Dear MoveOn member,
At the beginning of the year, we knew our top priority in 2020 would be defeating Donald Trump for re-election. In fact, we'd spent much of 2019 planning for this fight.
Then COVID-19 hit, and most of the grassroots tactics we planned to use went straight out the window.
Indoor rallies? Can't do it. Not safe. Meetups at people's homes and coffee shops? Forget it. All of the tried-and-true tactics for contacting voters and getting out the vote suddenly had to be scrapped, forcing us to reinvent our entire campaign model while staring down the most dangerous election of our lives.
Then something amazing happened: We found a campaign approach that's not only safe but as much as 10 times more effective than what we've done in the past.1
We're calling it "polling place vote mobilization," and if we can raise enough money to go really big, it has the potential to increase Biden's share of the vote in critically important swing states and tip the key races needed to end Mitch McConnell's control of the Senate—all while keeping all of us safe and healthy.
With only 30 days to go in the election, will you start a $3 weekly donation right now to help run this game-changing program in the most important battleground states? (MoveOn will bill your weekly donation to your credit card once a month starting today and will contact you shortly after the election to see if you want to modify or cancel your weekly donation.)
No, I'm sorry, I can't chip in weekly.
Here's how polling place vote mobilization works:
On Election Day in heavily Democratic precincts in key battleground states, organizers stand outside polling places, speak to voters as they come out, and ask them to text their friends, urging them to vote as well.
It's that simple. Several organizers can team up to cover a single polling place, and as more and more people start texting, one single organizer can typically generate 40-50 voter contacts per hour—10 times what they would get going door to door or calling on the phone. It works at in-person early voting places too, which many states allow.
There are a few key reasons why this works so well:
- It's much more effective for a voter to be contacted by a friend than by a campaign or a stranger. When a friend asks if you've voted yet and what your plan is, there's a subtle but powerful social influence because of the implied accountability if you get "caught" not doing what you said you were going to do. Many studies have shown that this is effective.2
- People are most willing to contact their friends and urge them to vote right after they've voted themselves. Think about it: When you go to vote and put on that little sticker, it feels really good, right? If it's an important election, you probably walk out of the polling place feeling pretty pumped. It's something researchers call a "civic high," and if we can contact tens of thousands of voters right at that moment, the results will be huge.
- It's safe. Volunteers can do this while wearing a mask, avoid engaging voters who aren't masking, and still contact plenty of people.
When COVID-19 hit, we were hoping that we'd be able to come up with socially distanced tactics that would be at least close to as effective as door-to-door canvassing. But they say necessity is the mother of invention, and when we were forced to scrap our plans and start over, we came up with something even better.
Will you start a $3 weekly donation to help fund this groundbreaking get-out-the-vote strategy? (MoveOn will bill your weekly donation to your credit card once a month starting today and will contact you shortly after the election to see if you want to modify or cancel your weekly donation.)
No, I'm sorry, I can't chip in weekly.
Listen, Mar, the latest polls show that this election is still way too close to call in key battleground states like Florida and Arizona. Polling experts say Trump still has about a 20% chance of winning this election, and a 20% chance of four more years of Trump is way too much.3
This isn't just a contest between Trump and Biden; democracy itself is on the ballot. If there was any remaining doubt, Tuesday's debate confirmed it.
We are 100% committed to winning this election—and doing so without putting MoveOn members at risk. Polling place vote mobilization is the perfect breakthrough we needed to do just that.
Start a $3 weekly donation now to help power our nationwide polling place voter mobilization effort to defeat Donald Trump and stay safe at the same time. (MoveOn will bill your weekly donation to your credit card once a month starting today and will contact you shortly after the election to see if you want to modify or cancel your weekly donation.)
No, I'm sorry, I can't chip in weekly.
Thanks for all you do.
–Kate, Dom, Nick, Tzyh, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. "The Power of List-based Polling Place Vote Tripling," VoteTripling.org, accessed October 1, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/144875?t=8&akid=277314%2E10220574%2ETWx7vM
2. "Affect, Social Pressure and Prosocial Motivation: Field Experimental Evidence of the Mobilizing Effects of Pride, Shame and Publicizing Voting Behavior," Yale ISPS Political Behavior, 2010
https://act.moveon.org/go/144909?t=10&akid=277314%2E10220574%2ETWx7vM
3. "Biden is favored to win the election," FiveThirtyEight, October 2, 2020
https://act.moveon.org/go/144910?t=12&akid=277314%2E10220574%2ETWx7vM
Want to support our work? As Robert Reich says, "No organization in America has a better track record of success in developing cutting-edge strategies to get out the vote and win elections than MoveOn." But it will take each of us doing our part to defeat Trump and flip the Senate!
Will you chip in $3 a week to help MoveOn combat right-wing lies, make sure every vote is counted, and win this election?
No, I'm sorry, I can't chip in weekly.
PAID FOR BY MOVEON
This email was sent to Mar Alfaro on October 4, 2020. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. MoveOn's privacy policy was recently updated. To read our new privacy policy, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.
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