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 contacted 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: Determining Average Effects on Turnout
We then enlisted election data scientist David Nickerson to estimate MVP partners’ electoral impact. To do this, David relied on the wealth of scientific research on the impact of different voter-outreach tactics. Specifically, he looked at the average voter mobilization “treatment effects” (the measurable impact on voter turnout) found over the course of years of experiments run on each tactic by the most respected election data analysts: Analyst Institute, Green and Gerber, and Mann and Haenschen. To refine these averages further for this particular election, he incorporated results from randomized controlled trials conducted by other groups in the 2024 election 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.
For these reasons, David fine-tuned his estimates to account for these presidential-year effects, arriving at the following standardized set of average turnout effects by tactic:
- Voter registrations: 10% (10 voter registrations = one vote)
- 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)
Finally, for the more-contested presidential “battleground” states, he lowered his estimates further. Treatment effects are roughly half as large in battleground states as in non-battleground states, because the decrease in effects in presidential elections is even greater in swing states.
Default turnout in the battlegrounds is higher because of greater visibility (voters are inundated with political media) and perceived importance (voters know their votes matter more), and there are far more competing turnout efforts. As a result, David adjusted the parameters accordingly.
Step 3: Determining Best Estimates for Net Votes Generated by Partners
To estimate total net votes generated by MVP partners for each tactic, David multiplied the number of partner contacts for each tactic by that tactic’s average treatment effect. He then added the net votes for all tactics by all partners in each state to estimate total net votes generated by MVP 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.