Philadelphia. Monday morning, October 28, 2024. Last night I arrived in the City of Brotherly Love to do my part fighting fascism. I will be working on voter protection efforts until all the votes are counted in Philadelphia sometime next week. The vote count takes so long in Philadelphia because state law - something enacted by a Republican legislature for less-than-honest reasons - prohibits election workers from preparing mail ballots to be counted until Election Day. Mail ballots are more labor intensive to process than in-person voting because election workers must first check to make sure it is property signed and dated, they have to open envelopes and further check that the ballot is properly placed into a privacy envelope that has no writing on it that reveals the voter’s name or who they are supporting (seriously, in Pennsylvania mail ballots can be rejected if the voter writes “thank you, election workers! [signed] Robb Smith”), and then check to make sure the voter is registered and all relevant information is confirmed. After that the ballot can be counted just like it would if you voted in person (by inserting it into a tabulation machine). Other states - for instance, North Carolina - do this prep work in advance of Election Day so they can just count them on November 5th. In Pennsylvania, election workers are doing the prep work and tabulation round the clock after the polls close (they can do prep while the polls are open, but that’s not a lot of time for this kind of work). Thus, North Carolina gets it votes counted quickly while Pennsylvania takes days. So, remember that when you are wondering why we don’t yet have the final result in the Keystone Stone. And it is why I will be here until almost a week after Election Day. Anyway, today’s post is not about this; it’s about getting out the vote.
A long time ago, a political organizer friend of mine (who will remain anonymous) said to me after another campaign had ended that he wasn’t sure that all the work and money they spent on GOTV made a difference. He wondered if the same result would have occurred if they had done nothing. It was something he had wondered about in previous elections as well. Frankly, so had I. That said, there was no way we would consider not doing it.
Source: USA Today; photo credit: Eliza Collins
In the Boston mayor’s race in 2013, there was a close race between state Rep. Marty Walsh and At-Large City Councilor John Connolly. You may remember Walsh. He was Biden’s first Secretary of Labor and is now the executive director of the NHL players union. This race was a close one and split the city along education: the “ed reform” proponents – largely anti-union, pro-charter school, and privileged – came out strongly for Connolly while organized labor supported Walsh, a former building trades union leader. Labor ran a strong and sophisticated GOTV operation on Walsh’s behalf. There was no similar response from his opponent, who seemed to focus on advertising and a modest door knocking campaign by the candidate and perhaps some supporters. Yet the race was close. In the end, Walsh won by about 3.5 points. The vote was split between the working class and non-white neighborhoods (for Walsh) and the white, middle and upper class neighborhoods (for Connolly). The Labor GOTV made the difference.1
GOTV campaigns can improve your chances, but not by as much as you might think. They might improve a candidate’s share by one point. Three points is a great outcome, and that’s probably what Walsh got out of Labor.2 This does not mean that GOTV efforts only get you one to three percent of voters, but most of the voters they contact would have voted anyway.3 In that sense, an increase of even one point can be a huge advantage in a close race.
Like most things in politics, this is only true until it isn’t. Harris’ GOTV operation might blow past this and be responsible for many additional voters, but that’s not the point here. While I think Harris is doing better than the polls suggest,4 the prudent thing to do is take the polling at face value. That means the race is a toss-up. And, if true, that means GOTV will make the difference.
One theory about why Trump did better in 2020 than the polling suggested he would is because Republicans hit the doors while Democrats did not. Due to the pandemic, Democrats chose to find other means of GOTV, such as phone and text banking. As I noted in my last post, in at least two states where UNITE HERE affiliates went out and knocked doors anyway Biden surprisingly won. There’s no reason not to knock doors this year, and Democrats seems to be ahead of Republicans in doing so already.
There is one weekend left before the election. In earlier elections that would be the ballgame, but we have so much early voting now. That does not mean this weekend is not important; it means the last few have been as well. But there will be a lot of votes cast on Election Day this year. Early voting constituted 50% of the vote in 2020 and 30% in 2022. It may be less this year, but what we are seeing is more Republicans choosing to vote early than in the past two elections and more Democrats planning to vote on November 5th.5
GOTV is not just about getting people out to vote on Election Day, of course. It’s about getting to vote period. However, since it appears we have more Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters waiting to vote on Election Day, that means there is still plenty of time to make a real impact.
Get out and knock doors this weekend.6 It doesn’t have to be in a presidential battleground state. There are House pick up opportunities in all sorts of non-battleground states like California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, and Alabama this year. A big victory in House and presidency will undercut efforts for another coup attempt. For more information about picking the right place for you to help, check out Sam Wang’s latest post and try using Vote Maximizer.
There was a very good analysis of the GOTV effort and how it probably gave Walsh the margin he needed for victory, but unfortunately the link is dead and I can no longer find it. I am pretty sure that I can get my hands on it with a little shoe leather, but there is no time for that right now.
Studies have shown that GOTV can increase turnout a little over four points, but that’s on the people they actually contact. Overall, the increase in turnout attributable to GOTV is usually more like one point.
In fact, there is evidence that not only does GOTV efforts mobilize high propensity voters, but it may do so at the expense of mobilizing low propensity voters. However, elections are not about increasing civic participation, they are about winning. That’s why we should not rely on political parties or political campaigns to organize our communities. In this country, that responsibility falls – fairly or not – on community-based organizations and labor unions. That’s where most of your donor dollars should go if you are concerned about building power over the long-term.
I am working on post about this today. I hope to have it ready for publication tomorrow. Time is of the essence right now, so you may see a lot of posting from me over the next week - and some it might not be very long because of my schedule. Follow me on Notes as I may have to use that instead of writing full blog pieces.
This is one reason why the early vote returns that seem to favor Democrats are so good for Harris, if true. If she banks a big lead in Michigan and Pennsylvania going into Election Day and Democrats form a larger share of that day’s voters than in 2020, Trump has to win the day in even larger margins than he did then.
It that’s not your jam, find some other way to help (it is not mine, which is why I do voter protection).
Robb- what’s your Venmo ? I’d love to buy you a couple cheesesteaks for the effort. You will have that going for you ….