(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Excitement Building in Ohio for the WIN on Tues; GOTV in OH and Weekly Canvass Report 4 Pennsylvania [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-08-03
We train these “super volunteers” to work their observations into that request. “I noticed you had kid’s toys in your yard,” that kind of thing. Proof they had actually knocked on their door. Even when you leave literature, voters don’t always see it (sometimes because they use a different door to enter their home). But their observations help establish a rapport with the voter.
Saturday was our fourth week of knocking on doors in Ohio with our hybrid GOTV/Issues Canvass with the supplemental Issue 1 vote ID. At the request of both our volunteers and outside groups (!), we are asking the Ohio voters we talk to about their opposition to Issue 1, which was designed by Republicans in the Ohio legislature to increase the amount of voter support needed to add something to the Ohio state constitution. Supporters of Reproductive Healthcare in the state are right to believe that this special election (on Issue 1) is designed to circumvent efforts to add a constitutional right to an abortion in Ohio. This week, we found out that sufficient signatures had been obtained to vote to amend their state Constitution to establish a right to abortion in November.
984 volunteers showed up to knock on doors in Ohio on Saturday. We are knocking on doors in three Congressional Districts (OH-01 represented by Democrat Greg Landsman (the grey CD on the lower left), OH-09, Marcy Kaptur (the pink CD on the top left) and OH-13, Emilia Sykes (the grey CD on the top right)) as well as the Columbus and Dayton areas. But the presence of Issue 1 has dramatically increased our efforts as we have added a GOTV component as well as a supplemental question to our Issues Survey.
Supplemental Ohio Issues Survey w/ GOTV component
We knocked on 76,063 doors on Saturday and talked to 5,765 voters. 3,620 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey — a thousand more voters than last week!
We are also asking voters two supplemental questions concerning the August 8th special election (where Issue 1 is on the ballot). So far, Hope Springs from Field volunteers have found 21,383 voters who plan to vote against Issue 1 at their doors. This does not include people who have already voted, nor does it include people who we have been told plan to do so. This also caused a little bit of a ruffle among our volunteers. We record those names down on our Observation Forms, for follow-up. The main reason why we want to follow up with them is that we want to ask them if they have decided on their vote plan, when and how they will cast their ballot. It seems simple, but it allows the voter to speak for themselves. We don’t really want to rely on second-hand information, even though it is usually spot on.
As i mentioned above 488,339 Ohioans have already voted early for the August 8th special election. Compare that to last year’s August primaries when “the sum total of early in-person votes cast in last year’s May primary election — which included a hotly contested GOP U.S. Senate primary — was only about 138,000.” It is unprecedented in Ohio to put a constitutional amendment before voters in a special election. But Democrats have had an unprecedented response to attempts by Republicans to end the Ohioan’s right to One Person, One Vote.
“Many of the proposal’s backers — though not all — were animated by an attempt to thwart a potential abortion rights amendment in November.”
Reproductive Healthcare, not surprisingly (since are target population is much more narrow than normal), was the Top Concern we found in Ohio this week. Defending Democracy was the secondly most cited concern, with lots of concern about what Republicans will do next when they lose this election on changing the Ohio Constitution. And this was before the news about Trump’s Third Indictment. Jobs was the third most frequently mentioned concern. “Good Jobs, jobs you can raise a family on!” I am betting they mean with only one income.
Joe Biden’s Approval numbers among the Ohioans we talked to was 59% last Saturday; his Disapproval number was 3%. Remember, narrowly targeted walk universe. Senator Brown’s Job Approval was 76% with only 2% of the voters we talked to on Saturday expressing Disapproval. Approval of Governor DeWine, meanwhile, was 13%; Disapproval was 53% last Saturday. These spikes (or dips) are a direct result of people’s attitudes towards Issue 1 and the August special election. Issue 1 has been really clarifying for the voters we talk to and so their attitudes towards the Democrats we asked them about served to represent their opposition to changing the state constitution to benefit conservative positions.
Hope Springs from Field volunteers registered 35 new voters. We also helped 126 more voters update 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 for newly registered voters, and even add Voter Video Chains this cycle.
437 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. We have even had candidates walk with Hope Springs volunteers because they had received one of these requests and wanted to understand how we collect them.
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/hope4ohio
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 of what we do.
463 volunteers came out to knock on doors in Pennsylvania last Saturday. The grey Congressional Districts (PA-01, PA-07 & PA-17) 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 33,660 doors last Saturday and talked to 1,951 voters. More volunteers, more doors but fewer voters; sometimes that happens. 1,184 of those voters answered questions to at least part of the Issues Survey.
Economic Uncertainty was the most frequent response to our question about voter’s top concern on Saturday in Pennsylvania. School Safety was the second most frequent response this week, and voters did talk about looking for “bullet proof” backpacks! Infrastructure monies was third.
Biden Approval among the Pennsylvanians we talked to was 53% last Saturday while 7% expressed some measure of Disapproval. 65% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Casey was doing while 5% expressed Disapproval. 55% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. Shapiro was doing a good job, 8% said they Disapproved. Remember that each week, we are hitting doors in different neighborhoods, which can account for sharp deviations in results (although looking at the graphic, there doesn’t seem to be much variation here!). There is no effort to make these responses statistically significant. This is just raw data. It is not a poll.
Volunteers registered 7 new voters in Pennsylvania and re-registered 36 voters in compliance with Federal (HAVA) law. 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.
58 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.
1 voter filled out an Incident Report about issues they witnessed in a prior election. We have been building a database of Incident Reports, and reports we collected in Pennsylvania previously have been used to request an extension of time before a precinct closed.
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.
Ohio Issue 1 opponent
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 seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.
We are definitely asking for help. If you are able to donate to our efforts to fight against Issue 1, identify abortion rights supporters, protect our voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, please help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hope4ohio
You can follow that link for our mailing address, as well. Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/3/2184963/-Excitement-Building-in-Ohio-for-the-WIN-on-Tues-GOTV-in-OH-and-Weekly-Canvass-Report-4-Pennsylvania
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/
