2024 Activism

The weekend has arrived, and it’s a great time to do something to help defend democracy.

My local Democrats Abroad chapter is holding a little event tomorrow at a trendy city pub (one of the owners is a Maryland voter). A team will be on hand to help expats check their voter registration and request their ballots. Happily, the t-shirt I ordered back in August arrived just in time:

The DNC is also doing its bit in these last weeks of the campaign! Commenter Scout211 flagged up a DNC press release in the morning open thread: for the first time, they’ll be sending cash to the party committees of all 50 states (and our seven territories) to support downballot candidates. The announcement states that $2.5 million is being disbursed as grants, and that some of this of grant money is earmarked for supporting GOTV organizations focused on Black, Puerto Rican, and native voters (among others).

There’s a POLITICO story (sorry) which offers some more context on exact amounts:

• $400,000 to Florida
• $100,000 to Missouri, to help break the GOP’s state legislature supermajority
• $70,000 to Idaho, with a focus on GOTV for the Nez Perce nation

Democrats in array! What are your plans for the weekend, GOTV or otherwise? I’ve got a ton of batch cooking planned: soup stock, bread, pulled-turkey taco meat, and tomato sauce, since a friend has given me some of her last tomatoes.

Open thread.

Big Weekend PlansPost + Comments (183)

Early voting is starting real soon in some states.

It is advantageous to a campaign to get as much as its vote in early. An early vote counts the same as an Election Day vote but an early vote removes variance. A campaign, like Harris that is highly likely in the lead at this point in time wants there to be less variance while a campaign that is behind (Trump now, Biden in June) wants more variance.

Every campaign will score the voting universe on some combination of the likelihood of an individual actually voting and then likelihood of that individual voting for a particular candidate. I should be scored in both the Harris and Trump GOTV models as Exceedingly Likely to Vote & Exceedingly Likely Harris. Some people might be Iffy to Vote but Exceedingly Likely Harris so the Harris campaign will try to mobilize this class and the Trump campaign will try to demobilize. Other voters might by Likely to Vote and FLIP A COIN at which point both campaigns will try to persuade that voter. Different combinations of scores will produce different strategies.

If I vote early on the first day of in-person early eligibility, I’m transitioning in the data from Exceedingly Likely to Vote to VOTED. Individually that means the Harris campaign can now completely forget about contacting me for anything other than money or volunteer hours. They don’t need to mobilize me. More importantly, if a campaign’s modeling says that they are on pace if by Day 5 they have 52% of people like me already voted to be on track for a win, but 57% of people like me have voted, they can systemically shift resources either within or between states to target mobilization and persuasion of less likely voters. Remember, in all the polling, the Dems have dominated this cycle on 2020 voters. Trump is competitive because he is doing well enough with the seldom to never voters.

Most importantly, an early vote makes that voter information agnostic. No new information that arrives after the vote is cast will change the vote.

So make a plan to vote as early as you can, and then get the people in your life who are less politically attached than routine readers of an Almost Top-10,000 politics blog to vote early with you.

Make plans to vote earlyPost + Comments (224)