The $165 Million Gap: Shortfall for Grassroots Field Operations in Key Battleground States

Nate Silver recently wrote: “In 16 years of election forecasts, I’ve never seen such a close election.”

The last election was decided by 43,000 votes. This one could be even closer.

The most important funding gap for Democrats right now is the local ground game. The Harris-Walz campaign has raised over $678 million. Political ad spending is projected to top $10.2 billion. A fraction of this would close all the budget gaps of the hundreds of local organizations who are best positioned as trusted messengers to persuade skeptical voters and turn out sporadic voters over the next six weeks.

The #1 thing we can do now is make sure these organizations are well-funded.

Sampling of Battleground State Budget Gaps

As an update to our recent memo, here is a sampling of budget gaps for Movement Voter PAC’s partner organizations in our Top 9 states (updated as of September 23rd):

• AZ – Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA): $5 million
• AZ – Our Voice Our Vote (OVOV): $4.9 million
• AZ – Chispa AZ: $2.9 million
• AZ – Rural Arizona Action (RAZA): $ 2.2 million
• AZ – Fuerte Arts Movement: $1.2 million
• AZ – AZ Poder: $800,000
• AZ – Arizona Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Advocates (AZ AANHPI Advocates): $600,000
• GA – Black Male Initiative (BMI) Fund: $5.2 million
• GA – Asian American Advocacy Fund (AAAF): $1.3 million
• GA – 1000 Women Strong: $1 million
• MI – Michigan United Action: $1.4 million
• MT – Western Native Voice Action Fund (WNVAF): $500,000
• NC – A. Philip Randolph Educational Fund (APREF): $1.1 million
• NC – Down Home North Carolina: $500,000
• NV – Make the Road Action Nevada: $600,000
• PA – Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance (API PA) Votes: $2 million
• PA – One Pennsylvania: $1 million
• PA – Make The Road Action PA: $850,000
• PA – Pennsylvania United: $428,000
• WI – Voces de la Frontera Action: $500,000
• Multistate – Mi Familia Vota / Mi Familia Decide (AZ, CO, CA, FL, GA, PA, NC, NV, TX): $17 million
• Multistate – Rapid Resist Action, a program of Movement Labs (AZ, GA, MI, NC, NV, PA, WI, MD, MT, NE, NH, OH): $16.1 million
• Multistate – Black Male Voter Project (GA, MI, NC, PA, WI): $13.4 million
• Multistate – UNITE HERE (NC, NV, OH, PA): $10.1 million
• Multistate – Working Families Party (GA, WI, PA, AZ, NC, MI, OH): $9.6 million
• Multistate – Empower Project (GA, WI, MN, PA, MI, MT, NV, AZ, NC & OH): $8 million
• Multistate – Equality Federation (GA, MI, PA, WI, AZ, NC, MT, OH, NV): $6.4 million
• Multistate – Black Voters Matter (GA, MI, NC, OH, PA): $6 million
• Multistate – Community Change Action (WI, MI, PA, NC, GA, AZ, NV): $5.7 million
• Multistate – NextGen America (AZ, MI, PA, NV, NC, NH, TX, VA): $5.3 million
• Multistate – Color of Change PAC (multi-layered program in CA, FL, GA, MI, NC, OH, PA, WI; digital-only in AZ and NV): $3.5 million
• Multistate – Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) Action: $3.5 million
• Multistate – MoveOn (MI, PA, WI, GA, NC, AZ): $3.5 million
• Multistate – Care in Action (GA, NC, AZ, NV): $3.2 million
• Multistate – Alliance for Youth Action (AZ, FL, GA, MI, MT, NC, NV, OH, PA, WI): $3.2 million
• Multistate – One Fair Wage Action (AZ, MI, OH): $3 million
• Multistate – Project Freedom (Black Church PAC, Until Freedom, Woke Vote, Kairos Democracy Project, MPower Action Fund; NC, MI, GA, NV, AZ, NY, PA): $2.5 million 
• Multistate – People’s Action (MI, NC, PA, WI, and more): $2.2 million
• Multistate – Sister District (AZ, GA, MI, MN, NC, NH NV, PA, WI): $1.8 million 
• Multistate – Climate Emergency Advocates (Field program: GA, NC, PA, WI, MN; Digital program: MT, FL): $1.75 million
• Multistate – The Movement Cooperative: $1.5 million
• Multistate – Civitech (WI, MI, NC, and more): $1.2 million
• Multistate – National AAPI Democracy Fund (AZ, GA, MI, NC, NV, PA, WI): $1 million
• Multistate – Vote Pro-Choice (Action Fund & PAC – AZ, FL, GA, MI, MT, NV, NC, OH, PA): $815,000
• Multistate – American Family Voices (PA, MI, OH, WI) $800,000
• Multistate – Seed the Vote (MI, NV, AZ, WI, PA): $600,000
• Multistate – National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund (FL, NC, PA): $600,000
• Multistate – Poder Latinx (AZ, CA, FL, GA, NC, TX, WA): $573,000
• Multistate – Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) Action: $503,000
• Multistate – Gen-Z for Change: $500,000

The gaps above total roughly $165 million. Again, this is just a quick sampling of large 501(c)(4) and PAC gaps, shared with permission to give a sense of the overall scale of funding gaps. This is 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. And for legal reasons, we are only listing partisan political gaps, not their entire voter engagement budgets. 

Want to help MVP fund the ground game? You can give online here or by other methods here, or contact us at advisor@movement.vote to help fill larger gaps for a group or a state.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin, deep canvassing for VP Harris | September 23, 2024

In case you missed it: We discuss this at length in our recent memo, Bat Signal 4: Democrats’ Underfunded Ground Game. If you’d like a thorough understanding of the situation, please give it a read. 

If you want the quick and dirty version, here are the key points:

Democrats’ Underfunded Ground Game

As Maurice Mitchell (National Director of the Working Families Party) put it, there are now 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 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 battlegrounds.

The Overall Need: $200-$300 Million

• We estimate a total partisan budget gap of at least $200-$300 million in the top nine Presidential and Senate battleground states.
• MVP’s goal for this cycle is to move $100 million in partisan funds to groups on the ground. As of September 23, 2024, we have moved over $62 million.
• 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 enthusiasm for the Harris-Walz campaign into the grassroots turnout operation so that we can get them elected.

Why Are the Budget Gaps So Big? 

• First, Democratic donors dramatically decreased their giving after 2020. This is understandable, if we commit to steady, multi-year funding, we will reap the benefits in 2026, 2028, and beyond.
• Second, everything costs more than it did four years ago, and local in-person voter engagement is no exception.
• Third, our political and civic engagement sector is now bigger and stronger, but our funding is now spread among a broader array of strategies.
• Fourth, the recent surge in money has gone to the Harris campaign, but most Democratic donors have simply not yet learned how or why to also strategically invest in the Grassroots Ground Game.

What is the Money Needed For?

• Four key functions are needed in the electoral homestretch: Voter registration, voter persuasion, voter mobilization, and election protection.
• For details, see our 2024 plan and recent highlights from our partners’ work on the ground.

MVP local partners engage in each of these activities in the lead-up to an election.

“Isn’t the Democratic Party supposed to do this?”

• Yes and no. The grassroots ground game doesn’t replace official Democratic efforts, it strategically complements them by filling essential gaps. 
• 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. 
• Local organizations excel with these 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.

A Potential Blue Wave (if we fund it)

• Thanks to the audacious shake-up at the top of the ticket, we are now competitive in all seven top battleground states.
• There is a real potential for a Blue Wave (see three scenarios below), but now is the time to be clear-eyed and leave nothing to chance. 

Three Major Election Scenarios

Broadly speaking, this election will likely go in one of three directions:

• Scenario A: MAGApocalypse: By the narrowest of margins, we elect Trump as President, backed by a loyalist MAGA Congress, Supreme Court and no guardrails.
• Scenario B: The Mediocre Scenario: We win the Presidency but lose the House and/or Senate. We will be unable to accomplish anything federally until 2026 at the earliest.
• Scenario C: Blue Wave: We win the Presidency, save the Senate, and flip the House, enabling us to do amazing things like pass sweeping policy on voting rights, reproductive rights, and more. A Blue Wave in 2024 would lead to so good things that it is worth our largest possible investment.

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.
• 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.
• We must act purposefully and strategically. Given early voting timelines, we need to take action now.

“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 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.
• 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 for 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 gaps and is a great resource for making the most strategic allocations in the final stretch.

The future is in our hands.

If you knew that, by making your biggest investment ever, you could help secure the few thousand votes that separates a Blue Wave scenario from a Trump/MAGA takeover scenario… Would you do it?

Thanks to the incredible situation we find ourselves in, that is exactly the choice before us.

As generations of donors and organizers before us have done…

LFGG: Let’s Fund the Ground Game +

LFG. Let’s Effing Go!