Recommendations for prioritizing political engagement in the 2020 US elections

By IanDavidMoss @ 2020-10-14T13:52 (+38)

(Context: there is a long-running debate within the EA community about whether or not effective altruists should seek to avoid getting caught up in party politics. I have written a companion post to this one exploring some of these issues. What follows is intended to be of service to those who, like me, believe strongly that the current election cycle in the US represents a uniquely important opportunity for effective altruists and are looking for the best ways to get involved.)

Since early August, a giving circle entitled the Landslide Coalition has been researching time-sensitive, neglected, and (where possible) evidence-based opportunities to maximize electoral victories for Democrats in the current election cycle. While not operating officially under the banner of effective altruism, Landslide Coalition has drawn roughly half of its membership from the EA community, makes significant use of concepts from EA charity analysis, and is explicitly modeled after an EA giving circle that drove millions of dollars to neglected global coronavirus interventions earlier this year.

Currently, we are a group of 35+ individuals and families who are concerned about the future of the United States under Donald Trump and his allies. Thus far, we have directly moved more than $315,000 to recommended charities and campaigns and indirectly influenced another $1.1 million in gifts and grants, while volunteering more than 200 hours of our time to date. We offer both donation and volunteering recommendations, and we are continuing to welcome new members through Election Day.

In keeping with our name, our primary goal is to ensure as widespread and decisive a victory as possible for Democrats in 2020. Our reasons for pursuing a landslide, rather than a narrow focus on winning the presidency, are as follows:

A landslide victory will make it harder for Trump or his allies to successfully dispute the election results, a major concern given his repeated refusal to commit to accepting the outcome of the vote or to a peaceful transition of power if he loses.
A landslide victory offers insurance against the possibility that election administration snafus will meaningfully affect the outcome, whether they are accidental or the result of malign interference by foreign actors.
A landslide victory increases the chances that a Democratic president will have enough votes in the Senate to pass needed legislation and confirm appointees, including for the Supreme Court.
Perhaps most importantly, a landslide victory is the only plausible path toward freeing the Republican Party from Trump's toxic influence in the years to come. Any hope of reducing polarization and partisanship in the United States over the long term requires that we first confront the power of the most partisan and polarizing leader the country has seen in generations.

To achieve a landslide victory, we need to throw everything we have at this election, even if the race seems to be trending in Democrats' favor at the moment. We are currently focusing on neglected opportunities for impact in the following thematic areas:

Maximization of net Democratic votes in battleground states, e.g. cost-effective get-out-the-vote and persuasion campaigns in places most likely to decide the general election
Election campaigns that are underfunded relative to their significance, such as state house races that have a chance of flipping a chamber and preventing Republican control of redistricting
Integrity and security of the upcoming election against threats such as hacking, disinformation, equipment failure, and COVID-related staffing shortages
Preparation for the possibility that the election will be disputed and ensuring massive resistance to any attempts to undermine the will of the people after November 3

Our current top recommendations

Note: the following recommendations are the product of approximately 350 hours of research (including numerous conversations with fellow funders, campaigns, and organization leaders) by members of our group since early August. The political giving space is highly complex and there are surely gaps in our knowledge still, but we have confidence that the recommendations below are significantly higher-quality than what we would have been able to come up with simply by following the news and publicly available commentary during this time.

Donating

Working America, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, has identified through repeated RCTs several techniques that greatly outperform traditional persuasion tactics with uncommitted and even Republican-leaning voters. Estimates suggest investing in these techniques will be roughly 8 to 10 times as cost-effective as donating to the Biden campaign, with the potential to net hundreds of thousands of votes across key states.
Because we are a donor network, we often learn about confidential opportunities that, whether because of concerns about tipping trade secrets to the other side or the fast pace at which the efforts need to be stood up, are not being shopped around to the general public. We are currently aware of a number of unfunded efforts brought to us by trusted advisors that cover areas such as persuasion campaigns targeted at very specific target populations in key states, efforts to build public trust in the election results and vote counting process, and more. If you are considering a last-minute donation of at least $10,000 and would like to learn more, feel free to write us at landslidecoalition@gmail.com for further details.
Flipping the Texas State House is a massive opportunity to break up Republican control before states draw new district maps for the next ten years, as Texas has by far the most Congressional districts of any state whose legislature is in play. You can donate to the Lone Star Votes pooled fund for high-impact races, or to individual campaigns directly using Princeton Election Consortium's Moneyball vote visualizer as a guide.

Additional donation recommendations are available at our website. We ask that donors get in touch with us at landslidecoalition@gmail.com before donating to Working America so that we can help you ensure the money goes to the right programs. We also very much appreciate it when donors tell us how much they gave to our recommendations so that we can track our money moved.

Volunteering

Note: we recently overhauled our volunteering recommendations to focus on efforts that would be most valuable over the last two weeks of the campaign. Readers are invited to check out the slides from a briefing we held this week to go over the recommendations; if you would like to view the recording of that event, please write landslidecoalition@gmail.com.

Below is a "decision tree" intended to provide guidance for how you can choose to volunteer your time during the last stages of the election:

Regardless of other activities, everyone seeking to help should pick three (or more) friends in swing states who they're going to ask to be vote triplers (i.e., remind three friends to vote). If possible, prioritize friends and family in small states with competitive Senate races like Montana, Alaska, Iowa, Maine, and Kansas, but any swing state is better than none. Evidence indicates that these asks are most effective when you reach out individually -- don't just post on Facebook!

Then...

Make a plan for the next two weeks and decide how you're going to spend the time:

If you only have a few hours to spare between now and Election Day, try one of our textbanking recommendations.

If you particularly enjoy (or are just good at) talking to strangers, try deep canvassing with Working America or People's Action.

If you can put in at least ten hours a week but prefer to work from home, sign up to support Focus 2020's "deep volunteering" work to educate and protect voters in Philadelphia and the Upper Midwest.

If you're willing to volunteer in person, do it! The top recommendation here would be the partisan or nonpartisan Polling Place Vote Tripling programs, but your time would also be of value as a poll monitor nationwide or a GOTV canvasser in Philadelphia. For efficiency reasons, we recommend that any in-person work be directed toward densely packed urban areas in swing states.

Finally, if you have specialized skills or talents, use them. For example:

If you speak Spanish, sign up to phonebank with the Biden campaign here, or to send texts with the Texas Democrats.
If you're a lawyer, sign up with We the Action.

The Landslide Coalition website has more details on all of our donation and volunteering recommendations. We do not anticipate any more major updates to these recommendations before November 3, but may make small tweaks in response to new developments.

Is it better to donate or volunteer?

It depends on whether you personally have more time or money to spare. While there are uncertainties and variability associated with our cost-effectiveness estimates, a good rule of thumb is that if you think it’s more realistic for you to volunteer for at least five hours than it is for you to give $1,000, then you’re better off doing the former. In light of the limited time remaining before Election Day, anyone in a position to give over $50,000 is almost certainly going to accomplish more by donating than by giving their time, even at this late stage.

Comparing our recommendations to others

There are a number of giving guides and pooled funds currently making the rounds in progressive circles (although there were a lot fewer when we got started). EAs might reasonably ask why they should trust our analyses over these other options. Below are a few thoughts on comparative advantages and areas of overlap:

Most existing analyses we've seen have focused on donations to political campaigns, with rankings of the Senate races a particularly crowded space. Notably, none of the rankings we have seen (including Blue Senate Project, David Shor's recommendations, Princeton Election Consortium, as well as the opinions of experts with whom we've spoken) agree either with each other or with our own analysis. ~~While we stand by our current prioritization of the Iowa race as #1~~, the most logical takeaway is probably that the difference in expected marginal impact between supporting different Senate races is no longer as dramatic as was once the case.
By contrast, many of our donation recommendations are for charitable organizations and political action committees whose work is not widely known. We have vetted most of these fairly intensively given the time constraints and have access to substantial detail on how marginal dollars will be used. Where possible, we have tied recommendations to an increasingly robust evidence base for the effectiveness of various campaign tactics as chronicled by organizations such as the Analyst Institute.
In addition, as far as we know we are the only group publicly offering evidence-based volunteering recommendations for the current campaign cycle. Volunteering can be evaluated through the same cost-effectiveness lens as donations, but for whatever reason it appears that few have attempted to synthesize and compare opportunities in this way.

Landslide Coalition has not attempted an analysis of how political donations stack up against other EA priorities, so if you are already directing significant support to GiveWell-recommended charities or longtermist priorities, our intention is not to suggest you do otherwise. If the funds would otherwise go toward personal consumption or other non-essential spending, however, you may wish to consider how far you can reasonably stretch your budget in light of the stakes currently at play. Furthermore, if donating is not an option for you, there are many opportunities to make a highly-leveraged difference with your time in this election.

UPDATE LOG:

11/15: See the comments for recommendations relating to the Georgia Senate runoffs and other post-election work.
10/23: Posted complete overhaul of volunteer recommendations for the final two weeks.
10/15: Removed Theresa Greenfield from top-level recs (Senate campaigns generally very well-funded now), replaced with writeup on confidential opportunities.

IanDavidMoss @ 2020-11-15T19:37 (+15)

Hi everyone, we've updated our recommendations for the post-election, pre-inauguration period, with a focus on the Georgia Senate runoffs and efforts to reduce polarization and fight disinformation about the election results. Georgia recommendations are below; recommendations for the other category are coming soon.

In our pre-election research, we learned a lot about the power of vote tripling, or getting potential or recent voters to remind three friends to vote. BlockPower takes that idea several steps further by combining vote tripling with relational organizing in a paid organizing model with a special focus on Georgia's Black communities. The approach is like a greatest-hits album of evidence-based GOTV techniques, has significant potential to scale productively, and is currently flying well under the radar of fundraisers for the Georgia runoffs. Donate to BlockPower here.
Vote.org is accepting donations for a radio advertising buy that will stress the importance of voting in the runoffs on Georgia-based stations with majority youth and/or POC listenership. Radio is a relatively underappreciated tool for getting out the vote, and evidence from past elections suggests the cost-effectiveness of such programs is extremely competitive. And since the outcome in the runoffs is far more likely to be determined by turnout than persuasion (runoffs are typically low-turnout affairs), we think this is a great bet for your money. Please note the funding deadline for this opportunity is Friday, November 20. Donate to this opportunity here (note this is different from the main donate link on the vote.org website).

An important piece of context for these recommendations is that this race is attracting an enormous amount of money and attention from both sides of the aisle. You've probably seen friends donating to or fundraising for well-known entities such as the Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff campaigns, the Democratic Party of Georgia, and the Stacey Abrams-founded organizations Fair Fight and New Georgia Project. These organizations and campaigns do great work, but if they don't achieve their goals on January 5, it's unlikely to be because they didn't raise enough money this fall. By contrast, our recommendations try to hone in on lower-profile efforts that cover an important niche in the overall landscape, yet have a real chance of not meeting their fundraising goals or potential.

For volunteering: Focus 2020

In the final week leading up to the November 3 election, we had the privilege of working closely with our friends at Focus 2020 to direct volunteer efforts focused on Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest. Focus 2020 operates as a clearinghouse and coordinating body for high-impact volunteering efforts, working in close partnership with local and state-based organizations. The group has now pivoted to the Georgia runoffs and we are pleased to recommend them as our primary partners for Georgia volunteering. In addition to maintaining a curated list of third-party Georgia volunteering opportunities (which Landslide Coalition will be helping to coordinate), Focus 2020 accepts direct volunteers with no minimum time commitment, which is the best way to stay in the loop on an ongoing basis. One of the most critical lessons we learned over the past month is that the landscape of political volunteering needs is constantly shifting, and your efforts are only as impactful as the importance of the gap you're filling. We're recommending Focus 2020 because you're going to get much better information on that front from partnering with them than by working with a single organization or running down a list of random events on Mobilize.

Happy to answer any questions about the above. Thank you!

HStencil @ 2020-11-20T20:54 (+1)

Looks like BlockPower is holding a hackathon tomorrow to help build out the platform they’re using for their GOTV efforts in the Georgia runoffs, if anyone’s interested!

Aaron Gertler @ 2020-10-14T22:35 (+5)

In accordance with the Forum's policy on political posts, I'm keeping this one in "Personal Blog."

However, as a citizen of the U.S. and the world, I deeply appreciate the Coalition's work, and I hope you can draw a lot of readers to this post by linking to it elsewhere.

Peter_Hurford @ 2020-10-16T01:16 (+4)

What do you see as the case for political volunteering, as opposed to trying to use time to earn/save money to donate more instead?

IanDavidMoss @ 2020-10-16T02:29 (+1)

The best volunteer opportunities we've seen in terms of cost-effectiveness cash out to the equivalent of about a $150-200/hr rate if you were going to donate that money to our top recommendations instead. So if you can earn more than that OR if you have spare money lying around OR if you can raise more than that easily from others, then donating/raising is a better use of your time. Otherwise, volunteering is great at this stage. As mentioned in the post, we'll be rolling out a curated list/calendar of recommended & evidence-based textbanking events in the next few days, so watch this space.

Peter_Hurford @ 2020-10-16T02:40 (+2)

The best volunteer opportunities we've seen in terms of cost-effectiveness cash out to the equivalent of about a $150-200/hr rate if you were going to donate that money to our top recommendations instead

I find that very surprising! Couldn't a campaign hire a person to do these top volunteering opportunities for ~$20/hr? Presumably that would cap the value of volunteering at ~$20/hr?

IanDavidMoss @ 2020-10-16T03:05 (+1)

Interestingly, the "typical" volunteering opportunity is in fact worth more like $20/hr. You only get into that 10x range by using a very specific combination of techniques and targeting that we're trying to incorporate into our textbanking recommendations. So I think this is partly an arbitrage opportunity due to the market not yet catching up to the research on a widespread basis.

Peter_Hurford @ 2020-10-16T05:43 (+2)

Perhaps you are right, but my outside view would suggest some skepticism that professional campaigns haven't identified these winning techniques that you have. Perhaps they have some reason for doubting them?

Relatedly, do you worry about optimizers curse when identifying top opportunities?

(FWIW my personal experience does suggest campaigns can be shortsighted at times... I recall volunteering for Hillary in 2016 and spending an unfortunate amount of volunteer time being directed to make calls in Iowa)

IanDavidMoss @ 2020-10-23T20:18 (+3)

Sorry for the delayed response -- the past week has been pretty crazy as you might imagine!

I think we're both falling prey to a tendency to oversimplify things in this thread. The reality is that the value of a volunteer hour is highly context-dependent. Textbanking is a lot more efficient than phonebanking because you can reach more people in a given amount of time. However, textbanking is also a lot less neglected than phonebanking this year because it's easier to do. In-person canvassing is probably the least efficient of all, but you can reach people in person that you can't reach by either phone or text -- so it doesn't make sense to abandon it entirely. And regardless of the mode, if a campaign hasn't done a good job of curating its list, a volunteer's efforts are going to be pretty ineffectual.

We've put a lot of research into trying to identify high-impact volunteer opportunities, but honestly what we've done is just scratching the surface of what it would really take to get to a confident answer. Campaigns don't say on their websites, "hey, sign up to volunteer and by the way what we REALLY need is phonebankers who can speak Spanish." Because they don't want to alienate anyone who could be a productive volunteer and they want to make it as easy as possible for people. Because of that, finding out what the actual needs are takes a lot of shoe-leather investigation: talking to knowledgeable people in the field, analyzing the kinds and frequency of voter contact that's taking place across all campaigns to assess the level of saturation in different geographies. This kind of real-time cross-campaign landscape analysis simply doesn't exist at scale right now, so the best we can do is look at what the research says about the cost-effectiveness of different methods in terms of converting volunteer hours into net votes and try to make holistic judgments about where additional efforts would have the most value. What I can say is that I'm confident that the suggestions we've offered a) will be helpful rather than harmful and b) are substantially better than just randomly signing up for a volunteer opportunity.

As a side note, you seem to have a lot more faith in the efficient markets hypothesis as it applies to organizational behavior than I do! I don't think I have ever encountered an institutional ecosystem that was unburdened by poor strategic thinking, inefficient legacy practices, and failure to coordinate complementary or duplicative efforts. In that regard, I've actually been pleasantly surprised with how high-functioning the progressive organizing space seems to be on the whole.

Peter_Hurford @ 2020-10-26T14:26 (+5)

What I can say is that I'm confident that the suggestions we've offered a) will be helpful rather than harmful and b) are substantially better than just randomly signing up for a volunteer opportunity.

I agree that's totally fair! And I appreciate you doing that work.

As a side note, you seem to have a lot more faith in the efficient markets hypothesis as it applies to organizational behavior than I do! I don't think I have ever encountered an institutional ecosystem that was unburdened by poor strategic thinking, inefficient legacy practices, and failure to coordinate complementary or duplicative efforts. In that regard, I've actually been pleasantly surprised with how high-functioning the progressive organizing space seems to be on the whole.

I'm not sure this is a side note... this might be the main crux of our disagreement!

My prior is that a team of smart non-experts uncovering some large tactical error in large well-funded groups that are highly incentivized to not have errors of that type is certainly possible and actually quite achievable, but probably takes on the order of >4K hours of work. I also think it is easy to think you have found an error that is not in fact an error. I'm not sure how much time you've spent on this?

I do have massive uncertainty about how true the efficient market hypothesis is, for a variety of domains.

IanDavidMoss @ 2020-10-26T18:35 (+1)

My experience has been that across most domains, there is kind of a Pareto-optimality to coming in as an outsider and trying to find superior giving or intervention opportunities. It usually takes only a few hours of research to determine an approach that will be above average. It may take a couple hundred hours to find opportunities that will be in the top 10-20%. And unless you get lucky early on, it can easily take more like the 4k you're describing to find the very best that's out there. So it depends on what your standard for excellence is and the opportunity cost of the time you're willing to put in.

Peter_Hurford @ 2020-10-16T01:14 (+4)

Estimates suggest investing in these techniques will be roughly 8 to 10 times as cost-effective as donating to the Biden campaign, with the potential to net hundreds of thousands of votes across key states.

Can you offer more detail on this? I would probably consider donating to it if I understood it better.

IanDavidMoss @ 2020-10-16T02:24 (+1)

Hi Peter, anyone who would like to learn more about the Working America program is welcome to email landslidecoalition@gmail.com to receive additional materials about it.

MichaelStJules @ 2020-10-22T00:18 (+3)

Is Future Forward on your radar? It has support from a couple people associated with EA, including Moskovitz. Although maybe they'll hit diminishing returns with such large donors?

https://www.futureforwardusa.org/

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/20/21523492/future-forward-super-pac-dustin-moskovitz-silicon-valley

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/future-forward-super-pac.html

Also,

Other significant Moskovitz bets this cycle have included millions to the Voter Participation Center, a voter-turnout organization that has been supercharged by tech money over the last two years, and Vote Tripling, a “relational organizing” approach to encourage friends to vote.

IanDavidMoss @ 2020-10-23T19:42 (+3)

Yep, that was one of the "confidential opportunities" mentioned in the recs, that is before it became, uh, not confidential. :) In any case, the funding deadline has long passed on that one. In addition, Vote Tripling was one of our recommendations very early on and we've been working with them closely this past week as we've developed our textbanking recommendations.

Peter_Hurford @ 2020-10-16T01:13 (+3)

I'm pretty undecided on how to give to pro-Biden/Dem efforts (as well as undecided on how pro-Biden/Dem efforts compare to other opportunities), but I wanted to give a small amount (as I no longer earn-to-give), so here is my giving:

My top idea right now is this campaign, that put together by a strong EA-aligned progressive-aligned data scientist with strong expertise in helping Democrats win and seems like a better bet than solely focusing on Theresa Greenfield. I haven't vetted it but I put $250 for it based on my intuition. (EDIT: I notice you mentioned this in your post, so I guess we'd either have to agree to disagree or have a longer discussion. My guess is that your analysis may be missing marginal media market costs?)

Worth keeping in mind that (as you probably know) due to FCC rules, donating directly to candidates seems like a stronger bet than donating to any other PAC, because candidates (a) get guaranteed minimum advertising rates and (b) get direct access to the candidate (more persuasive).

An honorable mention is this ad campaign, which feels strong and is also backed by strong message testing by people with a good track record for this sort of thing. I donated $100 to it.

I also think state legislature races are important, so I donated $100 to this impact-focused list that was also put together by people with a strong track record of putting together this sort of thing.

I like the idea of flipping Texas, so I donated to the Swing Left campaign for it. I don't know how that compares to Lone Star Votes or the Princeton Election Consortium. I also don't know the track record of Swing Left. This is the idea I feel least confident about, so I only donated $50.

Of course I also donated $100 to Biden directly following the logic that due to campaign finance and FCC rules, it is good for small donor individuals to donate directly to candidates.

And I gave $10 to ActBlue for facilitating all of the above.

Ideally I would've liked to have done more research and focused more money on one campaign I feel best about (and to have donated more money overall), but I don't think I'll ever get to that point, thus this scattershot giving approach.

(Obvious disclaimer: These are purely personal opinions and doesn't reflect any policy or position of Rethink Priorities.)

IanDavidMoss @ 2020-10-16T03:08 (+1)

Hi Peter, just FYI, the Senate campaigns are now pretty much all getting a lot of money and also outpacing their Republican counterparts, so we've decided to demote Theresa Greenfield from our top-level recs. But if you still want to give to the Senate, I think David's pooled fund is a good option. As I stated in the post, there's likely not a ton of difference at this point between the most competitive races in terms of one being better/more important than another. Just avoid McGrath, Kelly, and Harrison as they have all the money they could ever use.

Peter_Hurford @ 2020-10-16T05:42 (+2)

I agree it is definitely not a neglected issue but [per this table](https://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases-101520/#table5) there is still definitely room for Dems to increase their advantage... some races (e.g., GA, MI) aren't even 2-to-1 in favor of Dems yet.

HStencil @ 2020-11-10T18:35 (+2)

I'm curious whether Landslide Coalition has given any thought to how one could most effectively make an impact on the Georgia Senate run-offs. Obviously, the stakes are much lower now that Trump has lost the presidency, but I think there's still a reasonable case to be made that helping Democrats win Senate control at this moment in history is hugely important from an EA perspective. For those who think that's a priority, I assume deep canvassing through People's Action remains among the best volunteer opportunities available, but do you know whether they could productively use additional funding right now? Or could Working America, if they're at all involved in the Georgia races? Are there any voter registration nonprofits that are running especially cost-effective programs? I'm sure someone must be focused on registering the ~23,000 teenagers who will become eligible to vote in Georgia between the 2020 general registration deadline and the Janury run-off registration deadline.... But I assume the campaigns themselves are (or will soon be) absolutely flush with cash and probably are not the most impactful groups to fund on the margin. Any thoughts?

IanDavidMoss @ 2020-11-15T19:52 (+4)

Much of this is addressed in the new top-level comment I just posted with our Georgia recommendations, but here are a few specific responses to your questions:

We love the People's Action deep canvassing program and agree that it remains as relevant as before. Our understanding is that they are taking a break for now and will be starting up again soon.
Working America is running an extension of its program in the Georgia runoffs. We've decided not to give them a top-level recommendation at present, but might in the future.
There are several organizations running voter registration programs; the one that we like the most is the site-based one run by the Everybody Votes Campaign. You can donate to that here: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/everybodyvotes. With that said, I expect GOTV efforts will be much more important to the outcome of the election than registration.

HStencil @ 2020-11-17T19:00 (+3)

Thanks so much -- really appreciate your taking the time to look into this stuff!

IanDavidMoss @ 2020-10-23T19:38 (+2)

All: I've updated the post to reflect the fact that we've thoroughly overhauled our volunteer recommendations in anticipation of the final two weeks. Our top recommendation for people who don't have a lot of time to spare is to spend a few hours textbanking with one of our recommended campaigns, and we have lots more suggestions for those who can commit more time or have specialized skills to offer. If you'd like to see the recording or deck from the briefing we held on these earlier this week, feel free to get in touch. In addition, there were some minor changes to the donation recommendations last week.