Bat Signal 4: Democrats’ Underfunded Ground Game

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Written By Billy Wimsatt, Guest Contributor

One year ago, the Movement Voter PAC team launched a series of memos called the Bat Signal to sound the alarm about a dangerous funding drought that threatened our ability to win in 2024. The voter engagement field was in contraction, with layoffs across the board. In response, hundreds of donors stepped up to make their biggest investments ever. Thousands more chipped in as well. These investments stabilized the voter engagement field, and we now have a fighting chance of winning this fall.  

With historic turnout predicted on both sides and so many toss-up races in the House, Senate, Presidential election, and down-ballot, the difference between winning everything and losing everything could easily come down to a relative handful of votes. 

This excerpt of a longer Bat Signal 4 memo explains how we can finish strong to secure a Blue Wave and a Democratic governing trifecta, pass amazing policies, and set ourselves up for a better future.

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A Potential Blue Wave (if we fund it)

We have just witnessed the most amazing turnaround in modern Democratic campaign history. Thanks to the audacious shake-up at the top of the ticket (which MVP is proud to have advocated for), we are now competitive in all seven top battleground states.

Our side has momentum and money. Harris and her team are running an energetic – and in many ways joyful! — campaign. There is a real potential for a Blue Wave (see three scenarios below).

Now is the time to be clear-eyed and leave nothing to chance. We cannot allow a repeat of 2016. As the polls tighten (we’ve dropped about a point in aggregated polling over the past two weeks), it’s important to address our key vulnerabilities — including the one glaring problem that is eminently solvable: The funding gap in our ground game.

Democrats’ Underfunded Ground Game

Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, put it eloquently during a recent MVP briefing — there are three indispensable components of victory:

  1. A Presidential campaign that is inspiring and well-funded.

  2. TV ads and digital outreach by Super PACs to reach a lot of voters very quickly.

  3. A ground game to engage, persuade, and mobilize voters through direct person-to-person contact — not just the “party faithful” but lower-propensity Democratic voters who can tip the closest battleground states and races.

The Harris campaign has money. Check. The super PACs have money. Check. But if you look beneath the coconut memes and joyful vibes, there is an alarming gap below the surface: hundreds of little-known organizations who do the vast majority of the work of actually talking to tens of millions of voters — AKA “the grassroots ground game” — are not yet on track to fund their largest possible voter contact operations this fall. 

A Sampling of Battleground Budget Gaps

To give you a sense of the scale, here are the most recent budget gaps for some of MVP’s state-based partner organizations — all of whom have proven track records of engaging sporadic Democratic-leaning voters. Again this is a sampling of hundreds of partners MVP funds across our top 9 states, not necessarily representative. For legal reasons, we are only listing partisan political gaps, not their entire voter engagement budgets.

Note: These are estimated c4 and PAC gaps as of August, shared with permission, to give a sense of the overall scale of funding gaps. For funders interested in helping fill these gaps, please contact advisor@movement.vote and we can give more detail and make connections to specific organizations, as desired.

This is just a quick sampling of some of the larger gaps, not in any way a comprehensive list or an attempt to highlight which gaps, organizations, or states are most important. There are a lot of excellent, important organizations with large gaps not listed here.

The Overall Need: $200-$300 Million

We estimate that the grassroots electoral field in the top nine Presidential and Senate battleground states has a current partisan budget gap of at least $200-$300 million. Based on our direct check-ins, we can now estimate partisan gaps of well over $165 million from our grantee partners alone.

At MVP, our ambitious goal for the 2024 election cycle is to move $100 million in partisan funds to these groups on the ground. As of September 6, 2024, we have moved over $55 million.

If this sounds like a lot to raise with two months to go, it is. But consider that the Harris campaign raised over $540 million between July 21 and August 25 alone, and AdImpact estimates that 2024 cycle political ad spending will top $10.2 billion.

Our partners have a huge undertaking. The top 9 states alone encompass 53 million eligible voters (more than California and Texas combined — in a 50% bigger geographic area). And that’s not even counting House races. 

The scale of our partners’ work is enormous. We can and must do big things. And the amazing surge of funding for the Harris campaign has proven that we can close funding gaps with record-breaking speed, joy, and fervor if we want it badly enough. Let’s do it!

The money is there (see stats on charitable & political giving, and on the millions of modest millionaires among us). We just need to channel a sliver of the wonderful enthusiasm for the Harris-Walz campaign into the grassroots turnout operation that is crucial to getting them elected.

What is the Money Needed For? 

Grassroots organizations are carrying out four key functions in the electoral homestretch: Voter registration, voter persuasion, voter mobilization, and election protection. How? Tried-and-true methods like door knocks; innovative tactics like relational organizing and deep canvassing; tailored media; GOTV events; and crucial efforts to counter voter suppression and improve election administration. (For details, see our 2024 plan and recent highlights from our partners’ work on the ground).

The grassroots ground game doesn’t replace official Democratic efforts, it strategically complements and augments them by filling essential gaps. The Harris campaign has a real ground game now, which is fantastic. But frankly, the grassroots ground game is an order of magnitude larger.

The “Coordinated Campaign” (i.e. the joint effort by the Democratic Party and its candidates) is optimized for turning out Democrats who vote each cycle, but it’s less effective at reaching new, infrequent, and skeptical voters who we need to win. Local organizations excel with these low-propensity (read: high-opportunity) voters, because they deploy trusted messengers who are not from the campaign to be validators, speaking from a shared cultural context, with messages they resonate with.

We’ve written a lot about the efficacy of local voter organizing — see our Guide to Strategic Giving, our evidence and research, and our impact reports from 2020, 2022, and 2023. 

In 2022, MVP partners had an unparalleled win record in close races. In 2020, our partners turned out far more voters than the margin of victory in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — the three closest Biden-won states (see page 9 of our recent report).

“OK, I’m fired up — What can I do?”

A simple option is to give through MVP, and we'll redistribute according to our electoral strategy, which is optimized for winning the presidency, Senate, House, and key down-ballot races.

If you need help figuring out how and what to give, the MVP team is here to help. If you’re not sure who to talk to, email advisor@movement.vote. We strive to serve as honest brokers to advise or help you to move money, by any form or method to maximize impact — whether through MVP or elsewhere. We are the opposite of the annoying political fundraising emails and spam texts you’re getting. We are real people who are here to help. 

In addition to giving through MVP, we’ve also put together recommendations for national organizations, and we can go deeper in any area of interest such as this list of Black voter engagement organizations where there are acute gaps and great opportunities to make an impact. We’ve also partnered with allied donor networks Way to Win, Democracy Alliance, Committee on States, and others to launch Building for Democracy (BFD), which monitors state election gaps and is a great resource for donors and advisors looking to make the most strategic allocations in the final stretch. There are so many good ways to give — so many gaps that need filling. The key is to pick one and be decisive. 

Three Major Election Scenarios 

Let’s zoom out for a moment and look ahead to November 5th. Broadly speaking, this election will likely go in one of three directions. These scenarios largely match our predictions a year ago — with some important updates. The main political update is that it looks clearer now that if we lose the Presidency, we’re most likely to lose it in Pennsylvania. If we lose the Senate, we’re most likely to lose it in Montana. These states in particular require a full-court press.

Let’s take the worst scenario first:

Scenario A: MAGApocalypse

This is the nightmare scenario: We scrape by in Wisconsin and Michigan, but it’s not quite enough. We lose the Sunbelt (Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina) by a few thousand votes. Everything comes down to a recount in Pennsylvania. The whole country waits with bated breath for weeks. In the end, we lose… by less than a thousand votes. Similarly, we lose the Senate in Montana by a thousand votes and we come up short in the House (similar to in 2022). By the narrowest of margins, we elect Trump as President, backed by a loyalist MAGA Congress, Supreme Court, and no guardrails. 

I don’t have to tell you how bad this would be. They will implement Project 2025 full blast. Obviously, we will fight back. We will do everything we can at the state and federal level. But we will spend the next 4-8 years counting down the days to 2029 or 2033 — filled with dread – and regret that we could have done more back in the “good ol’ days” of 2024.

Scenario B: The Mediocre Scenario

In the mediocre scenario, we avoid the worst-case outcome of a Trump trifecta. We win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. We secure 270 in the Electoral College. Phew! But the race is extremely close. We lose most or all of the Sunbelt. We lose the Senate race in Montana so we’re down to 49 votes in the Senate. And we either win or lose the House by a few seats. And all of this is after huge fights over ballot curing and election certification.

In this scenario, governing is difficult. President Harris will have to beg Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins to appoint cabinet members and judges. She’ll struggle to pass any federal legislation. If MAGA controls the House, it will be hard to pass budgets and there will be constant trumped-up investigations. Our base will feel demoralized. The MAGA base will be riled up with grievances, claims of election theft, and political violence, and will be extra terrible toward President Harris as a woman of color. 

We’ll have to wait until 2026 to even try to win back the House and Senate (against midterm headwinds and a bad map) to be able to accomplish anything at all. In this scenario, we will be forced to focus entirely on state-level policy only — but if we barely scrape by in the Presidential race, we’ll probably lose ground at the state level. The Mediocre scenario isn’t hell. But it will start to feel like purgatory. We will think: If only we had done just a little more!

Scenario C: Blue Wave

In a Blue Wave scenario, we win the popular vote by 8 million (improving on the 6-million vote margin Biden won in 2020). We win the Great Lakes and Sunbelt battlegrounds, racking up 319 votes in the Electoral College.

In this scenario, we save the Senate (Ohio and Montana) and we flip the House. We win major victories down-ballot: We run the tables on abortion rights and democracy ballot measures; we flip state chambers in Wisconsin and New Hampshire; we win the governorship and break the MAGA supermajority in North Carolina. We strengthen our Democratic trifectas in Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, and we win veto-proof supermajorities in Nevada. The cherry on top: We win a trifecta in Arizona (where we are currently one seat away from parity in each state chamber). And if we’re extremely lucky, we might even pull off a surprise victory like the dark horse Senate race in Nebraska. 

Can you imagine? We would be dancing in the streets! 

This Blue Wave scenario is totally doable — we probably have a 1 in 3 shot. Although the polls are close, there are indications that enthusiasm is running higher on the Democratic side (by 8-12% according to recent reputable polls from Gallup and Suffolk/USA Today). We just have to channel that enthusiasm into votes by funding the ground game. 

It wouldn’t even take that big a Blue Wave to win all of the winnable toss-up races. They could easily be decided by less than 1% — well within the “margin of effort.” If we build a big enough Blue Wave this fall, we will be able to do so many amazing things like pass sweeping legislation around voting rights, anti-gerrymandering, economic fairness, reproductive rights, and climate. We’ll be able to appoint thousands of federal employees, including hundreds of judges and potentially a Supreme Court justice or two.

A Blue Wave in 2024 would be so good that it is worthy of our largest possible investment.

Spoiler alert: 2024 is just the beginning. As with anything we care about, long-term investment is the only way. Even with a Blue Wave, there will still be tons more work to do. But we will be doing it from an infinitely better place. And over time, if we’re committed to it, we could really and truly create a new progressive era that changes hundreds of millions of lives for the better. 

The Itsy Bitsy Difference Between Scenarios

A remarkable thing about these three scenarios is how incredibly close they could be to one another in terms of the sheer number of votes. It’s unreal how few people — on either side – will decide the course of history. 

Given the non-negotiable timeline imposed by the climate crisis, we won’t get this big a chance to make this big a difference in the future of the world for the rest of our lifetimes. This is it.

Notice: I am not equivocating here. I did not say “might” or “could.” This is a definitive statement. A Harris-Walz administration supported by a Democratic Congress from 2025-2028 is our best shot at stabilizing the climate, locking in an accelerated transition to clean energy, and saving our grandkids’ future. Period.

We must act purposefully and strategically. Given early voting timelines, we need to take action in the next week or so. 

We need to collectively close the budget gaps above as early in September as possible so that groups can leave it all on the field. September is historically the #1 month for election money to grassroots organizations. 

Despite the fact that we all complain about late money and how it’s not as effective as early money (true!), our partners are all still counting on a surge of September money to run their final vote programs. If a ton of late money doesn’t show up “early” enough this fall, they’ll have to dramatically stop or scale back their canvas and campus programs at the very moment when we need them to scale up as aggressively as possible. Money can’t solve every problem, but in the last two months of an election, it can sure do a lot.

LFG — Let’s Effing Go!

If you take one thing from this memo, let it be this: Whatever you’ve been thinking about doing to make a difference this election cycle, please do it this week. Whatever you want to contribute or do (so you can wake up on Wednesday, November 6th with no regrets) please prioritize doing it this week. Don't wait until October.

Too many donors scramble a few weeks before the election to panic-donate. Savvy donors know that the earlier we move resources, the more cost-effective our investments will be — the more net votes our donations will yield. Yes, it’s all “late money” now, but there is a world of difference between mid-September and mid-October in terms of the effectiveness of your investment. Collectively, we are the supply line. We have to do our job so that the organizers on the frontlines can do theirs!

Please join us in doing everything you can this week. We look forward to celebrating our Blue Wave with you in November, next January — and for many years to come! 

Thank you for everything you do. Let’s go win!

Bat Signal 4 was a collaborative effort, written primarily by Billy Wimsatt and co-written by Zo Tobi with editing and contributions from Rachel Gordon, Sarah Chaisson-Warner, Javier Morillo, Haley Bash, Rebecca Ennen, Betty Herschman, Rachel Hill, Helena Huang, Kevi Brannelly, Eugenio Smith, Zakiya Lord, Brandon Klugman, Tom Mendelsohn, Hallie Montoya Tansey, Talya Stagg, and many other MVP staff, volunteers, allies, and supporters — though Billy takes full responsibility for its final content :)

Billy Wimsatt, Guest Contributor
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