2022 Election Roundup
We accomplished so much in 2022 across the country, working in 17 states to advance a progressive agenda. Thousands of staff worked on our campaigns this year, as canvassers, directors, organizers, callers, recruiters, payroll administrators, and more. We have some of the most talented and dedicated staff around- these accomplishments and the resulting victories were only possible because our teams worked together through immense challenges to meet their goals.
Here is a long summary of our extensive work in critical swing districts where every vote counted. Thank you to everyone who made this happen.
Delivering signatures we collected to qualify our initiative for the ballot in San Francisco
Topline Results
U.S. Senate seats we helped win: Pennsylvania, Nevada
U.S. House seats we helped win: MI-08, MN-02, NV-01, NV-03, NV-04, PA-07, PA-17, CA-45, CA-47, CA-49
Governorships we helped win: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Oregon
State Legislature chambers we helped win: Pennsylvania House, Michigan Senate, Michigan House, Minnesota House, Minnesota Senate, probably the Oregon House and Senate
Ballot Initiatives qualified: 3 - Oregon, Oklahoma, San Francisco
Doors Knocked: 1.65 million
In-Person Conversations: 360,0000
Calls: 6.4 million
Phone Conversations: 235,000
Text Conversations: 117,000
Voters Registered: 30,000
Clients we worked with: Black 2 the Future Action Fund, Ceasefire PA, Climate Emergency Advocates, Conservation Voters PA, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic Governor’s Association, Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Environmental Defense Fund Action, Forward Majority Action Fund, Friends of Tina Kotek, Michigan Democratic Party, NARAL Pro-Choice America, New Day Nevada, North Star Prosperity, Planned Parenthood MN, Planned Parenthood PA, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, Oregon Senate Democratic Leadership Fund, Our Voice Our Vote, State Voices, Texas Organizing Project, WorkMoney
Our Work By the Numbers
In Wisconsin, we had organizers on the ground with Planned Parenthood all year, and we peaked with 24 organizers on staff in November pushing young voters to the polls with vast networks of reach months in the making. Our paid voter registration work in Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha, and Green Bay added nearly 9,000 voters to the rolls statewide. And then when the calendar turned to fall, we got to work on the doors. We knocked on 200,000 doors for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, including nearly 20,000 on Election Day alone all across Milwaukee County. Meanwhile, our efforts on the IE side included running field operations for Black 2 The Future Action Fund, Planned Parenthood, and For Our Future, and running a call program for Planned Parenthood, which all combined to pay a visit to 275,000 voters. All told our canvassers had conversations with over 130,000 voters in a race the Governor captured by 70k. While we didn't quite get Mandela Barnes across the finish line, we put up a hell of a fight trying. This is the second straight election our field operation has delivered statewide victories in Wisconsin, and this year's effort fed an incredible run all across the state that also resulted in Democrats fending off a Republican supermajority in the state legislature.
In Pennsylvania ,we also did big things for the second straight election. We partnered with Forward Majority Action Fund on an incredibly important, challenging long-term effort to figure out how to register and engage more Democrats in suburban state legislative districts that will determine the balance of state government power over the course of this decade. Our three-state pilot program with them included the suburbs of Alleghany County north of Pittsburgh, where several districts we targeted wound up flipping red to blue and very likely handing Democrats a new majority in the state house. We registered 4,500 voters in these target districts, then our persuasion and turnout door knocking got to 77,000 households on behalf of For Our Future and Planned Parenthood. We turned out more voters for PPPA in Bucks County, another hot spot on the state house map. That operation crushed it, exceeding goals and driving record Democratic turnout in the region. In Lehigh Valley we did two full passes to target voters in Allentown and Bethlehem. And we showed up on behalf of the League of Conservation Voters in Philadelphia suburbs (known as the collar counties) with the most powerful turnout operation across Delaware, Montgomery, and Chester Counties. We even added a telephone turnout operation to the closing stretch, speaking with an additional 16,000 hard-to-reach voters to confirm voting plans. And our canvassers for NARAL knocked nearly 100,000 doors in Philly proper. Across the Commonwealth we wound up talking to over 66,000 people in person at their homes and helped get enough of them to the polls to help ensure a John Fetterman victory for Senate.
Michigan staff on behalf of the DCCC about to register voters.
In Michigan, our voter registration efforts netted 16,000 new voters statewide; our program with Forward Majority centered in Royal Oak and targeted three state house and two state senate districts high on everybody's list to flip. We ran an operation there that wildly exceeded best case expectations for the program, ultimately registering 8,500 voters in these critical districts. We registered 4,000 more voters on campuses all across the state with NARAL, and we registered nearly 3,000 more in Genesee County as a joint effort with the DCCC, Michigan Democratic Party, and the Democratic Governors Association. Working with the Michigan Dems and the Dan Kildee campaign, we built on the back of our voter registration campaign to knock more than 55,000 doors in MI-08 and help Congressman Kildee crush his Republican opponent in a tough-to-defend district. In Detroit, we built out another canvass with NARAL, knocking on 75,000 doors across Wayne that drove massive turnout by Democrats all around the metro. Democratic statewide candidates won, abortion rights are alive and well, and we flipped all 5 state legislative targets as part of an overall swing to Democratic majorities in both chambers of the state house.
In Oregon we went next level. Two years after qualifying (and ultimately passing) the only two statewide initiatives in the middle of a pandemic, our team qualified another to ensure legislators do their jobs. Votes are still being counted, but so far over 2/3 of Oregonians agree that showing up to vote on legislation is something legislators should be required to do! We partnered with both the House and Senate Democrats to turn out the vote in 7 state house and 2 state senate districts; thus far we have helped deliver key victories in 3 of those 9 districts, and we’re ahead in 5 of 6 yet to be called. All told knocked on over 100,000 doors to help deliver a razor thin victory for Governor-Elect Kotek while preserving likely strong legislative majorities in both chambers.
We noted our work earlier with Black 2 The Future Action Fund in Wisconsin, and our program with them extended well beyond that. We hit the ground in 3 cities in North Carolina and in Los Angeles back in June to talk to voters and start a long-term process of Black power building. We got conversations going early to engage people leading up to primary elections, and we continued those conversations with fresh visits throughout the fall. We added late turnout operations in Atlanta and Racine, and all told from June through the election we wound up knocking on the doors of nearly 400,000 Black voters and having conversations with 90,000 people.
Our work in California didn't end in LA. We registered voters with the DCCC in target Orange County districts, including Katie Porter's newly drawn and challenging 47th, and a high-value flip target in GOP Rep. Michelle Steele’s R-leaning 45th. We qualified a countywide ballot measure in San Francisco that, if passed, will dramatically increase the supply of affordable housing around the city. It is currently running neck and neck with about half the vote reported. And we ran turnout operations in three of the most tightly contested House districts in the state, the 13th, 22nd, and 49th.These House districts may very well wind up determining the balance of power in Washington, and all are currently leaning in our direction as votes continue to pour in. We combined to knock on almost 85,000 doors in these districts.
In Nevada and Minnesota we set out during the summer to build a long, experimental program as part of an Impact Project study of how to most effectively layer multi-channel voter outreach. Our campaigns in each state tested things like adding a mail piece right before or after we knocked on a door; collecting and mailing back pledge-to-vote cards; and using targeted digital prompts right after we spoke with someone to reinforce our messaging at the door. Our results won’t be known for a while, but our impact was much greater and more immediate, too. In Nevada our program knocked on over 160,000 doors from August through Election Day, joining a coordinated effort with NARAL that knocked on another 95,000 to produce conversations with more than 45,000 voters. As we sit here, Senator Cortez-Masto is currently projecting to hold on to her seat by roughly a third of that voter count.
Meanwhile, we combined our Minnesota operation with Planned Parenthood’s state affiliate to target critically important state legislative districts outside of Minneapolis down the stretch. Thanks in part to nearly 100,000 total knocks from our team on the ground, Minnesota’s state house stayed in Democratic hands and we were able to flip the senate back, giving Dems trifecta control in a state that increasingly looks like a very important piece of the 2024 Presidential map.
We topped off our efforts in the field by providing depth to programming in a couple other states, including Texas, where we knocked on nearly 20,000 doors with the Texas Organizing Project, and a similar volume with Black to the Future to bolster Senator Warnock's run to a runoff in Georgia. Earlier in the year, we qualified a ballot initiative in Oklahoma to legalize marijuana that will appear on the ballot in 2024. We collected over 140,000 signatures in just over 8 weeks.
Calls Across the Country
In the Quality Control (QC) department, our team supported 85 Black- and brown-led grassroots organizations doing voter registration work in 8 states (AZ, FL, GA, WI, NC, PA, MI, MN). We QC’d 550,000 voter registration forms in communities of color and had 165,000 conversations with first time registrants who didn't know they were allowed to register previously or didn’t know their voice mattered. We did this work for incredible grassroots organizations across the country, including Real Women Radio, The First Coast Leadership Foundation, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Florida Rising, State Voices Florida, Blueprint NC, NC Asian Americans Together, Unifour One, North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute, NC League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, One Arizona, AZ AANHPI for Equity, PoderLatinX, Corazon, Arizona Coalition for Change (AZC4C), Mi Familia Vota (MFV), Make the Road Pennsylvania, One PA, and PA Voice. These organizations did incredible work, and the quality control we did behind the scenes provided critical support by identifying ways to make the voter registration work more effective and protecting these amazing partners from potential attacks.
We also ran a campaign with WorkMoney that used deep canvassing to sway working class folks who lean independent or Republican to vote in their financial self-interest. We made 5 million phone calls and had almost 200,000 conversations about kitchen table economic issues with WorkMoney members in critical states, and preliminary data indicates these conversations were successful in bringing many people to our side and turning them out to vote.