Dems Just Keep On Winning, The Youth Vote, Rs On The Run on Abortion

Virginia Early Vote Starts Tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Friends,

A few things today:

My Appearance on MSNBC Last Night/Dems Strong 2023 Performance - So, I got to talk about the most important electoral story in American politics right now - the strong Dem performance across the US this year - with Lawrence O’Donnell on his The Last Word program last night. You can find a clip here. Was a great discussion, and I so appreciate Lawrence’s wisdom and courage to say what needs to be said.

Another way of gauging Dem intensity and performance is with fundraising. In 2022 our candidates outraised GOP candidates throughout the battleground, sometimes by 4-5 to 1. So I pulled some fundraising data, and this year we continue to see Dems raising a lot of money. Here’s ActBlue data for the first half of the year compared to 2019:

Q1-Q2 2019 - $421m

Q1-Q2 2023 - $490m

Here’s the Virginia State Senate and House candidate data, via VPAP and the Virginia Political Newsletter. It’s encouraging:

State Senate Candidates

State House Candidates

As I explain here, it’s very possible that national polling is not finding Dem intensity right now and our coalition feels a little soft because the national campaign has not begun, and Dems have no reason to be engaged in the Presidential election yet. But where we have needed to be engaged across the US this year, we are seeing the same kind of intensity and performance we saw in 2022 - “kicking ass” as I called it on MSNBC last night. 56% in Wisconsin! 57% in Ohio! Flipping Colorado Springs and Jacksonville! +8 over 2020 in 25 specials across the US! Winning that Trump district in NH by 12 points!

It’s all really encouraging, and exciting. We just keep winning. They have Trump.

Early vote starts tomorrow in Virginia peeps. It’s our next big test. Make sure you have your plan to help in place - donate, canvass, calls/texts, postcards - whatever you can do. It all matters. And let’s work to drive the early vote hard this first week. As we’ve been discussing, voting on Day 1 and driving the early vote will increase Democratic turnout and help us win. If you plan on helping in Virginia, do it this week if you can. Don’t wait.

Here’s a short video on the importance of the early vote in Virginia:

Republicans Are On The Run on Abortion, and Deserve To Be - One of the reasons I remain so optimistic about 2024 is that since the 2020 elections the Republicans have done two things which will make it much harder for them to win - their party-wide effort to overturn an American election and end American democracy, and their assault on women’s rights and freedoms.

Watch this new powerful (and tragic) new ad in Kentucky. Kentucky. If the Democratic Party is on offense on abortion in Kentucky (and Ohio, Kansas, Florida etc) it’s a sign of how hard next year is going to be for them.

The Damage MAGA Is About To Do To The Country - Listen to Republican Congressman Mike Lawler describe on Fox News the damage the insurrectionists in the House are going to do the country and what’s left of his party (Via the Republican Accountability Project):

The Youth Vote - Lots and lots of interest in this topic, so I am sending along some resources for you to check out:

• A Great Youth Vote Program in Arizona

• Smoothing the On-Ramp To Democracy: Voter Registration As A Staple of American High Schools - By Laura Brill

• The Rural Youth Voter Fund

• My interviews with Laura Brill and John Della Volpe

• Get to 55, Expanding Our Coalition, The Youth Opportunity

The Election Data and Narratives I’m Focused On

The Democratic Party Is Strong - Democrats have won more votes in 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections, the best popular vote run of any political party in US history. In the last 4 Presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the vote, our best showing over 4 elections since FDR’s Presidency. Can we improve on that performance and get to 55% nationally in 2024? I think so.

Democrats Keep Outperforming Expectations - In a “red wave” year, 2022, Democrats gained ground from 2020 in 7 key battlegrounds: AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA. We also picked up 4 state legislative chambers, 2 governorships, and 1 US Senate seat. As we’ve written 2022 was not a single nationalized election, but really two elections - a bluer election in the battleground where we gained, and a redder election outside where we did not. We’ve seen this strong Dem performance continue into 2023 with impressive wins in CO, FL, OH, PA and WI. A recent 538 analysis finds Dems outperforming the partisan lean in districts this year by an average of 10 points in 38 special elections across the US - this is a big deal, and similar to what we saw post-Dobbs last year. The Daily Kos special election tracker has Dems up 7.6 points over 2020 in a smaller sample of elections this year.

The Blueing of the Southwest - Democrats are having their best run in the Southwest since the 1940s and 50s. In 2004 Bush won AZ, CO, NM, NV, Rs controlled 5 of their 8 Senate seats, 14 of their 21 House seats. In 2020 Biden was the first Democratic President to win all 4 of these states in a single election since FDR. Today Rs control none of those 8 Senate seats and we control 14 of 24 House seats there. Our success with Hispanic voters and in heavily Hispanic parts of the country remains one of the Democratic Party’s most successful party-wide efforts over the past generation of US politics.

Keeping working hard - it is making a difference! - Simon