Progressives set to unleash swing state blitz for Harris
Just over a month away from the U.S. general election, the largest progressive political organizing group in the country announced Friday that it is aiming to encourage 5 million voters in seven battleground states to vote against former Republican President Donald Trump.
Our Revolution hopes to reach voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin via door-knocking, phone calls, and text messages ahead of the November election, in which Trump is facing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
The get-out-the-vote effort comes after surveying over 1,400 Our Revolution members who live in swing states. The results, the group said, "present worrying signs for the Harris campaign" and "suggest that the Trump campaign is actively engaging young and progressive voters."
Joseph Geevarghese is the executive director of Our Revolution, which grew out of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2016 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The group leader said Friday that "the polls are tight and the Electoral College is rigged to give Trump an edge, but Our Revolution can turn the tide by turning out progressive voters in key battleground states."
In the 2020 election, President Joe Biden "narrowly beat Trump by less than 300,000 votes in these states four years ago, which means that our 1.2 million supporters in the swing states could be the margin of victory in 2024," Geevarghese noted.
"After hearing from progressive swing state residents and our organizers on the ground, we are sounding the alarm on the lack of enthusiasm amongst this key voting bloc," he added. "In the coming weeks, Our Revolution will continue urging the Harris campaign to release bold policy plans aimed at motivating the party's progressive base, and we are committed to doing everything we can to mobilize support against another disastrous Trump presidency."
As the group detailed Friday, its polling—first reported by Semafor—found:
- 1 in 4 Our Revolution members in swing states know progressives who are planning not to vote or to vote third party;
- 3 in 4 of our swing state supporters believe Harris needs to get more specific on policy and do more interviews to clarify her positions to earn the votes of undecided people they know;
- 80% say that celebrities coming out for Harris are unlikely to sway their undecided friends and neighbors;
- 80% think the escalating war in the Middle East is a sign of trouble for the Harris campaign;
- 2 out of 3 said they've received outreach from the Trump campaign—including grassroots Trump canvassers and door knockers, and they're being bombarded by Trump ads; and
- 54% of Our Revolution swing state supporters report they're seeing more Trump signs than Harris signs in neighbors' yards.
Since the president passed the torch to Harris this summer following a disastrous debate performance against Trump, she has racked up endorsements from leading groups, including People's Action, Popular Democracy, and the Working Families Party. Harris won the first-ever endorsement of the youth-led gun violence prevention movement March for Our Lives and has support from various reproductive rights, labor, and climate organizations—even some that declined to back Biden.
However, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse for the first time since 1996, and the Uncommitted National Movement—which is critical of U.S. support for Israel's annihilation of Gaza—announced last month that "Harris' unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her."
Uncommitted also made clear that it "opposes a Donald Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing," and "is not recommending a third-party vote in the presidential election, especially as third-party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given our country's broken Electoral College system."
Despite recent polling that suggests U.S. voter support for Harris would grow if she backed an arms embargo against the Israeli military, Harris is not making clear attempts to win over Uncommitted voters. Leaders from the movement toldReuters that they were not invited to her Friday meeting with Arab American and Muslim leaders in Flint, Michigan.
Efforts to convince Michigan voters to support Harris will continue this weekend. Sanders and United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain—whose union endorsed her this summer—have three events in the state in the coming days. They plan to talk about corporate greed, healthcare, and manufacturing in the state.
Meanwhile, Harris this weekend plans to head to North Carolina, which was just devastated by Hurricane Helene.
The Sunrise Movement—a youth-led climate group that launched a campaign to defeat Trump and reach 1.5 million young swing state voters in August—intends to boost efforts to elect Harris in the weeks ahead, specifically focusing on North Carolina.
"Young climate voters could decide the election in North Carolina and put Harris over the edge," Sunrise organizer Paul Campion said in a statement Friday. "We're focused on reaching a group of 84,000 young voters between the ages of 18 and 26 who are very concerned about climate change but aren't regular voters. We're talking with them about the devastation of Helene and how Donald Trump's Project 2025 agenda would worsen the climate crisis, making disasters like Helene more frequent and severe."
Shiva Rajbhandari, a North Carolina student organizer, said that "people are angry. We're watching homes be swept away, entire towns consumed by floodwaters, and Donald Trump is joking about how climate change will create more waterfront property."
"Big Oil just murdered 200 people," the 20-year-old declared. "People know who's responsible for the climate crisis, and we're going to hold them accountable in November."