*** BREAKING: President Joe Biden leads former President Donald Trump 50 - 44 percent in a head-to-head matchup, according to a Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters in Wisconsin released today.
In the U.S. Senate race, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) leads challenger Eric Hovde (R) 54% to 42%. ***
When you think about elections, Wisconsin is a state that remains one of the most contested. And it has been this way for awhile. Wisconsin has had numerous statewide elections decided by tiny margins in recent years. But it was the presidential election in 2020 that remains on voter’s minds here. Wisconsin was a major focus of TFG’s efforts to overturn the presidential election. Leading into the 2024 presidential contest, multiple lawsuits have been filed while the officials who will be responsible for upholding the rules are changing.
Like Phoenix in Arizona, Atlanta in Georgia or Las Vegas in Nevada, Milwaukee, the state’s biggest city, and the county that surrounds it, contain about 1 in 7 Wisconsin voters.
In previous elections, Milwaukee’s election administration has been at the center of Republican claims of fraud. Allegations have frequently stemmed from the operation of the city’s central count location where absentee ballots are tallied. In the recently concluded legislative session, Republicans in the state Senate refused to advance legislation that would allow the city to start processing ballots ahead of time, leading to concerns that if the city again takes a long time to count those ballots, conspiracy theories will once again emerge.
Milwaukee is also central to efforts by pro-Trump groups to purge the state’s voter rolls and other lawsuits to narrow the electorate and access to voting. (108,378 voters were deactivated last year.)
Our experience in Wisconsin has been that some of our Hope Springs from Field PAC [website] volunteers enjoy the challenge of chasing down these voters (voters who have been purged because they haven’t voted in the last four years. It’s an interesting thing, because Wisconsin allows same day registration, but Hope Springs has volunteers who believe it helps to let these people know that, basically, Republicans want them removed from the voter rolls because they were infrequent voters. I have been involved in (purged) voter location since 2012 in the state, and have followed up with the voting records of those we had re-registered to vote. Those infrequent voters voted at a 23.4% higher rate in the next election — which is why some of our Hope Springs volunteers ask to canvass these targeted lists.
Last year, 4,988 volunteers came out to knock on doors, using our voter-driven Issues Canvass technique. So far, Hope Springs volunteers have knocked on 967,318 doors, which is about 39.8% of the state.
401 volunteers came out to canvass in Wisconsin on Saturday, our second canvass of 2024. Like last year, we continue to canvass in Milwaukee (where we are canvassing in African-American wards with primarily Black volunteers) and its suburbs (the WOW counties), as well as Kenosha and Dane counties. The key Democratic and swing areas of this Senate Swing State. And, like 2022, we will ease out of our canvassing efforts as the WisDems pick up their’s in these areas.
In everybody’s minds, Wisconsin is one of the most important states in the Electoral College and maintaining a Democratic majority in the Senate. On Saturday, volunteers knocked on 29,794 doors and talked to 2,493 voters. 1,613 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on the Issues Survey.
(Rising) Prices was the Top Concern among the Wisconsin voters we talked to on Saturday. The Threat of Political Violence or Extreme Partisanship was the second most frequently cited concern. Campus Protest Activity was third, and these voters did not mention the connection between those protests and the Conflict in Gaza (so different this week over last week’s responses).
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since 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/hopemobilization2024
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.
Joe Biden’s Approval numbers in Wisconsin fell to 51% last Saturday; his Disapproval number was 8%. Senator Baldwin’s Job Approval was 57% (this is about ten percentage points less than she was doing last year) with 7% of the voters we talked to on Saturday expressing Disapproval. Approval of Governor Evers, meanwhile, was 49%; Disapproval was 10% last Saturday.
Hope Springs from Field volunteers registered 8 new voters; 34 more voters updated their voter registration to comply with federal law. We differentiate between new voters registered and existing voters re-registering because we plan to continue our New Voter Postcard effort later this year.
91 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms. We send completed CSRs to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if there are no Democrats who can further the request, and 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. We increasingly have local Democratic elected officials and prospective candidates join our Saturday canvasses just because they are hearing about these CSRs.
Wisconsin is a state where we have had a lot of comments about the Constituent Service Request forms.
2 voters in Wisconsin completed Incident Reports, specifically in Milwaukee. Four other voters expressed concerns or apprehensions about the 2024 elections but did not fill out an incident report 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. (We also make Issues Surveys, Incident Reports and Constituent Service Request forms available at the churches we visit, but we don’t include numbers for those, in part because we don’t always get counts back, but also because we like to compare like to like.)
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. 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.
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 because this issue drives volunteer turnout higher and higher. Which means we have to buy more lit to distribute and other minor expenses (like water for volunteers). We just paid off the printers for last year’s Ohio lit that we distributed there. So please:
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!