ABSTRACT
Black neighborhoods in key swing states hold enormous power to reshape politics in November 2020 and beyond. Black voters have consistently supported Democratic candidates over Republicans by stunning margins: about 90% to 10%. The political scientists Donald Green and Alan Gerber conducted an analysis of hundreds of voter turnout experiments that tested methods like yard signs, mailers, text messages, and TV ads. No simple, inexpensive tactic improved turnout more than three percentage points on average in high-turnout elections. Black Leaders Organizing for Communities in Milwaukee, for example, trains community ambassadors to turn their neighborhoods’ resources into collective power that can be wielded to win. And Color of Change aims to do this on a national scale through its political arm called Voting While Black. Genuine community organizing takes months and years, not days and weeks, a truth that is often lost on the donor community.
