The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

How Far Left Is the Democratic Party Moving?

I address this question in a new article for the British site, Unherd. I argue that the Democratic party is indeed moving left but not in the fashion envisioned by self-conscious radicals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“The Left in America is on the rise…But how far Left is this surge? And what does it stand for? Can it really be compared with the hard Left radicalism seen elsewhere across the globe?

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

The Washington Post is out with a large poll of the House battleground–the 69 most competitive House districts. The poll covered the period when the Kavanaugh controversy was coming to a head so should capture political movement from those events pretty well.

The topline is quite favorable for the Democrats:

“The survey of 2,672 likely voters by The Post and the Schar School at George Mason University shows that likely voters in these districts favor Democrats by a slight margin: 50 percent prefer the Democratic nominee and 46 percent prefer the Republican. By way of comparison, in 2016 these same districts favored Republican candidates over Democratic ones by 15 percentage points, 56 percent to 41 percent.”

If accurate, that’s quite a sea change in sentiment in these districts.

But I want to draw special attention to a couple of graphics in the story. The first shows some basic demographics of the likely voters in those districts. Note that despite all the talk about educated suburbanites, there are still far more white noncollege than white college voters in these districts (47 percent to 31 percent).

The second shows vote intention by some key demographics. Unsurprisingly, the Democratic advantage among white college women is large (62-37). But also of great significance is that white noncollege women–a more numerous demographic than white college women–are close to even between the parties (a mere 4 point Democratic deficit). If white noncollege women were polling more like their white noncollege male counterparts (a 20 point Democratic deficit), the Democrats’ chances of taking the House would be poor.

Understanding these facts about the House battleground is key to understanding what is going on in 2018 and lessons Democrats should learn for 2020.

From “Liberals, This is War” by NYT columnist Chafrles M.Blow: Liberals can get so high-minded that they lose sight of the ground war. Yes, next month it is important to prove to the rest of Americans, and indeed the world, that Trump and the Republicans who promote and protect him are at odds with American values and with the American majority…But, catharsis is an emotional response and an emotional remedy…Liberals have to look beyond emotions, beyond reactionary electoral enthusiasm, beyond needing to fall in love with candidates in order to vote for them, beyond the coming election and toward the coming showdown…Folks, Kavanaugh is only one soldier, albeit an important one, in a larger battle. Stop thinking you’re in a skirmish, when you’re at war.”

Regarding the proposals to impeach Kavanaugh or pack the Supreme Court to restore ideological blaance, Charliie Savage writes in his aticle, “On the Left, Eyeing More Radical Ways to Fight Kavanaugh” in The New York Times that “Either step would be an extraordinary violation of constitutional and political norms. No justice has been removed through impeachment. And a previous attempt at court packing, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after a conservative-dominated Supreme Court rejected important parts of his New Deal initiatives during the Great Depression, is broadly seen as having been misguided…Either step would also face steep odds. Some Republicans would have to go along for them to work: a court-expansion bill would need the support of 60 senators to overcome a filibuster, and while a simple majority of the House could vote to impeach, removal would require two-thirds of the Senate…Still, even the political pressure of the threat might make some of the conservative justices more cautious. While Congress rejected Roosevelt’s court-reform bill, the court changed course while lawmakers were considering it and started upholding New Deal laws — a move called “the switch in time that saved nine.”

At The American Prospect, Paul Starr notes another way-down-the-road potential Supreme Court reform: “Democrats should also seek to negotiate long-term constitutional reforms of the Court, though these would not address the immediate challenge they face. One such reform is to limit Supreme Court justices to a single, 18-year term, with those terms staggered so that an appointment comes up every other year. Winning the presidency would then mean getting two Court nominations per term. Fixed terms for the Court would reduce the tendency toward self-perpetuating majorities that results from justices deciding to retire only when a president of their own party is in office.“

You gotta like the title of the David Atkins post, “Bipartisanship is Dead. Time for Democrats to Embrace Their Inner McConnell” at The Washington Monthly. Atkins writes, “McConnell more than any other person is responsible for the destruction of bipartisan norms. He exerted unprecedented obstruction of President Obama’s legislation and nominees, crucially including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland who never even received a hearing from McConnell’s Senate. McConnell enabled Russian interference in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump by threatening to deny it and call it a presidential abuse of power if Obama-era law enforcement agencies exposed the plot. And now, of course, McConnell has made himself responsible for a mockery of a Supreme Court confirmation process, abusing his power to hide and limit evidence and testimony about Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual abuses and blatant perjury…Instead, Democrats will need to embrace their own inner Mitch McConnell…it will be just as important to secure structural initiatives that will make it difficult for Republicans to continue thwarting the will of an increasingly progressive majority. That is precisely what McConnell would do if a man of his instincts and temperament were serving the public welfare and society’s marginalized, rather than corporations, the wealthy and the privileged….Among these fixes would include but not be limited to:

1) Making election day a federal holiday, and perhaps moving it from Tuesday to a weekend.

2) Pushing a majority of states to sign onto the National Popular Vote compact.

2) Securing statehood for Washington DC and Puerto Rico, thereby securing representation for those citizens while limiting the overrepresentation of rural white conservative states in the Senate.

3) Limiting gerrymandering and voter suppression by states in whatever ways are constitutionally possible, including by pressing for non-partisan districting commissions, automatic voter registration, full vote by mail systems, paper ballots with paper trails and more.

4) Securing responsible immigration reform and a rapid pathway to citizenship.

5) Adding more justices to both the appellate courts and Supreme Court.”

And David Leonhardt writes in his NYT column, “Get Angry, and Get Involved: The midterm elections are the smart way to make your influence felt” that “The only good solution to this mess involves fighting for democratic principles. In concrete terms, this means turning your attention away from the Supreme Court, for now, and toward the midterm elections. The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh is over. The midterms are not, and, one way or the other, they will change Washington. Either President Trump will be emboldened — to fire Robert Mueller, take away health insurance and so on — or he will be constrained. There is no election outcome that preserves the status quo.”

Some statistics for Democrats to ponder, from Hunter Schwarz’s “How millennials could kill politics as we know it if they cared to” at CNN Politics: “Defined by Pew as those born between 1981 to 1996, millennials make up about 22% of the US population, and at some point between November’s midterms and the 2020 election, they’re expected to surpass baby boomers as America’s largest living generation. They’re a massive voting bloc, capable of setting policy priorities and swinging elections…In Congress, there are currently only eight millennials in the House and none in the Senate, according to Quorum, a public affairs software company. And millennials’ vote at lower rates than older generations. In 2016, just more than half of eligible millennials voted. In 2014, less than a quarter voted…Today, the average American is 20 years younger than their representative in Congress, Quorum data found…Politically, millennials are the most independent generation. They’re the least likely to see big differences between the Democratic and Republican parties, and a March Pew poll found 44% of millennials identify as independent, while 35% identify as Democrats and 17% as Republican.”

“The size of the Democratic advantage in the fight for control of the House is unclear with a month until the midterm elections,” warns Nate Cohn at The Upshot, “and there are recent signs Republicans might have improved their position, possibly because of the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court…The sheer number of highly competitive districts means a wide range of possible outcomes. Democrats could win in a landslide, or Republicans could run the table and narrowly retain a majority. Both possibilities are evident in data collected from The New York Times Upshot/Siena College surveys in battleground districts…With so many opportunities to win just a few more seats, it’s easy to see why the Democrats are considered favorites. And with so many opportunities over all, it’s easy to imagine how the Democrats could gain 40 or more seats. Even modest late movement toward the Democrats would topple many additional Republicans and potentially put an entire additional tier of seats into play…On the other hand, modest late movement toward the Republicans could give the party a chance to sweep a pretty long list of tossup districts. Any number of factors could push the race one way or another.”

Anna Maria Barry-Jester writes in her article, “Even People Insured By Their Employer Are Worried About Rising Health Care Costs” at FiveThirtyEight: “Polls show that once again, health care is weighing heavily on the minds of voters this election season. And that’s largely because voters think it costs too much. In August, nearly six in 10 Americans said they are very concerned about the rise in individuals’ health care costs. And just over a quarter of registered voters said that health care was the “most important” thing for candidates to talk about this election season (only corruption in Washington, with 30 percent, was cited as the most important issue more often). And the biggest concern under that giant health care umbrella? For a plurality, it was cost…That concern isn’t coming just from people who buy insurance on the marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, even though that’s the group we hear about most often. People with employer-sponsored insurance are also paying more for health insurance and facing serious concerns about how they will pay their medical bills in the event they need care. A new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation helps explain why: Employees are picking up more of the cost, even when they are covered through their employer…In 2000, the average family with an employer-provided plan paid 25 percent of the total cost of an annual insurance premium. By 2018, it was 28 percent (down from 30 percent in 2017), according to the annual KFF survey.”

In his article, “Democrats’ Burgeoning Chances in the Rust Belt” in The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein writes, “For Democrats looking ahead to 2020, the most encouraging trend in 2018 may be the party’s renewed competitiveness in key races across all five Rust Belt states that keyed Donald Trump’s unexpected victory two years ago. Yet even that potential recovery can’t erase the magnitude of the challenge Democrats will face reclaiming those states from Trump in 2020—a trial that likely became even tougher after he announced a new North American trade deal this week…But perhaps even more encouraging for Democrats are the sprouts of recovery among working-class white voters—or at least working-class white women. In general, midwestern blue-collar white men still overwhelmingly favor Republicans in this fall’s contests. But in Ohio, the NBC/Marist poll showed Brown leading among non-college-educated white women by double digits, and Cordray trailing only slightly. In Wisconsin, those women prefer Evers narrowly and Baldwin by a 17-point margin. Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne, who are forcefully challenging Republican incumbents in two Iowa districts, posted stronger results among non-college-educated whites than almost any other Democrats in the recent House polls conducted by Siena College and The New York Times.“

After a tense week of uncertainty, the Kavanaugh confirmation saga came to an abrupt end, as I  discussed at New York:

In a conventionally partisan floor speech that lacked any indication of the doubt one might have expected given her long refusal to take a public position, Maine senator Susan Collins announced her support for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice. Barring something really strange, this should clinch a victory for the beer-loving conservative jurist despite allegations of sexual assault and some serious discrepanciesinvolving his own testimony. Earlier today, another possible waverer, Jeff Flake, indicated he would vote for Kavanaugh. In the unlikely event that another late decider, Joe Manchin, decides to flip after voting to cut off debate on the confirmation, Democrats would still be short a vote. Once the Senate has worked out Steven Daines’s travel itinerary (he will be home in Montana Saturday morning to attend his daughter’s wedding), the final vote will be held as quickly as possible — perhaps as early as 5:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday.

Collins’ speech tracked every Republican talking point in defense against charges that the highly ideological vetting process that led to his nomination would produce a highly ideological Justice. As she has done before, she suggested at great length that Kavanaugh’s respect for precedent — or to use his misleading term, ”settled law” — would keep him from tampering with reproductive rights. She cited, moreover, the pro-choice positions of past Supreme Court nominees of anti-abortion Republican presidents as evidence that Kavanaugh might similarly outrage all the people — including the 49 of her Republican Senate colleagues — who hope he will help eviscerate a right to abortion that they do not themselves support. In an expression of either naïveté or cynicism, Collins did not acknowledge that the entire Federalist Society–run vetting process Trump used to select his SCOTUS nominee was designed precisely to prevent the possibility of any more “stealth” moderate Justices like the ones she lionizes.

In what sounded very much like a flank-covering compensatory effort, Collins concluded her speech with plenty of shout-outs to the #MeToo movement and to victims of sexual assault, and lots of pious centrist tut-tutting about polarization. But what it really confirmed was that Collins made up her mind to put on the party harness some time ago. All of her well-documented equivocation about Kavanaugh, which continued to the very end, was a waste of everyone’s time.

 

The following note by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

California Dreamin’

The LA times has released polls of likely voters in 8 California congressional districts. Josh Marshall highlights the good news for Team Blue:

“Look at this new set of polls from California. The gist is that Republicans are at risk of losing a bunch of suburban seats the party has held for decades. In other words, they’re looking at a possible total wipe out. Democrats universal loathe Devin Nunes. But he’s generally been seen — rightly — to be safe in this cycle. But look at the numbers. He’s at 53 percent versus 45 percent for Andrew Janz. That’s still a pretty solid position to be in. But that’s not safe anymore. Duncan Hunter, under indictment but in an extremely Republican district, is up by only 2 points over Campa-Najjar.

Like everyone else, I’ve been focused more on congressional than on state and local elections lately. But a dramatic story is slowly developing in midwestern gubernatorial races, which I wrote about at New York.

[I]n the very Rust Belt areas that gave Trump his crucial Electoral Vote margin in 2016, Democrats are poised to make major gains in gubernatorial races, reversing a red wave that captured statehouses across the region in 2010 and 2014. As Reid Wilson notes, the turnaround is dramatic:

“Trump won Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016, two of the “blue wall” states that had voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992. He cruised to victory in Iowa and Ohio, swing states Barack Obama won twice. And he came within 45,000 votes of winning Minnesota, a state that last voted Republican when Richard Nixon was on the ballot.

“His wins added to a rightward drift that has happened in the Midwest in recent years. Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature in all five of those states, and the party owns most of the U.S. House seats in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio.

“[F]ive weeks before Election Day, public polls show Democrats surging in races up and down the ballot in those Midwestern states, and even in less competitive states like conservative Kansas and liberal Illinois.”

Democrats could pick up six net governorships in the Midwest in November. They are strongly favored in Michigan, where outgoing two-term Republican governor Rick Snyder is very unpopular, and Democratic former state legislative leader Gretchen Whitmer has maintained about a ten-point lead over Attorney General Bill Schuette. They have an even bigger lead in Illinois, where Democrat J.B. Pritzker is outspending the deep-pocketed Republican incumbent Bruce Rauner. In Wisconsin, the steady survivor of many challenges Scott Walker may have finally run out of luck; he’s trailing Democrat Tony Evers by a steadily growing margin. And Democrats have been recently pulling even with initially favored Republicans in Ohio (where Richard Cordray has caught and maybe passed Mike DeWine in recent polling), Iowa (self-financed Fred Hubbell now leads steadily fading incumbent Kim Reynolds), and even Kansas (Democratic legislator Laura Kelly is dead even with Kris Kobach as a divided Republican Party splinters even further).

In Minnesota, Republican hopes of reclaiming the governorship declined when former Governor Tim Pawlenty lost his primary; his vanquisher, Jeff Johnson, is now well behind Democrat Tim Walz.

As Wilson observed, these gubernatorial races anchor tickets in states with a lot of other high-profile races going on. Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin all rank high on lists of battlegrounds where control of state legislatures (and future redistricting) are on the table. There are significant Senate races in Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. And there are competitive House races in nearly every midwestern state, including (according to the Cook Political Report) two in Iowa; four in Illinois; two in Kansas; two in Michigan; four in Minnesota; one in Missouri; two in Ohio; and one in Wisconsin.

Looking forward, trends in these heartland states could also tell us a lot about the shape of the 2020 presidential contest. Aside from Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump famously won by an eyelash in 2016, he won large victories in Ohio (by eight points) and Iowa (nearly ten points). If those states are turning against Trump’s party so quickly, his path to reelection could be treacherous indeed.

Some highlights from “GOP sees Kavanaugh as boost for Senate, danger for House” by Scott Wong, Lisa Hagen and Mike Lillis: “A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marish survey released Wednesday shows the Democratic advantage has basically vanished. Once a 10-point margin for Democrats in July is now only a 2-point gap between Democrats and Republicans who consider the elections “very important.”…Polling released from Harvard CAPS/Harris on Monday showed that registered Democratic voters are slightly more likely to vote than Republican and independent voters based on the battle over the Kavanaugh nomination, which could provide some comfort to the party. Half of Democratic voters say they’re more likely to vote, compared to 46 percent of GOP voters…But Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC says it has conducted 24,000 interviews in states with Senate races since Thursday that shows the Kavanaugh nomination is not the game changer the GOP claims. The group says it hasn’t moved the needle in horse-race polling in Trump states, arguing that health care is still the top issue…While Trump’s attacks on Ford could excite the [GOP] base, many believe it could do lasting damage with independents and female, suburban voters whose support endangered House Republicans will need if they are to survive in November.”

Lillis, Hagen and Wong also note that “Democrats, meanwhile, have already been energized by what appears to be a backlash against the mercurial president, especially among female voters and candidates, who are running in record numbers this cycle…“The women of America are very energized — and they started to be energized on the 21st of January 2017. It has not dissipated,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the Democratic whip, told a small group of reporters in his Capitol office. “And while I believe there’s some energy on the other side as well, I don’t think it matches the energy that was created on our side, which was already at a high level.”…If the Kavanaugh nomination is derailed, Republicans like Freedom Caucus Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) believe the defeat will deflate the base and depress turnout in November. But others argue it could mobilize GOP voters — at least in Senate races.” While some very recent polls do show an uptick in GOP base voter enthusiasm, it’s unlikely that it will exceed the increase in voter enthusiasm among Democrats. Much depends on the wild card that will be played today, the results of the F.B.I.’s Kavanaugh investigation. Don’t be shocked if any GOP base Kavanaugh bump evaporates in the month ahead, as voters begin focusing on issues of concern that can actually be affected by their votes.

In his article, “Brett Kavanaugh Is Patient Zero” Ronald Brownstein writes in The Atlantic: “If Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is truly concerned about preserving the Court’s legitimacy in American life, as he’s often suggested, Brett Kavanaugh has become his worst nightmare…Before the disputed Bush v. Gore decision, which ended the recount in the 2000 presidential election, about half of Americans routinely expressed a great deal of confidence in the Court, according to Gallup polling. That number has fallen to 40 percent or less since the mid-2000s; in the latest Gallup measurement, from June, just one-third of Democrats said they had faith in the Court, compared with about two-fifths of Republicans…After Friday’s Senate Judiciary Committee session, Kavanaugh is facing a renewed FBI investigation into the sexual-assault charges against him from Christine Blasey Ford. But even if that inquiry fails to produce decisive evidence, and Senate Republicans push through his nomination, the tactics Kavanaugh has already employed to preserve his candidacy are bound to stoke Roberts’s greatest fear…if the Senate confirms Kavanaugh, it will present Roberts with a justice whose every decision will be viewed through the lens of the partisan and tribal animosities he inflamed to defend his nomination…In every possible way, he validated the portrait that critics had painted of him as a Republican operative in robes.”

At law.com, Karen Sloan reports that “900+ Law Profs Say Kavanaugh Lacks ‘Judicial Temperament,’ in Letter to Senate,” and observes that “The list of signatories is growing by the hour, and organizers plan to send the letter to senators on Thursday. As of Wednesday morning, 907 professors from 154 law schools had signed on…We have differing views about the other qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh,” the letter reads. “But we are united, as professors of law and scholars of judicial institutions, in believing that Judge Kavanaugh did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land…A separate group of 660 female law professor are also planning to send their own letter to the the Senate Thursday, arguing that Kavanaugh cannot be impartial and that he was especially condescending toward women senators during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.”

Kavanaugh’s evangelical conservative supporters won’t like it much, but “The nation’s largest group of Christian churches on Wednesday called for the withdrawal of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court,” notes Avery Anapole, writing at the Hill. “The National Council of Churches, which represents 38 denominations in the US, wrote in a statement on their website that they believe Kavanaugh has “disqualified himself from this lifetime appointment and must step aside immediately…”Judge Kavanaugh exhibited extreme partisan bias and disrespect towards certain members of the committee and thereby demonstrated that he possesses neither the temperament nor the character essential for a member of the highest court in our nation,” the statement read…The National Council of Churches alleged that Kavanaugh’s testimony included “several misstatements and some outright falsehoods,” including some related to Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school party in the 1980s.”

“Several Democratic candidates around the country are conducting shrewd, intelligent campaigns for Congress, focusing on real issues and letting the Trumps fall where they may,” writes Richardf Hermann in “A Democratic midterms strategy” at The Wayne Post. “They realize that they do not need to fulminate incessantly against President Trump’s countless foibles, faults and failures. He does this very ably all by himself. He is the perfect vehicle for keeping his mayhem front and center, reminding voters daily why it is essential to come out and vote against his enablers in November…Trump’s inability to stop tweeting, turn off the TV and actually govern permits Democrats to zero in on issues that matter to voters: a broken and obscenely expensive healthcare system; K-12 education that has fallen behind the rest of the developed world; unaffordable higher education that often does not lead to a decent job; blindness to the massive workplace changes about to hit us from technological innovation; expanding income inequality; collapsing infrastructure; climate change denial; inept disaster response; an unfair tax system that favors the wealthy; unsustainable entitlement programs; an ignored opiod crisis; and disastrous deregulatory initiatives that will sicken and even kill Americans.”

The following note by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Rebuilding the Blue Wall in the Rustbelt

Reid Wilson has a good article about this in The Hill. For reference, here are current RCP poll averages for D candidates for Governor and Senator in Rustbelt-ish states (note: not all of these states were typically included in the Blue Wall category).

Governor:

Some excerpts from three Working America e-blasts by executive director Matt Morrison, following up to his New York Times op-ed, “The Best Way for Democrats to Win Working-Class Voters“:

Our view of what’s working

In addition to what messages work with voters, we want to use our experience and analytics to share what’s proving to be most effective this cycle.

The Persuadable Voter: With such a volatile, yet seemingly polarized electorate, identifying the best voters to move from being undecided or opposed to supporting our candidates is essential, but difficult. One way we are solving this problem is by using our store of dozens of clinical persuasion experiments from the last eight years to identify the type of voter who is consistently responsive to canvass contact. This meta-analysis tells us that from Tacoma to Greensboro, and places in between, certain types of voters will consistently be persuadable.

While some of the attributes of this group are unsurprising —no college degree, younger, etc. — it is determining how these demographic and behavioral traits combine that makes the targeting more efficient. Per calculations by the Analyst Institute, this approach can increase our targeting efficiency by 80 percent.

To put these lessons into practice, Working America ran additional experiments earlier this cycle to validate that the model works in different environments (a Midwestern gubernatorial race and a coastal U.S. House contest). We are finding success among both expected and unexpected targets. Segments of our best persuasion targets this year include:

• Republicans and conservative voters under age 50
• Non-college female voters
• Latinx voters, many of whom regularly vote

Our Mobilization Targets: Similar to the meta-analysis of our persuasion experiments, we have combined the statistical power of dozens of turnout experiments to model which voters are most likely to increase their voter participation rates.

Much of the existing of meta-analysis, such as Gerber and Green’s authoritative book Get Out the Vote, points us to target lower-propensity voters (i.e. those with a 30%-50% likelihood to vote). That guidance is especially useful when the election context allows us to focus on these low-propensity voters, accepting that a large share will not vote even after being contacted.

What our new meta-analysis shows us is that there may be opportunities for increased turnout where we haven’t been looking, including among important segments of high-propensity voters (65%-80% vote likelihood). We have found this group can be mobilized as efficiently as lower-propensity voters — meaning we can achieve a similar proportion of vote gain, while spending less time and fewer resources in September and October trying to convince harder-to-reach low-propensity voters to turn out, and more time on the best bets. Examples of these types of voters include:

• Previously contacted voters, usually from earlier in the year or even earlier election cycles
• Those with whom we have the strongest ideological agreement

Importantly, mode of voting matters both in the short term and long term. During our work in 2014 in states with big vote-by-mail and early vote electorates, not only did we see increased turnout gains that cycle, but most of that increased turnout impact remained intact during the 2016 election two years later. As we think about 2018 as an opportunity to win more votes now, we are also looking at it from the perspective of how we realize the vote gain in 2020.

Consistent Engagement: The refrain every election cycle is that we must engage voters year-round, not just the last few months before an election. Yet, quantifying the value of that sustained engagement has proven difficult, leaving many to allocate resources and program to the same narrow window.

Our research shows that sustained organizing and engagement — whether done at the doors or through digital channels, or whether the target is persuasion or mobilization — consistently results in measurable vote gain effects 3-5X larger than late contact alone.

Many of the communities where political engagement has the most potential to increase — those with more voters who are people of color, young and low-income — simply do not receive this type of investment. Yet, our research finds time and again that shifting resources to contact these voters early and again during the last few months of an election is not only cost-neutral, but in most cases, significantly decreases the cost per vote.

——-

Highlights from the field:

I. We Are Growing: 11 states, dozens of campaigns and growing

II. “Minting” Progressive Voters: How we are using analytics to realign the politics of millions of members

III. The Digital Difference: Our high impact Door to Digital GOTV program is coming this Fall.

IV. Final Notes: Fran’s Front Porch, and Jane’s new documentary

I. We are growing. As of this writing, we are running voter contact programs out of a dozen offices across ten states (FL, CT, PA, OH, MI, IL, IA, MN, NM, ND, and CA), and adding more locations each week. By the end of the election cycle, we will have visited over 2.2 million voters and reached 650,000 through face to face conversations in dozens of important races. Some of our most exciting work is in races like PA-17, where Conor Lamb will defend the only House special election victory for Democrats since the Trump election. Another example is in Tallahassee and in Jacksonville, where we are fighting for Andrew Gillum, who would be the first African American governor in Florida history.

Despite the national political environment, most voters are focused on what’s closest to home—affordable healthcare, arguably the top issue this cycle. One story from the Minnesota gubernatorial contest:

One couple who identified as health care voters told us they were voting for conservative GOP nominee Jeff Johnson this election because they are conservative. The went on to say “honestly, we haven’t spent too much time thinking about it yet because our son is in the hospital.” They shared that they were having a rough time because they’re worried about their son’s hospital bills and how to pay for them when he got better, all while hoping the treatments were working. The canvasser responded by saying, “You know, that’s exactly why I’m here. I’m really worried about health insurance for my family too, and that’s why I’m talking to people about Tim Walz. He is pushing for a public option. No one should lose their house for hospital bills.” The couple agreed and promised to reconsider their vote. 

Indeed, when we look at elections across the country, those who are worried about health care back our endorsed candidates by a 25 percentage point margin, even when controlling for the partisan lean of voters.

II. “Minting” Progressive Voters. You may recall seeing our growing body of clinical research showing the multiplier effect on voter behavior derived from being a Working America member. An additional insight is that the impact lasts for years.

We studied the long-term effect of increasing voter turnout in 2014 elections in Iowa and Washington. In 2014, we added 4 votes for every 100 conversations. In a confirmation that voting can be habit forming, 2 of the 4 extra votes turned out in the 2016 contests.

This type of evidence points to the importance of early organizing in shaping long-term voter behavior. In a measurable way, Working America is literally building up a bulwark of votes with every conversation we have right now that will make the difference in the 2020 presidential race.

III. The Working America Digital Difference in 100s of Elections. Digital communications allow us to reach exponentially more voters. Our approach starts by establishing a relationship at the door and is amplified through digital channels. This layered communications combination shows remarkable potential to gain more votes at 1/8th the costs of a typical peer-to-peer text messaging program. We will be sending out a list of races around the country where our digital GOTV program aimed at our 3 million Working America members will add thousands of votes for our candidates.

What It All Means. We are building a set of tools that will win more elections. More importantly, they can be used to change how working people approach political AND economic choices for the long haul. These tools are our building blocks for large-scale engagement to make the economy fairer for working people.

—————

As part of our political program this year, we have revisited a number of Trump voters we canvassed in 2016. In January of that year, we sounded the alarm about Trump’s appeal to Ohio and Pennsylvania swing voters at a time when he was still widely dismissed. We saw that, among Republican voters, Trump had more support than all other GOP candidates combined. But what proved even more consequential were the 1 in 4 Democrats who planned to vote for him.

Here is what we have learned from these recent conversations in central Ohio and southwest Pennsylvania:

1. The defection of these Trump voters from GOP candidates toward Democrats is widespread. Those most likely to defect were:
   1. Mid-partisan and Democratic-leaning voters
   2. Voters with a four-year college degree
   3. Voters aged 50-70
2. Better-known Democratic incumbents were more likely to benefit from these votes than lesser-known challengers.
3. The issues that are driving the most defectors to Democrats are affordable health care and concern about the economy.

It seems that this is about more than just a partisan shift. From our vantage point, these voters reflect the great volatility of American politics over the last decade. These swing voters are people who do not relate to either party, but are yearning for something to change.

To get a sense of what we mean, watch for yourself:

To see the data on these responses, click here.

So what does it all mean?

The progressive challenge is not just how we win 2018, but how we establish a home for voters who are adrift that stabilizes politics for an economically progressive governing majority.