Most of you may also already be aware of the uncanny, precedent-breaking closeness of polls and other signs of election momentum, across every scale of the Federal government – House, Senate and the Presidency. In a world where everything looks like a toss-up, some prominent analysts have all but thrown up their hands, acknowledging that results are well within the margin of error across the board.

In this context of tightening polls and uncertainty underlying all the races that matter, we are inclined toward action over prediction, so consider GrayPAC’s up-to-the-minute analysis of key races that matter, in service of how you can best take action to shape the world we’ll inherit. 

1. First, when everything is close, then in the Electoral College, nothing is more important than the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and especially Pennsylvania. In each of these places, which Trump claimed in 2016 but Biden won in 2020, there are also critical overlapping US Senate and House races in contention.
   
2. Secondly, when everything is close, outcomes where victory can be counted in inches, will come down to the so-called “ground game” – how well campaigns and the grassroots knock on doors, staff phonebanks, and mobilize supporters to vote, and get folks to volunteer to get out the vote. There is considerable reason for hope here, and to doubt Trump, whose ground operations are smaller, underfunded, and late to the action. But there remain questions of targeting, about where campaigns have put their resources and who they’re contacting.

This is why GrayPAC’s work is so vital in these final weeks. We’ve found brilliant, evidence- driven organizations like Environmental Voter Project (EVP) and Seed the Vote to offer actions you can take, in the closest races, to reach people who may not otherwise vote. It’s a narrow niche we seek to fill, but as EVP noted, in 2020 “over 8 million voters who say they care about the environment, didn’t vote at all,” and in the end it may take only 10,000 of those voters in some of the closest states to decide everything. 

We recognize that Trump has crossed line after line, moving beyond his roots as a foolish and corrupt autocrat, to speaking openly as a full-on fascist authoritarian whose dangerously unhinged fantasies are on public display daily. Unfortunately, we have to combat a political establishment and media that is “sane-washing” the unthinkable – noting that the press covered “Hilary’s emails” in 2016 four times more than the January 6th insurrection, barely mentioning Trump’s fascism, and ignoring Trump’s signs of cognitive decline and mental health crisis, after having regularly amplified similar concerns about Biden just months ago.

Fortunately, we don’t have to simply wait and hope for the campaigns to get the job done – we are the change we’ve been waiting for!

Written by Jeremy Friedman, Campaign Strategist