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ArcticStones's avatar

DEPRESSING NEWS

(Sharing here because The DownBallot is a data-driven community.)

In a study set to be released later today, the group behind the letter-writing effort, the nonpartisan Vote Forward, found that personal messages sent to more than 5 million occasional voters deemed at risk of staying home last fall had no effect on turnout.

https://politicalwire.com/2025/06/10/letter-writing-campaigns-have-no-impact-on-turnout/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/06/democrats-progressives-campaign-organizing/683069/

PS. Along with many others, I spent a lot of time writing GOTV cards. While I don’t regret a moment of that, I may have to look for better ways to contribute in 2026 and special elections before that.

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James Trout's avatar

Sadly this isn't a surprise. Too many left leaning people of all types are simply shallow individuals who insist and insist and insist on treating their vote as a valentine. Not as a chess move, an obligation, or a duty. For them, the very idea of voting against someone instead of for someone is absurd and unthinkable. This is why Republicans have an edge. To them, the very idea of Democrats being in charge of ANYTHING is unacceptable. Too many on the left simply do not feel that way with regards to Republicans being in charge.

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Techno00's avatar

Hey stop with the left-bashing. I and my family are very left and we wrote numerous postcards and did numerous GOTV for our State Senator. I’m getting really sick of the left being blamed for everything — if someone who isn’t left loses an election, the left is told they should have voted. If someone who is left loses an election, the left is told they are “too far-left” or a centrist or moderate should have been run.

If we’re going to be a big tent party, we have to show it. That may mean compromising with the left sometimes, just as the left (or at least some of the left) have been willing to compromise with the center. Compromise is a two-way street.

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James Trout's avatar

For the trillionth time, by "the left" I mean most Democratic voters in general. Not just "progressives" who are NOT the base of the Democratic Party BTW.

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Techno00's avatar

Ah, got it. Misread your comment, apologies. I do agree that far too few Dems are willing to make sacrifices — like, I don’t agree with Beth Davidson in my district (NY-17) but I’m prepared to vote for her if she is the nominee.

(Though I’ll note that while we aren’t the base, we’re still a part of the party regardless.)

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James Trout's avatar

I would trust "progressives" more if more of them would accept that the ideology of the majority of Americans is closer to that of Virginia's than that of Vermont's. If the latter were true, we'd see more elected officials in the mold of Bernie Sanders than we do.

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Techno00's avatar

I mean, I know some of the ideas I support aren’t popular with a lot of Americans. I even support some ideas that are quite far out from most Dems — I’m a strong supporter of copyright reform for example.

My stance is that support for ideas can change over time. Maybe people don’t support something now, but in the future they might — and vice versa. See the LGBT debate for example, and its ebbs and flows.

Here’s a question I have for you — what do you think progressives should do, if they were to accept the Virginia vs. Vermont comparison you made? Does it become a messaging question? A policy question? A candidate recruitment question? I’ve always believed baby steps are still better than none, so I’m willing to play the long game myself. I’m just curious to know what you think, since you don’t seem to be a progressive yourself.

(I apologize if I’m not clear, I’m battling a nasty cold right now.)

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James Trout's avatar

They should keep in mind that American politics is bottom up, rather than top down. That ultimately voters are the deciders. If they want to push their preferred policies, voters have to ultimately accept them, and that in many cases it might take longer than they (or frankly I) would like. That if their candidates lose, it's not because "rigged" or "conspiracy" it's because their preferred candidate's ideas are simply not popular with the electorate as a whole.

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PollJunkie's avatar

I agree about 2016 not 2020. Rubio and Cruz didn't drop out in 2016. Even Warren was running as a progressive but at that point Biden was the best candidate to run the general election in my view so I don't think they made a mistake. Iff Bernie became president, he would have made the same mistakes on the border and the same post COVID and the russo-ukrainian supply shocks and inflation around the world would have hit him hard which would have ended the Progressive movement. Progressives should be thankful for Biden taking most of the blame. But if Trump won, the MAGA movement would have been finished too.

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Techno00's avatar

That’s actually a really balanced, logical way of looking at it. Thanks.

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PollJunkie's avatar

There are other top down elements too. Retiring reps and Senators often collude with local party machines, activist groups and DC to stop messy primaries, promote their preferred successor and coalesce behind a candidate in terms of support, endorsements and fundraising which is true for all wings of the party.

Single issue loaded Super PACs flood the airwaves with negative attack ads which are not related at all to their single issue. The electorate is also malleable and some polls found that Hillary Clinton's debates and her campaign rhetoric contributed to what is now termed "the Great Awokening" by liberalizing attitudes of half of America to many issues, especially systematic racism while Trump's did the opposite on issues like Immigration and not privatizing or "touching" Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security compared to before the 2016 primaries.

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Colin Artinger's avatar

That's really a great question. For me, it's as simple as ditching the purity tests when it comes to candidates. You duke it out in the primary for your preferred candidate and then after a nominee is chosen, you go all in for that person because continuous wins are how you achieve long term policy goals and nearly every democrat is better than nearly every republican on progressive issues. I'm an early 30s attorney in the middle of the democratic party (not far left, not moderate) and the "purity tests" my law school friends hold democrats to to "earn" their votes are impossible. I don't live in an area with many competitive races (STL suburbs in Illinois), but, personally, I will almost always vote for the candidate who gives us the best chance of winning a seat who will support 90% of democratic priorities.

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Mark's avatar

It's situational and issue-dependent. Just as the Republican figure to emerge from the ashes of their party's 2012 nadir was absolutely nothing like what anybody in the politics game expected, I think it's just as likely to be true about the next Democratic figure to emerge from the current abyss.

As Americans face the closure of thousands of hospitals because of our broken health care system and the atomic bomb of AI transforming every aspect of their lives in the next few years, I'm not convinced they'll conclude that Abigail Spanberger or Terry McAuliffe is their best hope for salvation. Maybe they will if 2028 turns out to be a 1996 or 2000-style low-stakes election. Seems unlikely.

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Paleo's avatar

He's not left bashing. He's simply bashing the left.

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James Trout's avatar

We get it. In your eyes the only people who qualify as "the left" are "progressives"......and those to their left.

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PollJunkie's avatar

Progressives are simultaneously the base of the Democratic party and have hijacked it but they also are not. Polls found that most self described socialists, progressives and very liberal voters voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic party while libertarians did so for the GOP. Socialists deny this because they want to project that they will not vote unless the party is more leftist and Centrists also deny this because they want to sideline the entire base in the name of Socialists and the "far left" because they won't vote anyway. Also, the centrist Welcomefest repeatedly referred to Liberals and Progressives as the base of the party who need to be sidelined. I would not call myself a progressive but I am a liberal who can vote for the right "moderate" or "progressive" candidate.

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Paleo's avatar

"by "the left" I mean most Democratic voters in general."

"Too many left leaning people of all types are simply shallow individuals who insist and insist and insist on treating their vote as a valentine."

Therefore, most Democratic voters in general are simply shallow individuals. Got it.

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James Trout's avatar

Yes, many of us are shallow individuals who don't see the trees from the forests.

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stevk's avatar

"shallow individuals"? WTF are you talking about? Seriously, this is not helpful to any kind of constructive dialogue...

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HumanFromJersey's avatar

Whether or not this is true, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the efficacy of this particular form of outreach. And it’s worth noting that the data we have suggests that no voters in 2024 were more likely to favor Trump than Harris, and by a larger gap than among people who did vote. I love to be frustrated with Democratic voters too, but pathologizing half the political spectrum isn’t helpful.

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ArcticStones's avatar

I have been impatiently waiting for Field Team 6 to release its state-by-state data of their voter registration efforts. I am hoping that will tell a different story!

(The article in The Atlantic is paywalled. Feel free to add a gift link if you can.)

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JanusIanitos's avatar

That's interesting and odd at the same time. I swear I read in past cycles that they found GOTV cards were one of the most effective ways of increasing turnout.

I wonder if this is a trend-fitting effect? If the cycle is one where people are more open to voting for democrats, the cards will be more effective. If it is a cycle where they are not, the cards will have little to no effect.

In 2016 and 2024 it seems there was a lot of people that were meh on our nominees for various reasons. In 2020 that might have been the case as well, but the hate for Trump overwhelmed that.

If the above idea is true, it'd result in years like 2008 or 2012 being years where GOTV cards did have an effect, but years like 2016 being ones where the effect is muted.

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Zero Cool's avatar

Regarding letter writing campaigns:

We had been doing them for a long time, as far back as in 2004 during John Kerry’s presidential campaign. Letter writing efforts particularly targeted states like OH which were key states Kerry needed to win. Naturally, he did not win OH as well as the presidency.

I get the impression that letter writing efforts are better done early on in a primary campaign to raise awareness about a political candidate. Letters to the editor on the other hand don’t really make an impact period.

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HumanFromJersey's avatar

This does not come as a surprise to those of us who have worked in field on political campaigns. The evidence around postcards has always been very flimsy compared to other forms of voter outreach. The races that have found it to have an impact are almost all lower-turnout races.

The gold standard for swaying voters is still face-to-face conversations. Postcards are fine for volunteers who cant walk between houses or talk on the phone, or are very far from any competitive district, but they also have a tendency to divert volunteers away from better forms of voter contact, which is why postcard drives are so rarely run by campaigns themselves. This means that the groups doing postcards are often from officially nonpartisan groups that don’t even mention specific candidates in their scripts because they’re not legally allowed to endorse. Among those who do endorse, the groups often don’t have access to the same level of voter targeting data as the campaigns and just kind of send the letters out to dem-leaning areas with the idea that it should have a generally positive impact. Of course, given what we know from studies it’s not clear if even a postcard campaign operating on really good data would have much impact on something like a presidential election. My recommendation for people who want to write postcards is to find some obscure down-ballot race where voters might not be familiar with the candidates and your message will carry more value.

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dragonfire5004's avatar

My opinion: Postcards and letters are great for special elections, maybe midterms. Not so much for presidential elections when even infrequent and unlikely voters tend to show up. The lower the turnout the bigger the impact these would have.

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