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Yes, We are seeing the First Signs of the MAGA Ground game [1]

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Date: 2024-06-09  

Yesterday, DKos member bullfox asked, “if you see any evidence of Republicans knocking on doors, any evidence of Republican get out the vote efforts?” And i replied that i need to start including that in these weekly wrap-ups. Because we are starting to see evidence of a MAGA ground game.

Hope Springs from Field PAC [website] volunteers have been knocking on doors since March 2 (weather permitting) in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Montana (where we continue to cut turf for those volunteers who want to circulate for CI-128), Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. So far, we have knocked on ~3 Million doors, and our grassroots volunteers have set a goal for themselves of getting to 10 Million doors before Labor Day.

Odysseus noted that we had “written in the past that their volunteers report encountering Republican” or MAGA canvassers. And, to be honest, i had forgotten to start that up again this year (and, hopefully, i will remember to start including that in my canvass wrap-up diaries.

Bullfox’s query may have come from this announcement:

One day after the verdict in the hush money trial, former President Donald Trump’s political operation says it is launching a volunteer-based voter canvassing effort aimed at turning out voters in key battlegrounds. [...] Trump’s campaign is also planning to use allied outside groups to help turn out voters. The former president’s advisers recently sat down with several pro-Trump outfits, including Turning Point Action and Heritage Action, to plan for the election.

But there are two important caveats to remember. First, Trump and the RNC have made dozens of announcements that, in hindsight, aren’t actually true. Trump loves being in the news, so that’s not much of a surprise. They’ve also announced things — even started things — that were reversed later (eg, “shuttering all of the community centers it established for minority outreach nationwide and laying off their staffs”), to save money for paying Trump’s lawyers.

Secondly, one reason why we hadn’t started including signs of MAGA activity on the ground is that some of what we have seen have been related to primaries. So our volunteers are eager to collect GOP lit, but most of it has been primary lit.

Third, what is the most interesting for our purposes is evidence of canvassers sponsored by Club for Growth, the various Kock-related efforts, Concerned Women for America or the forementioned Turning Point or Heritage.

Fourth: despite the announcements from various groups (including the Trump campaign), there is ongoing discussion about how to approach MAGA supporters and when to actually start knocking on doors. Remember, Trump’s “narrow lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote,” as the NYTimes writes. The dilemma for the MAGA crowd is whether it is helpful to convince his supporters to pay more attention to the campaign. There is a plethora of video out there documenting the ignorance of Trump supporters, for good reason.

So the NYTimes conclusion —

Mr. Trump’s strength among low-turnout and less engaged voters helps explain a lot of what’s strange about this election. It illustrates the disconnect between Mr. Trump’s lead in the polls and Democratic victories in lower-turnout special elections. And it helps explain Mr. Trump’s gains among young and nonwhite voters, who tend to be among the least engaged. His strength among young voters, in particular, is almost entirely found among those who did not vote in the midterms.

— is worth remembering. But that doesn’t really address the question. Or, frankly, excuse my forgetting. Because no one wants to be surprised this time.

Over the last six weeks, Hope Springs from Field volunteers have seen evidence of MAGA canvassing in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas & Wisconsin. Most of these have been run-ups to primaries. For example, i pointed out that ”last saturday, two gop canvassing teams were passed, one in ohio and one in nevada.” But both these states have primaries this week. And while the lit (and mail, left on the ground) we found mention MAGA, it was still primary lit and not really suggestive of what will happen in the Fall. It’s the targeting of neighborhoods after the primaries that will be really important. Every state on the list at the top of this paragraph had a primary election either approaching or just completed.

We use these Observation Sheets to document volunteer observations like the presence of MAGA literature or canvassers. But they aren’t the only things Hope Springs volunteers document. They are trained to think in terms of “can this be used to help GOTV (get-out-the-vote)?” And one of the benefits that our volunteers have in 2024 is that most of them have now gone through an election cycle where they can see how this systemic approach greatly benefits GOTV. Cross-fertilization of experienced volunteers from other states has also helped.

Our volunteers have found Club for Growth canvassers leaving lit for the primaries, Concerned Women for America literature on the ground and Americans for Prosperity literature left on a door, but probably for the purpose of the primaries.

Georgia, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania & Texas have now completed all their primaries (i don’t believe NC has primary run-offs but i could be wrong), and *i* have yet to hear about MAGA crews canvassing in any of these states. Yet.

Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 2nd. We target 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 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. One thing that i do think it is important to remember is that a massive ground game disadvantage didn’t keep Trump from winning the presidency in 2016, or, quite frankly, Biden from defeating him in 2020. Still, we believe that Democrats should do everything in our power to win in 2024.

And the thing that focusing on the top of the ticket fails to realize is that down ballot Democrats lost in 2020 because we had a Covid-impaired ground game last time — and many people believe the reason why we lost the U.S. House in 2020 was because of this failure.

What i’ve been specifically looking for this time is evidence of a MAGA ground game in the Rust Belt battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Last year, we found evidence in all three states, even encountering (passing) MAGA crews in two of them. And i had to remind myself that we started canvassing later last year.

AFAIK, Hope Springs from Field is the only Democratic or Progressive group on the ground week in and week out, year in and year out. In fact, that was one of the biggest reasons why Obama alums came together to create what we envisioned to be a pop-up PAC for the Georgia Senate runoffs. There are a number of MAGA or conservative orgs who have done (and are doing) the same thing.

Nonetheless, the Trump Trial (and conviction) seemingly paralyzed MAGA ground operations until now.

Widely praised for its professionalism and effectiveness throughout the primary phase of the 2024 election, Trump’s political operation has been slow to pivot toward the general election in the weeks after executing a hostile takeover of the Republican Party’s national political machinery. In fact, the former president’s team has rolled back plans under previous leaders to add hundreds of staff and dozens of new minority-outreach centers in key states without offering a clear alternative. Indeed, just six months before the first early votes are cast in the general election between Trump and Biden, Trump’s Republican Party has little general election infrastructure to speak of. Officials on the ground in top swing states are not panicking, but the disparity with the Biden campaign is stark.

One of the things that Hope Springs organizers and volunteers have been talking about lately is the lack of Trump paraphernalia at voter doorsteps or Trump flags on trucks on the road. One of the reactions we see repeatedly is, when we ask volunteers about this, there is a lot of, “oh, yeah, I had forgotten about that.” In 2016 and 2020, these were persuasive almost everywhere. And if the rise of the Trump ground game is something you worry about, you can look around for yourself and find the evidence on your own roads and highways.

Here’s the thing we have been really focused on:

While less-populous states tended to see relatively more churn than bigger ones, the numbers are still significant in the Rust Belt battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which were among the least-changed nationwide. At least 10% of the voting-age population has switched out in the three states since Biden and Trump last faced off, representing an estimated 2.4 million new voters.

To be quite frank, we don’t see these people at their doors. Most of the voters we talk to — overwhelmingly — have been voters over the age of 35. Now these voters cast a ballot much, much more frequently, but it is still something we have focused on. And that focus has grown out of the thousands of voters Hope Springs volunteers have registered at their door or the tens of thousands Black Churches, HBCUs and Divine Nine alums have registered in their partnerships with Hope Springs. If you are interested in participating in our Postcards to New Voters Project, you can sign up here. (The diary on this can be found here.) We especially need help this year since we are not limiting our Postcards to New Voters effort to those new voters that Hope Springs or its partners registered to vote. Basically, every new voter in the swing Congressional Districts in our Swing States will be included in this effort for 2024.

In all seven swing states, there are more newly registered voters than the margin of victory in the last presidential election, according to an analysis by Catalist, a voter-file firm that works exclusively with Democratic campaigns and progressive groups. Only about 70% of eligible voters are registered.

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 ActBlue page. Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/9/2245659/-First-Signs-of-the-MAGA-Ground-game?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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