In 2025, MVP’s Pennsylvania partners led a successful, multipronged effort to retain three Democratic seats on the state Supreme Court. This victory is crucial for protecting voting rights in 2026, 2028, and beyond, safeguarding abortion access through a state constitutional amendment, ensuring fair redistricting, and much more.
Anchored by Pennsylvania Working Families Parties, a coalition of 17 state and local organizations helped defeat a Republican campaign backed by conservative billionaire, Jeffrey Yass. They tested new strategies to engage, educate, and mobilize voters in the streets and online, helping secure major electoral victories. Our partners can use these successful strategies to learn from, adapt, and expand on to continue to build power and win next year.
Neighborhood Captains Program - Relational Organizing for Long-Term Power
Photo: Pennsylvania Working Families Party training Neighborhood Captains
Following 2024, MVP partners came together to find a solution to the ineffectiveness of large-scale, transactional door-knocking programs that focused on quantity over quality.
Led by Pennsylvania Working Families, our partners decided they needed to focus on building deeper and more durable relationships in communities across the state. The Neighborhood Captains Program was the best answer to both, quickly setting up a deep-canvassing field program to win the Pennsylvania Supreme Court retention election this year, and to build up powerful structures ahead of 2026 and 2028.
Deep canvassing — rather than transactional door-knocking — meant that Captains engaged in a series of meaningful conversations with voters about their lives and the issues they care about. These conversations build connection, trust, and understanding, increasing voters’ likelihood to turn out to vote and also to engage in year-round organizing campaigns in the future.
With seventeen organizations across the state participating — most of whom are MVP partners — the program recruited and trained more than 1,100 Neighborhood Captains across 18 counties to knock more than 175,000 doors, speaking with over 35,000 voters in geographically concentrated areas of Captains’ neighbors and community members. As the parties consolidated their bases in the months leading up to Election Day, the Neighborhood Captains Program relied on expanding the base and turning out neighbors and community members that the Democratic Party may not have reached.
On Election Day, Neighborhood Captains transitioned to serving as Poll Greeters at 1,000+ priority precincts across Pennsylvania, countering GOP misinformation by reminding voters to vote “yes” and to vote all the way down their ballots.
By focusing on trusted messengers and relational, deep canvassing, the Neighborhood Captains Program proved successful for key short- and long-term impact:
- Short-term impact: Strategically mobilizing voters to the polls to retain Democratic seats on the state Supreme Court and win local and county elections to go on defense and offense against Trump’s attacks.
- Long-term impact: Building lasting relationships with voters that will expand durable, independent political power to advance bold policy progress in Pennsylvania in 2026, 2028, and beyond.
Measuring Impact: A Randomized Controlled Trial
As a key component of assessing the impact of the Neighborhood Captains Program, MVP connected PA Working Families Party with renowned elections data scientist David Nickerson (the Director of Experiments for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign) to run a randomized control trial (RCT). The purpose of the RCT is to compile data and see if the Captains Program mobilized voters more effectively than traditional and transactional get-out-the-vote tactics.
If the results of the RCT show that this program is successful at turning out more voters than the cold-canvass approach, that proof would encourage the replication and expansion of this model both in Pennsylvania and other states.
When we invest in this type of assessment, we are also investing in determining — then sustaining — the most effective electoral and power-building strategies led by our state and local partners, which helps MVP’s investments go even further in the future.
Pennsylvania Creators Cohort - Organizing the Internet
One thing 2024 taught us is that, in today’s fractured media environment, it’s not enough to meet people where they are “in real life” — we need to dramatically step up our strategies to engage them online.
In that spirit, MVP partners, One Pennsylvania and Commonwealth Communications, flooded the digital airwaves as part of a strategic communications campaign that demonstrates our partners’ increasing sophistication in new-media work.
Applying old-school organizing tactics to new-media strategies, they supported content creator Alex Pearlman (4.2M followers) to lead training calls for Pennsylvania-based and national creators to directly counter and win against GOP mis- and disinformation and explain to voters — especially young voters — why voting to retain these Democratic on the state Supreme Court was so important.
MVP and our partners worked with forty-three individual creators or accounts to develop and incorporate “Vote Yes” messaging into their regular content — whether that was politics and journalism, comedy, or even beauty tutorials.
Screenshots: Pennsylvania Creators Cohort participants’ state Supreme Court posts
Posts made by our Pennsylvania Creators Cohort garnered 2,046,610 views, 125,620 likes, 58,877 shares, 3,296 comments, and hit a whopping 7.1 percent average engagement rate — meaning the proportion of viewers who saw the post and then interacted with it through a like, share, or comment — a powerful stat compared an average engagement rate of 1-3 percent for traditional media buys.
Leveraging the cohort’s reach and engagement, we created a specific amplifier account — @PAVotesYes — to boost the cohort’s current content and to capture audiences interested in the retention election. The account was cross-posted on Instagram by MVP partners and Creator Cohort participants and boosted via email to PA Megaphone — a volunteer network for 5,000 members created by Commonwealth Communiations. Created just four weeks before Election Day, the @PAVotesYes account currently has over 1,000 followers and 19,700 monthly traffic views.
Photo: @PAVotesYes amplifier account on Instagram
One Pennsylvania and Commonwealth Communications also held a local happy hour with creators in Philadelphia in partnership with COURIER Newsroom. Thirteen creators collaborated to put together a video highlighting their reasons for voting yes on Supreme Court retention. The gathering was an opportunity for creators — who do most of their work online — to meet in person, socialize, and develop content together in real time.
The Pennsylvania Creators Cohort fundamentally reshaped our partners' approach to working with creators, forgoing expensive marketing firms to partner with creators directly — treating them as fellow organizers whose work is strategic, not just transactional.
This has laid the groundwork for long-term organizing partnerships between MVP partners and local and national creators, supporting creators to believe in their own power, join us in a shared mission, and understand their role to influence our future.
Testing Innovative Strategies Pays Off and Sets the Stage for 2026
Pennsylvania is a must-win state in the 2026 House midterms and 2028 Senate and Presidential races, and our wins this year set the stage for more electoral victories in the future. The Neighborhood Captains Program and the Pennsylvania Creators Cohort are just the beginning; scaling these programs could make the difference next year and beyond.
As we outline in our 2025-2026 strategy, we can no longer rely on traditional field and campaign tactics; we must prioritize expanding local organizing and scaling up new media to build lasting electoral power and deliver progress.
This is how we win!
