“Why not Ohio?” This was the question posed more than a month ago. “Ohio has as much of a chance to flip as Florida? So why not Ohio.”
Despite all the moaning about how much more energized Republicans are than Democrats about the 2022 elections, we don’t see that on the ground. Let’s just call it what it is, concluding that Democrats aren’t excited about the midterms is a function of the poll question (‘Are you more excited about 2022 than you were about 2018’); the fact that, until the Alito draft leak and the current focus on mass shootings, that Republicans were more aggrieved (visceral voters are more reliable voters); and the focus on the policy battles in Congress (conservative policy concerns being ignored when Democrats control that executive and legislative branches make them more interested in the next election than Democrats who are more interested in the daily maneuvering on the Hill). But that isn’t what you see when you are in the weeds. Polls don’t produce volunteers, organizers do.
So to slide into the answer to the queries I posed above, Hope Springs from Field PAC has been in Florida for the last year because we have a robust Obama alum network there, that former field organizers were willing to step up and volunteer their time preparing and organizing efforts there, we had massive email and volunteer lists in Central Florida — and we had people in the right places. So why not Ohio? Because Ohio is more of a challenge, especially in the sense that the organizers we were talking to where not located in the parts of Ohio that were the highest priorities.
So why not Ohio was really a question of asking an experienced field organizer in Columbus whether he was willing to volunteer to lead canvassing outside of Toledo. Moving volunteers around the map is not as easy as moving pieces in Risk.
So when people ask me whether Democrats are motivated for the 2022 elections, I point to the Georgia volunteers — grassroots volunteers — who went to North Carolina for GOTV last month, or the organizers in Ohio who drove hours to lead canvassing efforts in Ohio. All four of the field organizers who led us last Saturday drove two hours or so to do so. With gas prices what they are.
In Ohio. Very, very Red Ohio.
Maybe that isn’t as motivated as all those Republicans who drove from Florida to D.C. to overturn the Constitution or those thousands of Trump cultists who attend every single rally, but these sacrifices being made to drive this election for Democrats is just as important.
So, Hello Ohio!
91 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday in Lucas, Wood, Erie and Summit counties for our second canvass in Ohio. We start from the beginning, and training volunteers took almost an hour. Knocking on doors in this “system” is painless, and the biggest thing expected from volunteers is a smile. Even I, who has been told I have RBF, can move the face muscles to smile when a voter opens the door. But, as I have mentioned before, we train volunteers to anticipate or predict whether or not someone is home even before they open the door. This saves time, even though it is hard to learn that you can walk away and return to talk to a voter if you predicted wrong. This so rarely happens, though, that the dozens of doors basically treated as a lit-drop (because the volunteer anticipates that no one is home) saves so much time (because we learned long ago that volunteers who are not trained in this way spend way too much time waiting for someone to come to the door when no one is home) that it more than makes up for any awkwardness in the rare events that someone does come to the door as they are leaving. But it takes practice and we know that.
We asked voters who opened their doors if they were registered to vote at their current address and if they have the necessary identification to cast a vote. We remind voters that they have to be registered at their current address to conform with HAVA *and* having their current address in the Poll Book allows them more options for identification purposes.
Our major focus is the Issues Survey. Using the Issues Survey as the means for directing conversation at the door makes it easier for volunteers to engage voters. Normally, around 65% of the voters we talk to at their doors answer some or all of these questions although it was slightly lower on Saturday (I don’t think any of our results reached that percentage last weekend, though). Each week, we ask voters about what issue they think is the most urgent facing America right now. Gas Prices were the top Issue mentioned by voters we talked to on Saturday. Last week, Crime was second. Schools was the third most mentioned issue.
We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters, which means we aren’t seeing responses from anyone (yet) who identifies as Republican. 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. By our work and our presence we are trying to convey that Democrats care and we listen. The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter. Far and away the number one issue that the voters we talked to in the Senate Swing States was inflation or price increases, and I imagine that concern has only increased since November.
But the main focus in our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns. We find that most voters who aren’t in a hurry or in the middle of something are willing to answer at least a couple of these questions, especially their top issue or concern and their views of President Biden. 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.
Collecting data about the Issues that voters actually think and talk about, though, is extraordinarily useful for Democratic campaigns, and the data we collect will be available to all Democrats who use VAN after the primaries. This may be even more important than ever before.
Support (measured as job approval) for President Biden fell to 54% from the voters we talked to on Saturday. Disapproval was at 14%. Approval for Tim Ryan was rose to 65% this week. Approval of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur rose to 74%, while 8% disapproved.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to increase awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights, and, in March, we will begin an even bigger effort. We are thinking about how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," both informing and helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.
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/2022senateswing
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. But the reason we won the Iowa Caucus in 2008 was because we registered voters and then turned them out! The approach we adopted was focused on listening, on connecting voters and their story to the candidate and our cause. 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 did). 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 cured.
Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races in 2022 as well as districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year. This is why we are canvassing in these specific areas of Ohio. But we know there are places we need to defend (Georgia, Nevada and Arizona) and there are opportunities. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — even Ohio and Florida — are such opportunities. There is a lot of work to be done!
We also ask voters who open their doors whether they want to fill out a Constituent Service Request form. And, when we start using this approach somewhere, we get a higher response rate on service requests than we do after we have been knocking for awhile. I can’t really explain why this is true, but it was true on Saturday, as well. This week, we collected 38 CSRs in Ohio.
Constituent Service Requests are handed over to (hopefully Democratic) office holders with responsibilities for the area of the request. Q-slips will be sent directly to the campaigns of Democratic candidates. Comments from Observation Forms are entered into VAN, as well.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has a hybrid approach. We aren’t interested in competing with regular campaign field organizing. We are in the field before they get there and then move on when the Democratic campaigns start their intensive field work. Indeed, when we wind up the typical field work by Labor Day, we will encourage all the volunteers working with us to move over to the Senate campaigns in their states (and hope that our field organizers will be hired on by those campaigns). After Labor Day, we will begin organizing our Election Protection Project.
But we are also cognizant that Democratic turnout has traditionally dropped off more than Republicans in non-presidential years. So early, frequent voter contact is more important to our side. Equally important, though, is that starting early means that we can make up for our inability to register new voters in the presidential election because we took Covid and the health of our base seriously. Registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, 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.
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/2022senateswing
Thank you for your support.