Joe Biden may not do crowds and parties….They want to make politics look different in the seven or so states that will decide the presidency — like a dance party, a comedy show or a place to chill out. Sometimes there will be free beer, manicures, boot shines, a rent check sweepstakes, a handout of contraceptive pills or cooling towels. All you have to do is show up, like it’s Super Bowl Sunday, and belong to something bigger. Oh, and someone might mention voting at some point.
“No one throws more simultaneous parties than we do,” Dmitri Mehlhorn, a donor adviser to billionaire Democrats like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, said of Americans. “There are 2.2 million humans in those states under 45 who are just nonvoters, but they do all kinds of other civic stuff.”
The new push — funded with millions of dollars by Mehlhorn’s group, Investing in US, and others — is now being tested in swing states like Pennsylvania and Arizona. The target is younger voters in major metropolitan areas of a few key states who, if they do vote, tend to favor Democrats. Early polls suggest they are more disconnected from the political conversation in ways that could sink Democratic hopes of keeping the White House. The current pilot project results will determine funding for events this fall.
“Turning people out to cultural events is not a hard thing to do. The key thing is to make it fun and keep out the doom and gloom,” said Kevin Mack, the lead strategist for The Voter Project, which has been throwing parties this spring across Pennsylvania to test the theory, under the banner of Stand Up Strong ’24. “They will take actions automatically. It is not a big push.”….
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“It is very 19th century in a way,” said Donald Green, a political scientist at Columbia University, who has studied the effectiveness of staging parties near polling places to get out the vote. “Before the so-called progressive era reforms of 1880s, you would have a marching band, you would have entertainment, you would have free whiskey for a male-only electorate.”…
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Green has run multiple studies since 2005 on the effects on turnout from parties held near polling sites when elections are taking place. There is variation in the results, depending on everything from weather to the cachet and skill of the party planners, he said. But when the events work, they can juice turnout by four to six percentage points, at a cost per vote that is lower than other tactics like door-to-door canvassing and phone banking…..
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“Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, we are meeting them where they are,” said Jenny Kay, one of the organizers. “We are coming to them.”
image…Jenny Kay, left, passes out free emergency contraceptive pills during the Vote for Abortion festival at the state Capitol on Saturday in Phoenix. (Rebecca Noble for The Washington Post)