Case Study

Michigan

Between April and November 2022, Scale for Change ran twelve programs with eight clients and two coalitions in Michigan to protect reproductive freedom, the LGBTQ+ community, and one of the most basic promises of a democracy - the right to vote. We did this through a multi-pronged approach to have real conversations with voters every day - through door knocking, phone calls, text messages, volunteer managers, rapid response organizers, patient advocates, and an innovative young Black and Indigenous people of color organizing cohort. Notably, for all of our programs, we prioritize hiring directly from the communities our clients are organizing and in partnership with.

Through our programs in Michigan in 2022, we knocked on 374,527 doors and had 74,346 conversations at the doors with voters (a contact rate of 19.85%) in Bay, Ingham, Kalamazoo, Kent, Macomb, Midland, Oakland, Saginaw, Wastenaw and Wayne counties, and we made 173,069 calls, sent 30,203 texts, and had 7,470 conversations statewide with voters between phones and text messages. Scripts included issue IDs (what issue(s) matters most to the person we are speaking to), candidate IDs from statewide leadership roles (Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and State Supreme Court) to district-level leadership roles (state Senate), ballot measure IDs, vote method IDs, and volunteer IDs. Importantly, all field and phone scripts have canvasser feedback loop questions - questions that allow the canvasser to provide real-time feedback about how persuadable they believe the voter is and if they heard any misinformation in their conversation. This feedback allowed us to make real-time pivots in candidate ID order and the ability to provide updated talking points for our hardworking field staff.

Organizing programs coordinated and mobilized volunteers to messaging trainings, phone banks, text banks, drafting hand-written post-cards about endorsed candidates, crowd canvasses, tabling events where pledge to vote cards were collected and candidate guides were dispersed, walk literature drops, and poll greeting and vote tripling asks (asking a voter to ask three friends to vote through a phone call or a text on the spot). Importantly, many events were held, including a Latinx outreach event in Clark Park, a volunteer canvass kick-off at Kitty Deluxe (a local progressive ship in St. Clair Shores), a YBIPOC-focused GOTV event at Wayne County Community College, a rally at Oakland University’s clock tower, and a Black Organizing Program trick-or-treat event in Palmer Park.

Ultimately, Michigan Democrats secured a trifecta (Governor, State House, and State Senate) for the first time since the 1980s. Of the 11 races our clients played in, wins were secured for 8. And the Reproductive Freedom For All (RFFA) ballot initiative amended the Michigan state constitution to permanently and explicitly protect reproductive freedom statewide.

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