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Canvassing Arizona: Beat the Heat! [1]

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Date: 2025-04-24

The Saturday before Easter is the one where many volunteers are reluctant to come out to canvass. For some, it’s the end of Spring Break and others are preparing for family obligations. Having done this for years (or decades), Hope Springs from Field PAC’s [dated website] organizers understand the volunteer cycle, and we plan accordingly. Volunteers in Florida, Nevada and Ohio choose to take the weekend off so we didn’t even have the number of volunteers canvassing we typically have.

Not surprisingly, volunteers in Arizona chose to come out. Some of them are worried about heat warnings in the Summer, prime canvassing time elsewhere. Everybody who brings that up talks about climate change and how it didn’t used to be so bad. To be fair, i’ve talked to more than a few people who remember 3 digit days decades ago and have even talked to someone who remembers car windows being blown out because of that. That’s something you don’t forget.

We also lose a couple of volunteers this time of year. They winter in Arizona but return home after Easter. Older volunteers, again something that you tend to remember. I don’t really ask people why they volunteer (although it can come up in conversations organically) but people do talk about the urgency of the moment. “Whatever I can do” is something i’ve heard more than a few times.

Some of these volunteers i’ve known since the Dean days when we were activated by opposition to the Gulf War. There was a sense of urgency then, too, 20 odd years ago. It doesn’t seem to have gotten better.

We are knocking on doors in Arizona because there are 3 congressional districts where we think we can beat a MAGA Republican incumbent to take back the House. That is our first and primary goal this year, returning Congress to sanity and Democrats to the majority there. While some political observers are focused on the number of open seats that will be contested in 2026, others (in this case, specifically, Alan Abramowitz) are focused on the conditions or political environment that candidates will face next year. He argues that “Just a couple of basic factors—House generic ballot polling and the number of seats the presidential party is defending—do a decent job of predicting midterm congressional election results” and that “Democrats would be favored to win the House majority even without a substantial lead in House generic ballot polling.” Abramowitz concludes that (at this point): even in a neutral political environment, one in which the two parties are tied on the generic ballot, Republicans would be expected to lose about 13 seats in the House and about 5 seats in the Senate. Losses of that magnitude would give Democrats control of both chambers in the next Congress. As of April 23, 2025, the generic ballot average, according to RealClearPolitics, favors Democrats by 1.5 points—very close to a tie. This is the kind of thing that gets many of our volunteers’ attention, and gets forwarded to Hope Springs’ organizers. It is simple to understand and easy to follow: “The model uses only two predictors—the number of seats held by the president’s party that are up for election and the average margin of the president’s party in generic ballot polling prior to the election.” These two numbers are well-known. larger image of graphic above But the takeaway is also simple: “For 2026, the model gives Democrats a strong chance of winning a majority of seats in the House and a chance of gaining enough seats to take back control of the Senate if the national political environment is highly favorable.” And this is why we knock on doors so far out from the next election, to create that political environment that is “highly favorable.” It’s why we had volunteers in Arizona want to canvass on the Saturday before Easter. Why they are determined to beat the heat. In AZ-06 (once held by a Democrat), new Republican voters alone accounted for more than the ~11k margin between Juan Ciscomani and the Democrat. The 6th CD was the closest margin in Arizona for a U.S. House race, which was not called for a week.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/24/2318461/-Canvassing-Arizona-Beat-the-Heat?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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