What the Arizona poll doesn’t tell us about the tight race?

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Policy


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October 11, 2024

There is simply no effort on the GOP side that approaches the size and sophistication of the Worker Power canvas.

A volunteer peruses political literature while cheering on local Democrats on September 7, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona.

(Caitlin O’Hara/Bloomberg)

If the elections were tomorrow, recent polls in arizona suggesting that Trump would narrowly win the state. But it’s more than possible that, like the 2022 gubernatorial race — which Democrat Katie Hobbs eventually won after trailing Kari Lake for much of the election season — the polls are missing some crucial points. surface trends.

Since July, UNITE HERE Local 11 MPs have knocked on almost three quarters of a million doors with community members from the social welfare organization Worker Power, many of whom belong to low-voting groups such as young people. , people of color, or poor or low-income. It’s the biggest and most effective canvas the group has ever produced, says Brendan Walsh, managing director of Worker Power, who believes it’s a game-changer.

In 2020, the UNITE HERE/Worker Power canvass knocked on more than 1 million doors in Arizona and was a vital part of Biden’s quest to win the state’s 11 electoral votes. This time, they’re using sophisticated voter information software to reach Democratic-leaning, independent and undecided voters, knocking on 1.3 million doors and talking to a quarter of a million voters. They will almost certainly surpass those numbers.

This week, Worker Power released data based on interviews with nearly 150,000 people in the state since the canvass launched in July. There is tremendous concern about reproductive rights, especially among affluent suburban voters — and that 80 percent of voters for whom it was the number one issue planned to vote for Kamala Harris. They found a significant number of moderate, GOP-leaning voters in these suburbs—the kind of voters who Recent endorsement by former Sen. Jeff Flake Kamala Harris really counts – they planned to vote for Harris. And they found that among Democratic-leaning voters who said the economy was their top priority, most planned to vote for Harris. That finding suggests Trump’s strategy of using economic concerns to woo Democratic-leaning voters isn’t working in key constituencies across the state. More importantly, given the alleged power of immigration as a key issue in the 2024 election, the posters found it was not in the top three among Democratic and independent voters they surveyed. It was pushed out by concerns about access to abortion, the economy and democracy.

Well, it’s possible that many of these voters, too often dismissed as “low propensity” or “low engagement” voters, will end up not voting. But in the last few election cycles, representatives of Labor and other groups have had significant success in electing voters. And despite the GOP’s efforts to curb early voting, ballots went out to every Arizonan this week. This means, Walsh explains, that “every day now is as important as Election Day.”

Given this complex reality, the ground game is more important than ever. And there is simply no effort on the GOP side that approaches the size and sophistication of the Worker Power canvas. “We have the tools to make a difference,” explains Walsh. We’ve “proven it every election” over the past few cycles, helping Democrats win the US Senate, the governorship and the attorney general office, and put Arizona in the Biden column in 2020. That year, in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, UNITE HERE Local 11 candidates were far and away the most important in-person campaign presence in an election where most searches had returned to the Internet. This time, building on the knowledge honed in 2020, they are embarking on an even greater effort.

Current number

Cover of the October 2024 issue

There are currently 250 UNITE HERE Local 11 and Worker Power agents on the ground, most from California and Arizona, but some from as far away as Florida, Iowa, and even another critical swing state, Pennsylvania. Many of them have been knocking in Arizona since July, braving triple-digit temperatures every day to reach voters.

“When the election is within 1 to 2 percent, that’s when fieldwork really counts,” says Walsh. “I think we’re doing better than the polls show.”

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Sasha Abramsky



It’s Sasha Abramsky The Nationwestern correspondent. He is the author of several books, including The American Way of Poverty, The house of twenty thousand books, Little Wonder: The fabulous story of Lottie Dod, the world’s first female sports superstarand most recently Chaos Comes: The Battle Against the Far Right Takeover of Small Town America.

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