Swing Left Greater Boston saw Florida as one of the critical super states in the 2020 election from the start. In 2016, Donald Trump won the state by just over a percentage point, helping to give him a victory over Hillary Clinton. While we did not win this year in Florida, the Democrats were still successful in the overall presidential campaign, winning 306 Electoral votes for Joe Biden to 232 for Donald Trump.
In Florida, our efforts were still critical to delivering many votes to Joe Biden and driving excitement, attention, and support. Our team included thousands of volunteers, who spent over 72K hours of their personal time supporting Florida—an amazing feat that few programs can match.
Vote by Mail in Florida
With the pandemic in full swing, Swing Left Greater Boston focused much of its Florida efforts on promoting and enabling Democratic voters to apply to vote-by-mail. Nearly 1M vote-by-mail applications were sent to targeted Democratic voters. Teams from 22 states participated in the program. In the end, it delivered 2.6M+ Democratic votes by mail ballots for Florida. While we cannot say exactly how many ballots were influenced by Swing Left Greater Boston volunteers, it is clear that we made an impact. In total, nearly 1M actions were taken by volunteers to support vote by mail in Florida, spanning nearly 56,000 hours.
Phone Banking in Florida
As the election continued, Swing Left Greater Boston volunteers ramped up their efforts in phone banking for Florida. Volunteers hosted hundreds of events for the state and made close to 200K calls.
Thank you to the whole team!
In total, tens of thousands of volunteers with Swing Left Greater Boston supported the election in Florida. Together, they volunteered over 72K hours of their time, made about 191K calls, wrote nearly 1M postcards and hosted more than 1,500 events. This was an amazing effort and the Swing Left Greater Boston team has never been more proud. Hundreds of hosts supported this team, many of which hosted hundreds and even thousands of events for the state.
Congratulations to the Florida team for such an amazing effort. Without the efforts of these activists, many of the close super state races that we won could have gone the other way. This team’s program has also become a cornerstone within Swing Left Greater Boston. It helped shape other programs within the volunteer organization and will impact our team for years to come.