Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: “Arizona Will Be Ground Zero for the 2024 Abortion Fight.” Keep your hands up if you’ve heard it in the last 24 hours.
That’s what i thought.
As i noted earlier, Hope Springs from Field PAC has seen an immediate impact from volunteers after the Arizona ruling. Clearly upset, almost 100 volunteers have already committed to knocking on doors this Saturday — and we just got our reminder email out the internet door.
Maybe agitated is a better word. Motivated might be even better. “With all this other stuff going on around us,” one of my organizers told me, “the future rests on our shoulders.” So, like, no pressure. “We have to continue.”
So far, Hope Springs volunteers have collected 43,007 verified petitions from valid voters who lived at the address from which they were registered (we match voters with their address to petitions on an ongoing basis). But, as those who have been reading my diaries about Ohio may remember, that’s not where it ends. We have a database of voters who signed the petitions our volunteers circulated. Voters who signed one of our volunteers’ petitions will now receive “thank you” postcards or notes for signing and, thereafter, received follow-up communications to verify their support of the Right to Abortion Initiative. These are important because we shouldn’t assume that someone supports something just because they signed a petition to get it on the ballot. There are voters out there who will sign anything, for numerous reasons (just as there are voters who won’t sign anything!), but generally because they believe Arizonans deserve a vote, a choice, a voice on the issue at hand.
Our Arizona volunteers seem to not only be, well, let’s be nice and say, mad but they know there is something they can do about it.
But the Right to Abortion Initiative is not the only thing driving volunteers to canvass on a Saturday. Arizona remains the Quintessential Swing State in 2024, the only state where pundits agree that both the presidential and senate seats are toss-ups going into the Spring. While there are a number of paths in the Electoral College for Biden to win re-election, Democrats have to win this seat to have any chance of maintaining the majority in the Senate. “The race is consequential for determining the balance of power in the Senate in 2025.”
278 volunteers came out to knock on doors in the eastern and southern suburbs of Phoenix and east of Tucson (in the 1st, 4th and 6th Congressional Districts) on Saturday.
Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 20,210 doors on Saturday. Volunteers talked to 1,594 voters, and 1031 voters answered questions from at least part of the Issues Survey.
(Rising) Prices was the Number 1 issue for the Arizonans we talked to on Saturday, with several voters wondering when their grocery prices will “return to normal.” Voters aren’t talking about inflation, but PRICES. Interesting. Housing Costs/Availability and Insurance Costs was the #2 issue voters raised. Border Security was third.
Among the Arizonans we talked to Biden’s Job Approval was at 42%; 9% expressed some measure of Disapproval (this is half what we found the first week). 14% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Sinema was doing while 34% expressed Disapproval. If you don’t realize it, Sinema’s approval rating has risen (sharply) and disapproval rating fallen since she announced her retirement. There seemed to be a little bit of bitterness attached before she did so.
It is important to remember that we are knocking on the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters. We also ask about whether voters Approve of likely Democratic nominee Ruben Gallego. 52% of the voters we talked to had a positive impression of the Congressman, and there were voters who mention Gallego’s experience as a Marine. So his story is getting out there. 54% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. Hobbs was doing a good job, 7% said they disapproved of the job she was doing.
Hope Springs from Field PAC started knocking on doors again on March 2nd, 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 are talking to 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), GOTV and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hope4arizona
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.
We registered 8 new voters and re-registered 39 voters who updated their addresses (or updated their voter registration to participate in the Active Early Voting List — the latter usually skews the number higher). We differentiate between the new voters and re-registering voters 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 will also receive robocalls thanking them for registering.
In Arizona, we had 88 voters fill out Constituent Service Request forms. 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 in Arizona completed an Incident Report. Several other voters expressed concerns about the 2024 elections but did not fill out incident reports because they didn’t say they witnessed voter suppression or intimidation (they just expressed concerns or worries about them). 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. 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 the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022). 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.
We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File. Several of our Arizona organizers are also talking to Native American groups about replicating our Voter Matching service that Hope Springs provides for Black Churches. This is really dependent upon the Native American tribes, though. It’s a big year. There’s lots to be done, and, hopefully, we won’t have to suspect in-person voter contact because of a heatwave this year.
Our biggest expense is the Voter File. But it is also a fixed cost. That won’t change as we raise and spend more money. Printing literature is our second largest cost. Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.
Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation. We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.
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/hope4arizona
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!