Topline Conclusions
Based on our and others’ analyses, we can confidently say that in 2024, MVP partners:
- Reached over one million unique, likely Democratic voters in key states by door or phone, who were not reached by the Harris-Walz campaign or party, candidate, or other programs.
- Played a meaningful role in Democrats’ four closest U.S. Senate wins (AZ, MI, NV, and WI).
- Reduced Harris’ loss margins in the three presidential “tipping-point” states (MI, PA, and WI).
- More effectively reached racially diverse, young, infrequent, likely Democratic voters, compared to party and candidate-driven efforts, blunting these groups’ shift toward Trump.
- Boasted higher contact rates by prioritizing person-to-person outreach and year-round civic engagement over cold text outreach, the main approach of party, candidate, and other programs. These methods are likely to have a far greater effect in lower-turnout elections.
Summary of Findings
Internal analysis: To quantify MVP partners’ 2024 electoral impact, MVP worked with David Nickerson, a top elections data scientist (and Director of Experiments for Obama's 2012 campaign). We found:
- In the top presidential battlegrounds (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), MVP partners generated at least 150,000 additional votes.
- In the three states that tipped the election for Trump by 229,726 total votes — MI (80,103), PA (120,226), and WI (29,397) — MVP partners turned out 62,621 net votes.
- In the four states in which Democrats won close U.S. Senate races by 152,420 total votes — Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin — MVP partners turned out 62,425 net votes.
External analysis: In a study released in 2025, researchers analyzed the 2024 electoral impact of 26 “independent political organizations” or “IPOs” — all but one of which are MVP partners — and found:
- “IPO programs were more likely to target and reach racially diverse, young, and infrequent voters,” who are even more likely to vote Democratic, vs. party or candidate efforts (p. 11-12).
- “The IPOs reached 1.3 million voters that no other program contacted with live outreach, including the Harris-Walz campaign,” and with a far higher contact rate: 9.3% vs. 5.4% (p. 10).
Internal Analysis by MVP
Methodology
Challenge: Ascribing Causality in a Cacophony of Correlation
Determining MVP partners’ quantitative impact during a presidential election is extremely challenging.
With an enormous number of factors influencing voter turnout — the candidates and their campaigns, the avalanche of earned and paid media, and the vast array of direct voter-contact efforts beyond those of MVP partner organizations — the only truly reliable way to isolate the impact of individual groups’ efforts is through randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
But with hundreds of partners across dozens of states, it is not financially feasible to invest in RCTs at scale, nor would it even be desirable, given the enormous stakes — RCTs require “control groups,” forcing organizations to ignore potential voters they would otherwise have contacted.
Instead, MVP's approach has been to follow the research on the effectiveness of various tactics, share that information with partners, and encourage them to integrate the lessons into their work.
Solution: Rigorous, Conservative Inference
Without RCTs, the best we can do to assess MVP partners’ impact on the 2024 election is to estimate the effect of their voter outreach based on that same, best-available research on tactics.
This means taking partners’ voter outreach “outputs” – the total number of doors knocked, calls and texts made, and voters registered – and applying a conservative estimate of the expected, average effect of each tactic on voter turnout, to come up with the total estimated impact on the outcome.
Process: Gathering Outreach Stats, Estimating Their Effects
Step 1: Collecting and Validating Partners’ Voter-Outreach Numbers
Each election cycle, MVP partners report on their voter-outreach numbers: Doors knocked, calls and texts made, and voters registered. In addition, many are part of America Votes (AV) – a network and coordination hub for progressive and Democratic-aligned get-out-the-vote efforts – and track their data through a shared AV database, to which we have access.
For this analysis, we looked at partners’ self-reported numbers, screened them for any inconsistencies (such as double-counting by affiliated groups), and cross-referenced them against AV’s data to come up with the most accurate figures possible for each voter-outreach tactic.
Step 2: Estimating Average Turnout Effects by Tactic
We then partnered with election data scientist David Nickerson to estimate partners’ electoral impact. To do this, we relied on established research on the “treatment effects” (i.e., measurable net impact on voter turnout) of various outreach tactics. Specifically, we examined the effects of voter mobilization across years of experiments by the most respected election data analysts: Analyst Institute, Green and Gerber, and Mann and Haenschen. To further refine averages for the 2024 election cycle, we incorporated results from randomized controlled trials conducted by other groups during the cycle.
Turnout “treatment effects” are lower in presidential vs. midterm and other elections, because:
- The “higher-salience” nature of the election – i.e., both greater visibility and also greater perceived importance – makes voters more likely to turn out,
- Any increases in turnout must therefore come from a smaller portion of the electorate, and,
- There are many other efforts – the campaigns, other organizations, etc. – working to mobilize voters, so the effect of any one voter contact is less.
We fine-tuned estimates to account for these factors, arriving at the following average parameters:
- Door-to-door contacts: 1.87% (~53 contacts = one vote)
- Phone contacts: 1.15% (~87 contacts = one vote)
- Texts: 0.11% (~909 texts = one vote)
For the more-contested presidential “battleground” states, we lowered these effects further – to just 55% of those in non-battleground states – because the marginal impact of most presidential-year voter outreach is even lower in swing states. This is because default turnout in the battlegrounds is even higher due to greater visibility (voters are inundated with political media), increased perceived importance (voters know their votes matter more), and far more competing turnout efforts.
Then, we applied a turnout effect of 10% for voter registrations (10 registrations = one vote). This figure is challenging to estimate because rates of net registration (additional registrations that would not have occurred otherwise) vary widely by tactic, targeting, and quality of implementation. On average, actual net registrations in a presidential election increase turnout by 50% (i.e., once someone is newly registered, they are 50% more likely to vote). But due to uncertainty about net registration, average net vote yields can range anywhere from 1% to 40%. For this analysis, we settled on a conservative average of 10% — in other words, one vote for every ten voter registrations collected.
Step 3: Determining Best Estimates for Net Votes Generated by Partners
Then, we multiplied the partner contacts for each tactic by that tactic’s average treatment effect. Finally, we added up all the net votes to estimate the total net votes generated by partners.
Results: Estimated Total Net Votes by State
This table shows all MVP partners’ 2024 outputs (attempted and completed door knocks and phone calls, texts, and voters registered) for the seven battleground states, along with estimated net votes.
MVP Partner Voter Outreach and Estimated Total Net Votes in 2024 by State
External Analysis: The Civic Power Report
In September 2025, MVP allies at the Pro-Democracy Campaign and Democracy and Power Innovation (DPI) Action Fund released a groundbreaking report, Civic Power, examining the role of “independent political organizations” (IPOs) in influencing both elections and governance. Of the twenty-six IPOs studied over an 18-month period, twenty-five are MVP partners.
Researchers concluded that the IPOs examined not only “reached voters overlooked by traditional campaign vehicles,” but also “built durable organizing structures (networked teams of committed leaders), and converted civic participation into tangible influence in local, state, and federal governing arenas in 2025.” This underscores MVP’s core value proposition: Our grantees not only mobilize the hardest-to-reach and most disenfranchised Democratic voters who can swing elections — they organize these voters year-round to shape governing agendas and create policy change.
→ Note: MVP is publishing a thorough analysis of this report soon. For now, read the full report here.