For this election cycle, FLIP NC began canvassing in March 2024, talking with left-leaning voters around the state about our critical statewide judicial races and the importance of turning out and voting the full ballot.
10,000 doors later, we hosted our final FLIP NC canvass of 2024 in mid-September.
You may be asking: Why not continue knocking doors until election day?
The answer: The Democratic party, our fantastic Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, and other grassroots groups are now in full get-out-the-vote (GOTV) mode at the doors. We don’t want to duplicate efforts or annoy voters with multiple knocks on their doors in quick succession.
For legal reasons, we can’t coordinate. FLIP NC is an IE PAC, so we can't coordinate with the party or campaigns on our voter outreach. In 2018, we canvassed until election day and often found that canvassers from different groups were out in the same neighborhoods at the same time (or one group would be there hours after another).
Our door knocking is most effective well before election day. We know that, in 2018 (when we knocked until election day), our early door knocking had a huge impact, but we were less effective at increasing turnout among low-propensity, left-leaning voters as we got closer to the election. Especially for people who aren't consistent voters, the early canvassing we did well before the election was much more effective than the canvassing right before the election (when it can feel more like everyone is asking them for something). So at this point, we've already done the canvassing that has been most effective for us in the past. That doesn’t mean you should stop knocking doors – every bit helps! But we don’t need to duplicate the party and candidate efforts.
We encourage you to knock doors with your local party or find a competitive Democratic legislative candidate near you to support! Here’s more information about volunteer opportunities.
FLIP NC will continue to drop lit – we just won’t knock or ring. We will continue our highly successful lit drop program through the election (although we have paused on-boarding new volunteers while we work to launch our early voting text banking campaign). We have left lit for voters at more than 35,000 doors across the state – and counting! And lit drop volunteers are still having a lot of conversations with voters while they’re out and about!
FLIP NC’s primary organizing focus in October will be our text-banking program. As an entirely volunteer-run organization, we only have so much capacity, and in October, our main focus is on prepping and running our text-banking program. We’ll text left-leaning, lower-propensity voters at the start of early voting – and again the day before Election Day if they haven’t yet voted – with their local voting information (e.g., sites and times).
In 2020, we sent 1.4 million text messages to left-leaning voters statewide, funded entirely by donations from individual donors. We held back a random sample during early voting and found that this program netted about 3,500 additional votes statewide for Democrats – even with turnout at a record high that year. We hope you will join us for this highly effective program!