Strategic rural organizing
Rural communities have enormous electoral potential once organized.
What criteria should be used to choose the counties with the most potential? Which counties could impact Senate, Congress, State Senate and State House races?
Rural Organizing is a progressive nonprofit that uses strategic distributive organizing to empower rural progressives. It identified the counties with the most potential with this criteria:
- Which rural counties had the closest margins in federal elections since 2020
- Which counties would have the greatest impact for House/Senate seats in “battleground” races?
- Which counties had the most points of impact across several elections?
- Which counties presented significant opportunities for local progressive leadership?
Rural organizing where it matters most
Rural organizing
Authentic relationships are the foundation for change in rural communities. Rural Organizing leverages relationships to organize and mobilize rural communities. It uses smart communications and strategic distributive organizing, to empower rural progressives and develop, pass, and implement policy platforms needed to rebuild small towns across America. Here is how this strategy could impact Colorado.
With solid Democratic wins in the 2020 Presidential and 2022 Senate races, Alamosa, Archculeta, Conejos, Garfield, Huerfano, Las Animas, and Rio Grande were selected because they are all part of House District 3, Rep. Lauren Boebert’s seat. Boebert won her last race by a .16% margin of 546 votes. Five of these 7 counties had margins in the 2022 House race of 200 votes or less with 27,859 registered voters not voting. Changing the outcome of District 3’s seat would have a tremendous impact nationally as it removes one of the most far-right voices in Congress. - Rural Organizing
Strategic planning with maps
Rural Organizing shares data on counties on its website. DemLabs represented the same data in a multilayered map using ArcGIS Online which helps make the data more usable for planning campaigns.
The map initially shows the key 100 counties with details on each one. Next congressional district boundaries are shown with the rural counties that overlap it. Zooming into the map reveals State Senate and State House districts. Another map layer shows the number of registered voters who did not vote in each of the counties.
Rural Organizing is a progressive power house mobilizing over 700,000 activists for positive change across rural America. Is mission is to build a rural America that is empowered, thriving, and equitable and our grassroots network of rural organizers, activists, elected officials and candidates for office.
In small towns and rural communities across the country, authentic relationships are the foundation for community change. Tip O'Neill famously said, “All politics is local”. Rural Organizing believes that communities, causes, and candidates must leverage these relationships in order to organize and mobilize rural communities toward enduring and sustainable change. With smart communications and strategic distributive organizing, we will empower rural progressives and develop, pass, and implement policy platforms needed to rebuild small towns across America.
TakeAway: Organize rural counties strategically.
Deepak
DemLabs
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This is such an important topic! Great topic