Election prediction + Tuesday briefing (RSVP)

MVP friends,

I’ll get to my election prediction below. But first, three quick notes:

1. Come hear our updates from the field on Tuesday!

This is our final pre-election briefing — RSVP here for stories and insights from key states and races across the country.

If you’re looking for healthy ways to curb your pre-election anxiety (I just ate a whole box of my kids’ popsicles, as one example!), this could be just the thing: On-the-ground, under-the-radar, hope-filled updates you won’t hear in the news, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, Arizona, Nebraska, and more.

2. Mark Ruffalo made an MVP video asking people to #FundTheGroundGame! 

We are honored to join with actor, director, and advocate Mark Ruffalo on a new video urging his millions of followers to “Fund the Ground Game” through MVP, to make sure we don’t lose this election by a few thousand votes. Enjoy and share widely!

Along these lines, we’re making the case to the big Democratic money Super PACs to #FundTheGroundGame. We’d love your help spreading the word and educating donors (large and small) about the most effective use of “late money” – to fully fund authentic voter contact from trusted messengers. Here’s our social media toolkit with shareable graphics and messages. We’re trying to get the word out to the broader public so we appreciate any sharing you can do!

The New York Times, 10/18/24: Inside the Secretive $700 Million Ad-Testing Factory for Kamala Harris (gift link)

3. The MVP community is kicking ass! THANK YOU!!!

You’ve helped MVP move over $71 million this cycle (so far!) – in hard-to-get partisan dollars – directly to local, year-round organizing groups turning out the hardest-to-reach voters to tip the scales in the places that matter most. 

Updated Friday, 10/18/24 at 2pm ET

The thermometer above is from our new Movement.vote homepage. Check out our blog for constant updates in the final stretch – we’re trying to make it into a mini news site for stories from the field. Sharing these stories is our way of saying THANK YOU for supporting our partners’ work so you can see what your money is doing!

OK so here’s my election prediction…

I’ve been informally telling people that I think we’re going to win the Presidency by 10,000 votes. People have been intrigued by this and so I decided to take the risk of making it an official public prediction. 

I’d love to be wrong and win by more than that. We totally might. But if we lose, we’re almost certainly going to lose by 10,000 votes or less. I don’t think we’re going to lose by more than 10,000 votes, which… punchline: makes this an eminently winnable election. Control of the House is also likely to come down to 10,000 votes or less, just like it did in 2022. (The Senate is harder to predict – we’re doing everything we can to save that too because we need to hold the freaking Senate). 

Why do I think we’ll win, when all the battlegrounds are in a statistical tie? The ace up our sleeve is local organizing. I’ve been reading everything there is to read. I’ve been listening to our partners on the ground and looking at the numbers. From everything I can tell (with 12 election cycles under my belt) our ground game is just enough stronger than their ground game that I think we’re going to just barely get it over the top. I did a podcast interview if you want to hear more.

Long story short:

Thanks to you we have a fighting chance of winning the Presidency and Congress. 

But just as importantly, by investing your dollars into local organizing groups that aren’t just going to pack their boxes and turn off the lights after November 5th. You are helping to build the long-term, bottom-up political power that we’re going to need long after Election Day. By funding MVP’s amazing local partners, you are making a good investment, no matter the outcome.

Let’s go win – and transform our country in the long term!

Billy Wimsatt, MVP Executive Director
(On behalf of the MVP team)