I start my day by reading the newspaper. But here’s the thing, in the four years since Hope Springs from Field PAC was launched, with now four years of Issues Surveys to compile, it feels like what i read in the newspaper is old news. At least to me. And here’s why:
Last week (4/6), Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 120,865 doors and talked to 9,139 voters. Almost 6,000 voters answered questions from our Issues Surveys. 6,000 will be a low number soon, as we are adding states where we are canvassing, and volunteers are more likely to show up as it gets warmer. But 6,000 is a nice even number.
We are about to start seeing a plethora of polls. But this review of recent polls from 538 shows how many people talk to those pollsters. The most, i believe, is 600. Or a tenth of the number of voters we talk to each week. One tenth.
Now here’s the thing: we aren’t doing polling, there’s nothing statistically significant about the work we are doing, we aren’t even talking to Republicans (although sometimes we end up with one, who resides in a home with a Democrat or unaffiliated voter). And, yet, because we are talking to voters, or, rather, LISTENING to voters and recording their responses, we can see the trends before pollsters can even identify them. Like i said, the newspaper is printing old news, politically.
What people ask me the most — volunteers, candidates, people who know what’s going on — is about trend lines for specific candidates. Joe Biden. Ruben Gallego. Jacky Rosen. Colin Allred. In fact, i’ve gotten a *bunch* of questions why i hadn’t yet included Allred in my write-ups. “We’ve had our primary,” they would say. What gives?
But what is interesting to me isn’t what we are finding at the doors (per se), but how the national media’s polls are following what we are finding at the doors (even though we don’t include Republican voters in our canvassing). We talk to a lot more unaffiliated voters this year than we did last year. Instead of trying to get a 50/50 mix this year (something we wanted because we didn’t want volunteers to get discouraged by talking to too many unaffiliated voters), this year we are aiming for a 40/60 mix, Democrats to unaffiliated. One reason for this is because our experience in Montana, where there just weren’t enough Democrat to reach a 50/50 mix, was a great one. Volunteers returned from canvasses enthused, not the least bit discouraged. Tester is a great candidate!
You can see the state by state graphs at our Canvass Wrap-up, but i wanted to focus specifically on Biden, because i think that’s what most people are really worried about.
Voters tell us lots of things before we even ask about whether they approve or disapprove of the jobs these candidates are doing. Many volunteers tell us that they know what voters will say about the candidate’s (approval ratings) before they even get there, from the issues that are important to them and earlier questions. And, sometimes, volunteers come away astounded because, for example, a voter will say they don’t have an impression of Joe Biden or they have a negative impression of Biden but say they are voting for him in November! How can that be?
It is important to remember that Biden has shied away from the media because the president believed that Trump was “in the news too much.” Now people i know in the advertising world are horrified by that decision. Seriously horrified, but i know i was exhausted by TFG being in the news so much. I was glad for the break. But i can see their argument. But my friends talk about “brand lift” and how the more than Biden appears in the news (on TV), the higher his brand lift has been.
Now these friends worry about Biden not having been on TV enough. But we’re about to see the president on television a lot. Perhaps more than he’d like. But there’s no getting around the fact that Biden is. well, Biden and he likes to do things his way. Like he’s always done them. He’s really comfortable with his narrative (although you could/should argue he shouldn’t be). And the fact is that Biden is proud of his accomplishments, proud of his presidency and doesn’t share Trump’s need to be in the center of the narrative. Joe Biden is the anti-Trump.
In all its connotations. And this is the finding we are seeing in the news, as well. “Biden sees highest approval rating since November,” “a 4-point increase from the same poll in March.” “President Biden has nearly erased Donald J. Trump’s early polling advantage, amid signs that the Democratic base has begun to coalesce behind the president,” inching “among Black and Latino voters,” “while older voters provide a source of relative strength for the Democratic president.” Nate Cohn writes: “The movement in Mr. Biden’s direction over the last month is slight, but it may be just enough to suggest that he’s beginning to benefit from improving political conditions.”
Biden’s slow rise isn’t the only trend line we are seeing at the doors this year. I’ve been pretty clear that “i don’t believe 2024 is going to be about Joe Biden” (i argue 2024 will be the Freedom Election). Over the last two years, Reproductive Freedom has increasingly emerged as a dominating topic for the voters we have talked to. Two years ago, when Dobbs was still on the horizon of the Supreme Court, voters were expressing concerns (in addition to economic topics) about Ukraine, Crime, Education topics and Racism. And, then in May 2022, the Dobbs ruling leaked. And voter’s concerns changed. In 2021, voters who told us Abortion was a Top Issue hovered around 4%. In Florida, less than 3% of the voters we talked to raised the issue; in Pennsylvania, it was almost 8%. In 2021.
And we were still around that range (4%-8%) when we first started canvassing in 2022. But the Dobbs ruling leaked became the Dobbs ruling, striking down Roe v Wade, and we started seeing double digits. In Ohio, by the time the November (2023) election rolled around, 28% of the voters we talked to rated Reproductive Freedom as a Top or their Single Issue.
By November, Hope Springs volunteers had identified 176,394 Reproductive Freedom or single-issue Abortion Rights voters in Ohio, over the course of canvassing in the past two years here. 2,186,965 Ohioans voted for the Issue 1 amendment.
Now we are seeing the same thing in Arizona and Florida. In neither state do 20% of voters raise Abortion as an issue — but they are raising it more and more as we go along. In Florida, we went from a effort-wide low of just under 4% in 2021, to just over 6% in 2022. So far, Hope Springs volunteers have identified 18,167 Reproductive Freedom or single-issue Abortion Rights voters in Arizona and 31,741 Reproductive Freedom or single-issue Abortion Rights voters in Florida. So far.
So far. I say that because Hope Springs volunteers have collected 43,007 verified petitions to get the Arizona Right to Abortion Initiative on the ballot. In Florida, Hope Springs volunteers have collected 43,133 verified petitions to get Amendment 4, Right to Abortion Initiative on the ballot. Those 43,007 Arizona voters will be contacted in the next month or so to determined whether they will join those 18,167 Reproductive Freedom or single-issue Abortion Rights voters we have in our database. Ditto for Florida.
But Abortion has risen to the Top 3 “Most Urgent Issue facing the country” in every state where we’ve canvassed this year except for Nevada (so far).
Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 2nd in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are taking those efforts to the doors of 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/hopemobilization2024
Hope Springs from Field understands that repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud). We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be (and can be) cured.
People keep thinking 2024 will be a re-run of 2020 and it won’t be. Not even close. In 2020, Republicans, the Trump campaign and conservative orgs ramped up their direct voter contact efforts. The Trump campaign tried to replicate what Obama had done, while Democrats effectively pulled back from their presidential cycle voter-registration efforts and direct voter contact canvassing. That won’t happen in 2024. Even with the on-going threat of covid, Democrats are returning to the aggressive voter registration, election protection and voter contact efforts of the Obama years.
And Reproductive Freedom is a major reason why 2024 won’t be a re-run of 2020. We hear that at the doors and i read it in the news.
A recent Wall Street Journal poll of seven battleground states found that 39% of suburban women cite abortion as a make-or-break issue for their vote—making it by far the most motivating issue for the group. Nearly three-quarters of them say the procedure should be legal all or most of the time, and a majority thinks Trump’s policies are too restrictive.
Especially in Arizona:
The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday to bring back a 160-year-old near total ban on the procedure inflamed the politics in one of the nation’s biggest electoral battlegrounds, which is now effectively ground zero for abortion politics. With a tossup Senate race, a pair of close congressional seats and its 11 Electoral College votes on the line, the state will be one of the most closely watched in the country.
“Arizona voters were most likely to say that they wouldn’t support a candidate they disagreed with on abortion, according to a Wall Street Journal poll.”
There is one other trend that is a big change from when we started knocking on doors in 2020/21. If you look at the first table above, you will note that Inflation dominated the Top Issue category. In a sense, inflation still does, but that’s not how voters are talking about the topic. This year, the term inflation rarely comes up. Voters talk about it in terms of prices, especially the price of food or groceries. Inflation is also a factor when they talk about Housing and/or Housing Insurance. Several voters we’ve talked to this year have mentioned that they had houses they wanted to buy but a cash buyer took it “out from under them.” It’s really rare when we see voters in different states use the same language to talk about an issue.
Explanations of the reasons why don’t placate anyone.
Grocery prices began rising early in the pandemic and have remained high even as life has returned to normal. Supply chain snags and labor shortages — combined with heightened demand, as more Americans ate at home — pushed up food costs across the board. More recently, rising wages, the war in Ukraine and a host of natural disasters, including droughts and the largest avian flu outbreak in history, have kept costs elevated.
I blame Trump, other people blame Biden. But “There’s still a fair amount of angst about prices." I knew that. Because i tabulate the findings of our volunteers every week.
But here’s the reality: Identifying Single Issue Voters and Constitutional Amendment supporters and doing GOTV (Get-Out-the-Vote) costs us more money than our regular canvassing just because this issue drives volunteer turnout higher and higher. More volunteers (a good problem to have) means we have to buy more lit to distribute and other minor expenses (like water for volunteers).
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/hopemobilization2024
If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page. Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!