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Canvassing North Carolina: Dem's Best Opportunity to Gain a Senate Seat [1]

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

Date: 2025-05-07

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.

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:

Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 1st. We target 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. The voters we talk to continue to tell us they come away more invested in governance and feel more favorably towards Democrats in general because of our approach.

But Hope Springs from Field volunteers believe that, if we can reverse this historical trend identified by Jhacova Williams , not just by voter registration but voter mobilization, we can reverse a couple of these less Republican Congressional seats in the state. Still, our (overwhelmingly) African-American volunteers who canvass in these counties, they are (admittedly) less interested in reversing gerrymandered seats than in reversing historical inequaties.

But this is another way we use Incident Reports. Now we did consult with the prior Trump administrations’ Civil Rights Division prior to the 2021 Special Election in Georgia, and had no issue with the meeting or their response. It’s a big question how this Trump administration will handle our pre-election report based upon our collection of Incident Reports. We already know that MAGA nation would like to shut us down. Pulling out an Incident Report and asking for their (the assailant’s, basically) name has caused MAGA vigilantes to grab it out of our volunteer’s hand and disappear (because, you know, we only have one — lol). But, clearly, the Biden administration was more receptive to these concerns.

We continue to canvass in suburban areas of the new NC-13, but we are also canvassing in NC-01, NC-07 and NC-09, as well as counties with high historical propensities of lynchings for our “Until Justice is Real” project. Like in Georgia, Florida and Texas, we have been recruiting Divine Nine groups for this purpose, who travel (usually from outside the state) to canvass in these counties. Canvassers in the state can see North Carolina’s hard-assed approach in the streets: last year, law enforcement approached Hope Springs’ volunteers 13 times as they were knocking on doors in North Carolina, it Georgia, it only happened twice. In Florida, where you’d think it would happen more, volunteers have had no interaction with law enforcement, and in Texas, it has only happened once. Not what you’d expect.

It can definitely feel like Sisyphus here. Two years ago, the state legislature chose to redistrict its Congressional Districts to help out Republicans in the House. 3 Democrats were given Districts that favored Republicans, and it changed our focus on where we were canvassing last year.

Last Saturday, Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 2,659 doors. We talked to 2,211 voters and had in-depth conversations with 1,415 of them, guided by our Issues Questionnaire.

We’ve added one thing to our questionnaire: we are asking voters whether they approve of the administration’s cuts to federal programs and agencies. Given that we are talking to more unaffiliated voters this year, we are offering that as a way to screen MAGA-leaning voters that we talk to.

Other than that, the Issues Survey hasn’t really changed. We may modify it again, if necessary. Voters like to tell us what is important to them!

On Saturday, Tariffs was was the Number 1 issue for the voters we talked both weeks in March. Inflation was second and Jobs was the third issue voters raised.

As i mentioned above, we are asking voters if they approve of the sudden and deep cuts in federal programs and agencies. On Saturday, 3% of the voters we talked to said they viewed these cuts in a favorable light. 41% thought just the opposite. Only 9% of the voters we talked to had a favorable impression of the job Trump was doing, while 43% disapproved. We still don’t know whether these two questions are correlated.

Saturday, 6% of the voters who responded approved of the job Sen. Tillis was doing while 44% expressed Disapproval. 48% approved of what Gov. Stein was doing and 10% disapproved.

Hope Springs volunteers registered 21 new voters (17 were African-American) on Saturday. We re-registered 18 voters, who mainly updated their addresses.

In North Carolina, 206 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms on Saturday. 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.

4 voters filled out Incident Reports. Incident Reports are used to plan Election Protection activities, and will be combined with other, historical incidents and handed over to District and State Attorneys, Attorney Generals and the DoJ Civil Rights Division right before Election Day as a precaution against Election Day Incidents in November. Past polling place activity is a predictor of future voter intimidation or suppression activity.

We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters and use a voter-driven approach to guide them through the Issues Survey, the CSR and Incident Report. We record questions voters raise with a Q(uestion)-slip and record other relevant observations on an Observations form. Q-slips are sent to the relevant Democrat to respond to and Observations are entered into VAN. 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 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.

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or Congressional Races in 2026. 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 some really, really onerous new voter regulations, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them and helping them to check their current voter registration status, if they cannot access it online themselves.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/7/2321000/-Canvassing-North-Carolina-Dem-s-Best-Opportunity-to-Gain-a-Senate-Seat?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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