgia-amp-Florida

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