How to target your home stretch activism
Everyone's in a tizzy. Put that to work!
Lots of people are in a tizzy. As far as anyone can tell from the data, the Presidential election is a dead heat. Some are looking at the models and saying that Trump or Harris is favored. But there’s no way to distinguish current conditions from a coin toss.
The same is true for control of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. With all three questions within a hair’s breadth (see the polling snapshots), federal power hasn’t been this close to the edge in our lifetime.
The only sensible thing to do here is to get to work in the next two weeks. The closer the polls are, the more likely it is that your efforts will make a difference - if you apply yourself correctly.
Here is a brief guide to how I apply quantitative reasoning to deploying efforts. I’m using the same reasoning that I outlined in the Washington Post (gift link). All the data you need to follow along is at VoteMaximizer.org (though note, it’s an informational resource; to act, you have to do additional work on your own!).
How to maximize your efforts
First, some principles.
The closer the race, the more leverage you have. It’s not that much use working in a race that’s a done deal. Go to the swing states, districts, and key ballot questions.
The smaller the state or district, the more leverage you have. If you knock 100 doors in a state legislative district, that might be 1% of the available doors. Good luck hitting 1% of the doors in an entire state!
Leverage for one side is leverage for the other side. Everything I’m telling you today is equally applicable if you want a Democrat or a Republican to win. It’s a symmetric situation. This post is all about per-person power. Whichever side you want to win, this post is for you.
The last point is a fairly bloodless statement based on the math alone. But to Democrats, many independents, and a fair number of Republicans, the election is about much more than that. They see a threat to the future health of democracy in future years, and they’re starting to highlight an increasingly visible authoritarian threat, one that we’ve seen around the world. When the stakes are that high, then the situation is not symmetrical.
But when it comes to tactics, the symmetry argument holds. It is for this reason that VoteMaximizer.org does not highlight donation pages - the site is pro-voter, but is nonpartisan. (Some information is available if you click on a race, but to do more you have to get in touch with the campaign or organization.)
Here’s a checklist to help you decide where to put your effort (and perhaps your pennies) in the home stretch.
Step 1: Are you in a Presidential state with high per-voter power?
There are many levels of government where your vote is valuable - type in your address at VoteMaximizer.org. But many of you may want to make a difference in the Presidential race. In that case, see if you live near one of the states listed here:
These are calculated according to the Democracy Moneyball principle I’ve been writing about.
The eight states where doorknocking and turning out individual votes can make the most difference are, from west to east: Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nebraska (2nd Congressional District), Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Step 2: Look for Senate races.
The same principle is at work for Senate seats. In some sense the calculation is easier, since it’s always one Senate seat at stake, whether the state’s population is huge (Texas) or tiny (Nebraska).
Some of the states with per-vote power greater than 20.0 are also Presidential swing states (Nevada and Wisconsin). Turning out votes there is a great idea. But in addition, consider three other states: Montana, Ohio, and Nebraska.
Nebraska is a really interesting wild card. Normally a Republican running for re-election, as Deb Fischer is, would sail to victory. But her opponent is not a Democrat. Instead, he’s an independent and a first-time candidate, Dan Osborn. Osborn is aggressively focused on local Nebraska issues. If ever a candidate could escape the polarized atmosphere of national politics, Osborn could do it.
But despite leading in surveys, Osborn is no favorite. Undecided voters are likely to be Republicans who eventually come home to Fischer. But what is certain is that Nebraska has fewer than 1 million voters. Combined with the fact that it’s one of only four Senate races currently within 3 percentage points, every vote turned out will be valuable - especially if you concentrate in the Omaha area, where the Second Congressional District’s electoral vote and a swing House seat are at stake.
Here is Osborn’s latest ad:
Step 3: Refine your search: House districts and state legislatures.
No luck on Presidential and Senate races? There are still many opportunities to make a difference in House and state legislative races.
Contrary to what you may have heard from some advocacy organizations, competition for House seats is actually at a ten-year high. It’s true! Redistricting in 2021 produced over 60 reasonably competitive seats, thanks to independent commissions and court cases. (For the math, see this rundown and the state-by-state details.) There are nearly a dozen competitive seats within two hours’ drive of New York City alone.
In addition, ten state legislatures sit at the edge of flipping a majority or of winning/losing a supermajority. Some bright spots are Wisconsin and Michigan, where new, fair maps now make it possible for the majority of voters to have their say. Here, gerrymanders were slain - and turning out votes will make a real difference.
Step 4: Find a place to make democracy itself work better.
Here is some reason for serious optimism: in many states, you have a chance to change the rules of democracy itself!
One of the biggest under-the-radar stories of 2024 is redistricting reform in Ohio. For several decades, Ohio has been the center of acrimonious battles over redistricting. These culminated a few years ago in the state Supreme Court ruling that both the Congressional and legislative maps were partisan gerrymanders. However, the commission, which is appointed by politicians, took advantage of a loophole in which the law could not force them to redraw the maps.
Ohio’s Issue 1 closes that loophole. It creates an independent citizens’ commission, which is basically a jury that meets to do one job: draw a map for everyone, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. If Issue 1 passes, maps will be redrawn next year, and representation for more communities in 2026. Read the Electoral Innovation Lab’s analysis of the Ohio reform here.
In eight other states, ranked-choice voting and letting independents vote in primaries are both on the ballot. These are combined in a single voting reform called Top Four or Final Five, depending on how many candidates end up getting nominated. The idea is that everyone gets to vote in one big primary, and then the nominees face off in November. Because the voting rule is ranked-choice, there is no such thing as a spoiler effect. And candidates get an incentive to go after each other’s second-choice votes in a positive way, through persuasion.
This reform is on the ballot in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and South Dakota. Interested? You can learn more at an online rally today (Monday) at 6:00pm Eastern. Register here!
Finally, democracy is on the ballot in various ways in a dozen other states. Check them out at Vote Maximizer.
Step 5: Reproductive rights in Florida and nine other states.
There are many other ways for local voters to have leverage. Continuing the trend started after the Dobbs decision, reproductive rights are on the ballot in ten states. These initiatives are mostly likely to pass, since support for legal abortion is at an all-time high in the United States.
There’s one exception: Florida’s Amendment 4, guaranteeing a right to abortion up to the point of viability (about 24 weeks). The legislature there found a way to raise the threshold for passage to 60% of the vote. Support for Amendment 4 is hovering right around 60%, so that question is on a knife edge.
Step 6: Donate!
Even if none of the options above are close to you, you still have options. One is to donate - unfortunately, money plays a big role in politics today, and you can express yourself. Here are an ActBlue and WinRed sites that curate key races.
Support Vote Maximizer
If you like the information presented here, consider supporting Vote Maximizer. The more support the Electoral Innovation Lab gets, the more it can get out the word about gerrymandering reform, ranked-choice voting, and ways to empower voters everywhere. The Lab is highly cost-effective: even a few hundred dollars will go far.
