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Just the Stats, Ma'am: Weekly Canvass Report from Swing States AZ & GOTV in OH & PA [1]

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

Date: 2023-11-11

Volunteers got to talk to 26,409 voters last weekend. They opened the door and at least took our lit. A very high percentage of them will respond to our query about whether they are registered to vote at this address. Anywhere between 59% to 65% of the voters we actually talk to will agree to answer questions on our Issues Survey.

In total, we knocked on 901,475 for GOTV Week . You might see why i can imagine (but don’t know) we could actually hit that 6 million doors grassroots goal. But this is more doors than we knocked the entire year of regular canvassing in 2021! (That doesn’t include our 2021 special elections.)

Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 353,747 doors last Saturday. The peak in the graphic to the left was during GOTV in Ohio during the Summer. Obviously, this was our high point of volunteers because the election was Tuesday. The dip obviously details the end of efforts in the states of Florida, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Wisconsin & Virginia. Summertime bliss!

When we include our GOTV efforts in Ohio and Allegheny Co, we had 7,968 volunteers for our Saturday & Sunday hybrid canvasses plus our Friday & Monday lit drop of GOTV reminders and our Election Day runners.

4,866 volunteers came out to knock on doors in Arizona, Ohio and Pennsyl-vania on last Saturday. We continue to knock on doors 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 (and, in the case of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, 2023) GOTV efforts.

Since March 4, Hope Springs from Field volunteers have been knocking on doors (as weather permitted) in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia. These all are critical states that will determine who is President and which party controls the Senate in 2025. So, not much at stake.

But we also find their literature, sometimes in the street gutters. We still have a 50-50 (Dem/ unaffiliated) voter universe, depending upon the state, but we walk by a lot of GOP/ conservative homes. This week, our volunteers saw or found evidence of conservative canvassing teams who were knocking on doors (or leaving lit) in Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania . Not a surprise, though.

Every Saturday, canvassing starts after a brief training session. Some of our volunteers call it a “jam session” (not exactly sure why). But we have some practices we like to share with our volunteers to help them feel more productive.

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.”

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. 16,671 voters answered questions from the survey, in whole or in part. This does not include voters in Ohio or Pennsylvania who told us they would be voting, but didn’t answer any of the regular survey questions. Hundreds of voters have done that in the last few weeks.

Nor does it include the voters who are “super volunteers” contacted during the week through other means. This is the number of voters volunteers talked to at their doors. But our super volunteers contacted another 87,353 voters who weren’t home when they had knocked on their doors the prior Saturday. I think that’s friggin’ impressive.

Ohio volunteers took 7 voters to the polls on Tuesday and another 17 to Early Voting locations over the weekend.

Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in swing states 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 canvass Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only do Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

2023 was the warm-up to 2024. Both the Senate and the White House is on the line, and our voter outreach in these swing states both takes the measure of voter attitudes there and provides direct evidence that Democrats Deliver! Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up), GOTV and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

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

Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical to favorable election outcomes. 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. Both volunteers and voters rave about this systemic approach/outreach. We need your help to have the greatest impact in 2024!

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. But a very high percentage of the voters who provide responses to the Issues Survey will tell us what they think about their president, or senator or governor. But especially president. In Ohio, we asked a supplemental question related to Issue 1, the constitutional amendment, on Ohio ballots ensuring Reproductive Freedom in the state.

46% of the voters we talked to in Arizona on Saturday had a favorable impression of President Biden. 6% of voters approved of the job Senator Sinema was doing. Less than 45% of the voters we talk to now have any impression of the senator that they want to share. We also ask about the likely Democratic nominee for Senate and Ruben Gallego’s job approval was 48% that week. Obviously, Arizona is a critical race for both the Presidential and the Senate next year. 50% also had a favorable impression of Governor Hobbs last week.

In Ohio, 56% of the voters we talked to on Saturday approved of the job President Biden was doing. 7% expressed disapproval. Remember that our targets are increasingly Democrats now, trying to drive the Early Vote. 66% approved of the job Sherrod Brown was doing; 6% disapproved. 23% approved of the job that Governor DeWine was doing and 39% disapproved. We have narrowed our walk universe and included more Democrats for the November election.

Issue 1 wasn’t the only item on the Ohio ballot this November. Some of our volunteers also distributed lit for Issue 2, which also won. We are in the 5 major metro suburban areas and we have vols in all 5 areas passing out lit for Issue 2, as well.

In Pennsylvania, the voters we spoke with gave Biden a 54% job approval rating; 6% disapproved. What interests me the most about this number was that this was more Pittsburgh area voters than Philadelphia voters. Usually, when we had knocked more doors in the Pittsburgh suburbs than the Philly suburbs, Biden took a big hit. So. 66% of the voters we talked to approved of the job Bob Casey was doing in the Senate and only 5% disapproved. Governor Shapiro received a 54% approval rating last week. 6% disapproved. This is largely as a result of the decision to reach out to more unaffiliated voters for GOTV.

If you support our grassroots efforts to register voters at their doors, strengthen voter support for Democrats, turn out voters and protect their vote, please help:

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

Each week, we ask voters what is the “most urgent issue facing” us today. Voters raise the conflict in Israel less often now. Still lots of worry about the Economy. Healthcare Costs have replaced Labor Issues as the Auto Workers Strike looks to be resolved. Abortion is also very prominent right now in states that are voting right now. Schools remain on voter’s minds.

Hope Springs volunteers have registered 9,653 voters at their doors this year. 13 people filled out new voter registration forms for their states last weekend. I write forms but most often these are completed on a tablet from their state’s election administrative website. Another 228 voters updated their address, as required by HAVA. We differentiate between the two, though, 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 1,130 Constituent Service Request Forms last week (not quite as many as the prior weekend). 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, 4 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).

We really do need financial support to continue these efforts. 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/hopemobilization

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address, as well. Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/11/2205109/-Just-the-Stats-Ma-am-Weekly-Canvass-Report-from-Swing-States-AZ-GOTV-in-OH-PA?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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