Democrats are getting desperate.
A recent Quinnipiac poll found that Republicans have a four-point advantage over the Democrats as the midterms approach.
Another poll found Republicans leading by 11.
Democrats are trying to expand on a strategy they used in Georgia: pay people to tell their friends about politics.
TRENDING: LAWRENCE SELLIN: The Second American Civil War is Underway
A group of Democratic strategists is trying to spread a novel organizing tactic in this year’s election. Technically, it’s called “paid relational organizing,” but it boils down to this: paying people to talk to their friends about politics.
Democrats think it helped them win the Senate in 2020 — and are hoping the get-out-the-vote strategy will help limit the pain of a brutal 2022 election environment.
Conversations with friends, family members or neighbors are more likely to earn a voter’s support than chats with a stranger at their front door, which is the traditional way campaigns have run paid canvassing programs in the past. And an important test case for deploying the strategy at scale came out of the Georgia Senate runoffs in 2021 when now-Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-Ga.) campaign, flush with nearly unlimited cash but only two months to spend it, used a paid and volunteer relational program to get people talking to acquaintances instead of strangers about the election.
The next time a friend brings up Democrat talking points, ask them: “Are you getting paid?”