2020 Independent Expenditure Campaigns: Voters for Equality
The Voters for Equality Campaign, a joint project of Feminist Majority and National Organization for Women, puts a priority on flipping control of the U.S. Senate. Democrats must gain a net of four seats to win the majority in the Senate (three seats if Democrats win the presidency). We are targeting Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, and Montana to flip the Senate, and we must defend the Senate seat in New Hampshire.
The Campaign works to increase the turnout of college and university students. College students will be a formidable voting bloc in 2020 – if they vote. We have found if we invest in campaigns to mobilize college students who vote more progressively, they will vote in unprecedented numbers and can provide the margin of victory in close elections while offsetting the votes of more conservative older voters. College students constitute a voting bloc that is easier and less costly to reach and can provide the margin of victory for the feminist agenda.
Young people (18-29) traditionally vote at a lower rate than voters 65 years of age and older. In off-year elections, such as 2019, only about 17% of young voters 18-29 years old vote.
The Feminist Majority and the National Organization for Women in our 2019 independent expenditure campaign in Virginia targeted young voters and we helped to significantly increase youth voter turnout, resulting in helping to flip the Virginia House and Senate from Red to Blue.
The Voters for Equality Campaign will make substantial investments both in multi-platform online engagement strategies and field operations aimed at mobilizing young voters on four-year college campuses, community colleges, and HBCUs. The Campaign will recruit, train, and equip teams of part-time student organizers on campuses in our target states. Teams of several students will be recruited per campus, at least one lead, one field and one social media organizer and more on larger campuses.
Working with Unfiltered Media, a social media consulting firm, our campaign used in the 2019 Virginia state legislative elections, we are acquiring lists built from geo-fenced mobile devices within the borders of campuses in our targeted states from late February/early March 2020, thus identifying women students on each campus (four-year, two-year, and HBCU colleges) in the critical period before the COVID-19 shutdowns began. This gives us the ability to push out social media ads to the mobile devices we identify.