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Politics is a spectator sport for most Americans. And it’s not a fun one – it’s full of horror, unfolding confusion and confusion about swings in state polls. As with most anxieties, the only antidote is action – and the 2024 pageant did many S for Americans willing to do democracy a selective contact sport. You are someone who wants to take notice Michelle Obamahis call to “do something?” Here’s something to do:

Get your neighbors out to vote.

One of the largest turnout organizations on the progressive side is Indivisible, which it went viral in response to his choice Donald Trump in 2016 and helped channel the anger of “resilient” Democrats. political power. Ezra Levin, one of the founders of Indivisible, is optimistic about 2024 – and ambitious. “Our North Star takes the White House, the House and the Senate,” he says Rolling Stonetrying to deliver a “democratic trifecta so we can reform filibuster, codify reproductive freedom, and pass democracy reform.”

To put this dream into play, Indivisible is innovating the “ground game” used to get out the vote in 2024. With a program called Neighbor2 NeighborIndivisible mobilizes progressive volunteers to canvass where they live—and convince like-minded, but less frequently voting, neighbors to vote.

This is different from routine GOTV polls, where strangers routinely drive into unfamiliar neighborhoods armed with long lists of contacts and pester those people to go to the polls. As Levin describes this traditional model: “You get 40 names. You spend an afternoon trying to contact those voters. You talk to three or four voters and go home for the day.”

Neighbor2Neighbor instead focuses on “relational organizing” – with volunteers mobilizing voters in their own communities, on their own agenda. N2N volunteers REGISTER online, enter their home address and “get 10 sporadic Democratic voters who are within a few blocks,” says Levin. The terrain is familiar and so are the faces. “You can show up at their house when you see their car in the driveway. Whenever you have time,” he says.

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Indivisible pioneered this neighborhood program during the 2022 midterm elections in more than a dozen competitive elections, and the results were extraordinary. Local canvassers turned out almost double the number of unlikely voters compared to conventional stranger-to-stranger methods. “Voters talking to voters is having a crazy impact,” says Levin, describing the increase in voter turnout as “amazing.”

The N2N program isn’t just superior for bank slips, it’s a better experience for volunteer activists, Levin insists. “We found that our people liked it because you didn’t have to go through the technical and time-consuming aspect of traditional canvassing,” he says. The N2N program offers less friction for activists, who will aim to engage in one or two conversations with each unlikely voter on the neighborhood contact sheet. (For starters, Indivisible offers a example script to guide the conversation.) “It’s intentionally low-rise,” insists Levin.

By every measure, the 2024 election it looks like a coin, which means it’s within the margin of effort for activists. “That’s disturbing,” says Levin. “But from an organization perspective, it’s a good place to be. It means that the work we are doing now is meaningful. You can make this argument to the volunteers: “This could come down to a few dozen or a few hundred votes outside of Phoenix or outside of Atlanta.”

The N2N program currently targets 300,000 unlikely voters. “We push quality over quantity.” says Levin. The program is spread across battleground states and districts, including presidential swing states; nine key Senate contests from Nebraska to Maryland; and certain House districts in places as far away as Oregon and Virginia.

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Indivisible points out the possibility of N2N having an impact on House races even in blue strongholds. “Your individual effort in your own battleground state of California or New York will do a lot more good,” Levin argues, “because you have a lot more influence in your own community than just being another person making calls or sending letters postals” in the Great Lake swing states. (For voters outside the battlegrounds, Levin is quick to add that Indivisible “also does traditional postcard, text banking, phone banking.” programmer.”)

Indivisible can make this neighborhood model work because it has chapters spread deep across target states. In Arizona, for example, there are 91 incorporated cities, Levin says, “and we have people doing Neighbor2Neighbor in 87.”

The 2024 election marks a return to on-the-ground organizing, which was nearly shut down by the pandemic in 2020. The transition of the party’s standard bearer from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris in July also fueled a resurgence of grassroots creativity and enthusiasm not seen since Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

It was a challenge to capitalize on that coconut energy in political power, simply as a matter of mechanics. “Joe Biden’s re-election campaign was not built around the idea that there would be a surge of volunteer energy,” Levin says, adding bluntly, “It’s impossible to build the kind of apparatus you’d need in a few weeks to absorb all that energy.”

Indivisible has gone above and beyond by partnering with other organizers, especially with White women for Kamala conference call that became the largest Zoom event in the world this summer with over 200,000 participants. The call directly spawned 700 new “action teams” for Indivisible, which have been mobilizing voters ever since. “To put that number in perspective, in seven years of Indivisible, we’ve had just over 2,000 local Indivisible groups,” says Levin. “It’s pretty amazing for us to have about 700 new action teams forming within weeks.”

The N2N effort is a reflection of the constant need to innovate in GOTV efforts. Levin points to the declining effectiveness of political texting. “Texting was so hot in 2017 – because it was so easy to do and also because it moved votes. Starting in 2019, 2020, as we looked at the impact, it went down significantly. People were being bombarded and the marginal vote you were getting from a text just went down.”

A recent FEC ruling that has opened the door to outside nonprofits that coordinate directly with campaigns — leading the Trump campaign to effectively outsource its turnout game to groups like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA and Elon Musk’s America PAC. But Levin insists that Indivisible remains “clean” and independent of the formal efforts of the Democratic Party, which he describes as “a sophisticated canvassing operation run by the party itself.”

Levin isn’t all that impressed with what he’s seeing on the ground from MAGA’s “non-shiny” forces. “The other side allowed Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk to run their canvassing operation – which I love. I like to see people who have no idea what they’re doing in charge of a major Republican campaign function.” He points to Musk’s questionably legal gifts of $1 million to registered voters who sign the Super PAC’s petition.

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For Levin, the goal a little more than a week before Election Day is to transform progressives who might be “passively enthusiastic” observers into political participants who “actively contribute to winning and not just winning — but what we want to we do later.”

If the effort pays off, he says, “It provides an opportunity for us to go through the motions — not just to win on Nov. 5, but to protect the election results and then go beyond Jan. 20 to actually get the legislation done. .”