Winning More Votes in 2025 Minneapolis

In 2000, DFLers in many urban State Senate Districts started “adopting” suburban “swing districts”.  The idea was to fill a few cars, drive to, say, Eden Prairie, and help the local DFLers door-knock for their candidates.

I was working for 3M in Maplewood, so it rarely worked for me to do a 6PM weeknight door knock out west.  Starting in 2006, I adopted my own districts in the East Metro.  Some elections I worked multiple campaigns.  Being just one guy changed the dynamic.  Many campaigns in that area (Maplewood to Stillwater, White Bear to Cottage Grove) were volunteer-starved, so by 2008 I was already starting to be a member of what candidates call their “Kitchen Cabinet”.  Sometimes I served as strategist, sometimes as volunteers coordinator, once as campaign manager.  Always as a prolific door-knocker.

Those campaigns were different from Minneapolis campaigns.  In East Metro suburbs, you can have voter turnouts of 90%.  So, you won or lost based on how well you captured “Persuadables”.  In Minneapolis, campaigns were about boosting turnout, for the sake of statewide candidates, among folks one presumed would vote DFL if one could get them to vote.

One of the few things I found that suburban Persuadables had in common with urban GOTV voters is that they tend to be “Low Information” voters.  Some pundits use this term almost as a put-down.  In my experience, though, Low Information voters are neither unintelligent nor lazy.  One thing that characterizes many of them is that they feel they have better things to do with their time than to pay attention to politics.  Some seem to be more self-aware than the most active partisans – While they may not be happy with the economy, running an economy is complicated, and they accept that policies they’d like to see tried might not, in fact, fix things.  They are the opposite of zealots.

This year’s city elections may be the first where my door-knocking insights from suburban Persuadables may apply.

Like it or not, Minneapolis now has two “parties”.  One consists of the candidates supported by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and/or “Minneapolis for the Many”.  The other consists of those supported by “All of Minneapolis” and/or “We Love Minneapolis”.  Some refer to the former as the Progressives and the latter as the Moderates.  Neither label will be on the November ballots.  I make no secret of my being firmly in the “Moderates” faction.  Each group has a fighting chance to elect a majority of City Council Members.  Several Wards are “swing districts”.

One difference is that a Low Information voter in Minneapolis has even less to work with than a suburbanite – because the “party” label isn’t even on the ballot.  Many will vote for the DFL endorsed candidate.  In some Wards, that was a Progressive, in some it was a Moderate, and in some no one was endorsed.

So it will behoove candidates to tell voters which faction they identify with.  I know some don’t want to do this – don’t like even that we’ve developed two factions.  Too bad.  The alternative is to let the Low Information voters you need not vote, or vote based on a piece of info they have (DFL endorsement), despite it meaning nothing in terms of policies.

Something I learned knocking countless voter doors is how to get past the “low information” problem in a brief conversation.  While Low Information voters often suspect they are not in possession of solutions to society’s most complicated problems, most have opinions on some issues which that voter thinks are simple “no-brainers”.  If you are on the same side on that issue, and “the other guy” is on the other side… Whoa!  You are now the voice of common sense, and your opponent cannot be trusted to do the smart thing on most issues.  Especially the complicated ones.  Who trusts someone who is on the wrong side of a “no-brainer”?

What’s required of the candidate is to do a careful inventory of their positions on the issues.  Also, the campaign must do a similar analysis of the opponent.  You can’t “straw man” the opponent.  You have to “steel man” the opponent.  Then, on which issues do you fundamentally differ?  On which will a voter who agrees with you think that the opponent’s stance is daft?

Then you need to adapt your door-knocking “patter” to touch on several issues, briefly and quickly.  When the face of the human being you are addressing “lights up”, you have found your topic for the remainder of the interaction.  You’ll know it when you see it.  Trust me.

You also must train any volunteers who will door-knock often on your behalf.  Some will be “naturals” at it.  Some will get better over time.  Some – full disclosure! – won’t be able to pull it off.  Don’t force them to.  They can door-knock from the instructions you’d be using otherwise.  Or they can serve some other role in your campaign.

It’s not hard to do campaign door-knocking this way, but it does take conscious effort to start.  And it can pay dividends – Once patterns emerge, it can (should!) inform what things you emphasize on your website, on social media, and on late-campaign literature pieces.  It does require a candidate to buck a current trend – the movement away from campaigning on substantive policy stances, rather than “Who could object to this?” platitudes.

But this is what a Low Information, “sometimes” voter needs. to be motivated to vote, and to vote for you.   I hope many of this year’s “Moderate” candidates in Minneapolis will employ these ideas.