For the past four years, my local Democratic Party colleagues have all been working hard to end the dreaded midterm turnout slump. You know, the horrible dropoff in Democratic participation that happens in non-Presidential-election years.
In Washtenaw County, that pattern has looked like this:
We need to be consistent, like the Republicans, only at the 120,000+ vote level.
We have called this the “W Graph” (maybe to remember POTUS 43? It would be fitting.) In presidential years, Democrats beat Republicans by at least 2 to 1. In midterms, we’re lucky to beat the Republicans at all. The Republican voters, meanwhile, turn out no matter what. Same old story almost anywhere in the country, as we have all lamented for years.
In 2014, we made a big commitment here to implement a precinct-based program inspired by the grassroots, bottom-up design of the 2008 Obama for America campaign. Between 2010 (obviously, a hugely dispiriting election) and 2014 we had some limited success, but our comparatively poor results in 2014 indicated we had to do things differently. So we devoted a lot of attention and resources to the development of a Precinct Delegate system throughout the county, one in which we recruited, trained, and deployed neighborhood-based Democratic activists to be resources for their own local communities. The table below shows our gains so far.
Precinct Delegates in Washtenaw County (MI), 2014-2018
|
2014 |
2016 |
2018 |
Precincts |
139 |
141 |
150 |
Positions |
288 |
300 |
330 |
# elected |
96 |
147 |
182 |
% filled |
33% |
49% |
55% |
# contested |
5 |
7 |
17 |
Thus we have almost doubled our elected precinct delegates (by count) in four years. I assure you that the proportion of active and engaged Precinct Delegates has also doubled, at least.
We’ve not contented ourselves merely with increasing our elected Precinct Delegate numbers. Our Precinct Delegates have been busy hosting neighborhood events for the sake of getting people involved and informed, including town halls for candidates to come to discuss issues of local concern with voters. We have some precincts now with block captains and their own lists of residents and activists. And we have a wide network of local political groups who are ready and able to coordinate with our teams to support the final push to Get Out the Vote. Here, that meant we were able to drop about 30,000 Democratic Voter Guides to people’s doors in the space of ten days. (These supplemented the 45,000 that we mailed out as well as the version of the guide available online.)
On Election Day itself, we took advantage of one last opportunity to get information into the hands of voters. We had a slate card (which Lauretta is holding in the story photo) which listed all our endorsements, candidates and proposals, partisan and non-partisan. We printed 50,000 copies of this card and distributed them to about 200 volunteers who were to cover about 300 shifts, total, at the 61 polling places in the county with the highest historical Democratic turnout. And then we said, “Go!”
Lauretta and Anna, shown in the story photo, were two of those poll greeters. They and hundreds of others stood outside in the cold and rain for hours to offer the cards to voters as they approached the polling place entrance. Yet you can see by the expression on their faces how cheered Lauretta and Anna were to do it. Over and over again, people took the cards and thanked the greeters for making them available. Over and over again, our poll greeters saw voters arrive with our Voter Guide in hand. It was a long but a rewarding day, because the enthusiastic response from hundreds of people let us know our information was welcome and appreciated.
Jeff McGrew, another stalwart Precinct Delegate, answering the call.
We can’t point to any one part of our campaign that made a difference to turnout. And certainly the Occupant squatting in the White House provides a strong incentive to VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. But until the votes were counted, we had no idea whether we were going to end up breaking this discouraging and counterproductive pattern.
Last night, we learned that we did succeed: We flatlined between 2016 and 2018. Washtenaw County produced 124,894 votes for Gretchen Whitmer, our gubernatorial candidate. That’s only about 6,000 votes fewer than we generated for Hillary Clinton, or under a 3% drop.
Statewide, in fact, we had the best midterm turnout percentage in almost 50 years. (See a Detroit Free Press story on turnout patterns here, with a nice interactive map.) The over 4.2 million people who cast ballots represented just over 57% of the state’s registered voters. Our turnout in Washtenaw (62%) was good, but it wasn’t even close to the best in the state. Tiny but purple Leelanau County, north of Traverse City, had about 70% turnout. So we still have some room to grow.
Between now and 2022, we have plenty more work to do, not only to increase voter turnout but also to increase voter engagement and empowerment. Yet our success yesterday gives us a taste of what we can accomplish, if only we continue to flatline.