INBOX: Bruce Springsteen to Join Hillary Clinton and President Obama at Independence Hall Rally in Philadelphia.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 6, 2016
(Insert your own Chris Christie joke here)
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a question for which i don’t know the answer: does a day-of, or day-before campaign rally actually move people toward a candidate?
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 5, 2016
No, it can move people who support the candidate to vote, who may not otherwise. All about mobilization down the stretch https://t.co/Ou8q5rg1NQ
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) November 5, 2016
@JakeSherman @danpfeiffer The free concerts/rallies seem to have a major impact on juicing the early vote. pic.twitter.com/GYu3F94Dp0
— Tyler Sandberg (@wtylersandberg) November 5, 2016
trump is so dumb, he thinks the concerts are about just getting a big crowd https://t.co/9Ib9dJkjbh pic.twitter.com/4EPClSYtOC
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) November 5, 2016
Buzzfeed:
… The show coincided with a coordinated push in Cleveland to turn out voters, as well as the significant operation currently running in the state. Of a dozen and a half volunteers that spoke with BuzzFeed News, nearly all canvassed in this city’s East Side.
One of them was Shay Ford, a 22-year-old who said her favorite part was when Clinton came out and “showed love” to Cleveland. “I didn’t think she wasn’t coming.”
They canvassed where voters fell into one of three categories, according to a wide range of starry-eyed young black people looking forward to laying eyes on Beyoncé for the first time. A third of voters had already voted for Clinton; another third planned to vote on Election Day. The last third, echoing a sentiment people inside the Clinton campaign dedicated to turning out the black vote dread, didn’t believe voting would in any way help their communities or situation.
Modern organizing programs of political campaigns like to have organizers say they’re your neighbors when they knock on your door. To the extent that this is an effective strategy, Clinton camp’s decision to have volunteers clock a couple of hours for the chance to see the concert is pretty genius…
Find someone who looks at you the way Beyoncé looks at Hillary pic.twitter.com/4S7nBJuBdE
— Marc Snetiker (@MarcSnetiker) November 5, 2016
Politico:
…[T]he free concerts aren’t just there to draw Donald Trump-sized crowds. They’re part of an under-the-radar tactic that Clinton’s Brooklyn team believes is a powerful organizing tool that’s already yielding results for the campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts — especially in the critical counties and among the demographic groups Clinton needs most.
The candidate with famously high unfavorable ratings doesn’t even have to make the pitch herself for the strategy to work: she spoke for five minutes in front of the crowd of 10,000 here, letting the headliners take the night — and even then the performers barely said her name, instead simply imploring the audience to vote.
Instead, her campaign focuses on the distribution of the free tickets themselves in the days before of the event, which lets the local teams collect, analyze, and mobilize thousands of new names in communities where they see warning signs, like young African Americans in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County.
And already, the campaign is seeing signs that the concerts are having their desired effect — including when artists are paired with traditional political surrogates: Ahead of President Barack Obama’s appearance with James Taylor, for example, the local operatives handed out tickets across the street from an early voting site in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Voting turnout there jumped 80 percent compared to the previous day, making it the single largest voting day there so far — and bumping up county-wide turnout 16 percent by itself.
“It’s about energy, it’s about mobilization. We who work in politics or cover politics have been thinking about this election for a year and a half, but there are still people who have not in some of these communities,” said Addisu Demissie, Clinton’s director of national voter outreach and mobilization. “There are a lot of ways we talk to voters — through the press, through direct voter contact — but this is just another tool in the arsenal to get to communities that aren’t necessarily engaged.”…