Number of Highly Effective Deep Canvass Calls Made by People’s Action and Pennsylvania Stands Up Boost Biden’s Margin
Contact: Johanna Kichton, 202.660.0605, press@peoplesaction.org
WASHINGTON, D.C.—People’s Action and its member organization, Pennsylvania Stands Up, today announced updated voter canvassing numbers, showing that the organizations’ deep canvass program played a pivotal role in Biden’s win in the battleground state, helping to flip red counties like Northampton from red to blue.
Biden’s margin of victory hovers around 47,000 votes. This is in a state where People’s Action and Pennsylvania Stands Up canvassers sent over 2.5 million text messages, made over 2.4 million phone calls, and had more than 383,000 conversations with voters, many of which were deep canvass. These calls are highly effective: of the people who complete these conversations with canvassers, 48 percent move towards Biden and 21 percent completely switch to Biden from voting for Trump or being undecided.
“People’s Action and Pennsylvania Stands Up helped flip this battleground state and deliver this win for Biden,” People’s Action Director of Distributed Organizing Brooke Adams said. “People-powered organizing works and Biden’s win here proves it.”
“Thousands of working class people of all races across Pennsylvania and around the country volunteered their evenings, weekends, and holidays to deliver the presidency for Biden. Now it’s time for Biden to deliver for working people,” Pennsylvania Stands Up Executive Director Hannah Laurison said. “As we talked with voters across the state, we heard again and again about the struggles their families face as they’ve gotten sick, lost jobs, and struggled to pay their bills. These aren’t small challenges, and tinkering around the edges won’t fix them. Black voters, young voters, and women turned out for Biden because our communities are hurting. Now, Biden must pursue bold policy solutions at the scale of the crisis our communities face.”
Deep canvass phone calls are candid conversations between canvassers and voters in which participants reflect on the experiences that shape what’s at stake for them. These conversations are critical to not only defeating Trump but also to building bridges among a divided America. People’s Action recently released new results from a deep canvass experiment it conducted showing that the method is about 102 times more effective at moving individual voters than the typical presidential persuasion program.
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People’s Action is a national network of 37 state and local grassroots, power-building organizations united in fighting for justice. We operate the largest progressive rural organizing project in the country. People’s Action and its member organizations are coordinating one of the biggest distributed organizing programs in rural areas this election season.