Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has poured significant resources into a notorious voter turnout operation in Philadelphia. The effort was supported by an army of door-knocking volunteers, and Democrats predicted record numbers would turn out in Philadelphia. They found that the Republican get-out-the-vote operation was relatively tender.
Now, two weeks after the red-wave election that sent former President Donald Trump back to the White House, Democrats locally and nationally are questioning whether their expansionary operation has moved the needle. Like the rest of the country, true blue Philadelphia has moved to the right, and the projected boost in voter turnout has not materialized. In most cities, fewer people went to vote than four years ago.
The differentiating factor appears to have been less about tactics and more about the electorate’s deep-seated dissatisfaction with the country’s direction.
“It was a failure from the start. This is not a grassroots failure,” said Rafael Álvarez Febo, a Puerto Rican LGBTQ community leader who lives in North Philadelphia. “The turnout was low, people weren’t excited and that’s what we got.”
In 2024, 726,692 ballots were cast in Philadelphia, meaning approximately 22,600 fewer people voted in the city compared to the last presidential election. About 65% of registered voters cast ballots, a decline of about 1.3 percentage points from four years ago. Voter turnout dropped in 55 of the city’s 66 political districts, according to an Inquirer analysis of precinct-level data.
» READ MORE: To win Pennsylvania, Donald Trump did exactly what he had to do in Philadelphia: he improved slightly.
Where attendance did boost, the biggest jump occurred around the city’s colleges and universities – a projected boost from 2020, when most students were off campus due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In other cases, the decline in attendance was greater than the average for the entire city. For example, in the 11th Ward in North Philadelphia and the 44th Ward in West Philadelphia, turnout was down more than 5% compared to four years ago.
And turnout in Philadelphia still lagged behind other places in the state. While the city saw a turnout of about 65%, statewide turnout was 76.6% this year, up half a percentage point from 2020, according to an Inquirer analysis of election results. A miniature number of votes remained to be counted on Wednesday.
In addition to the slight overall decline in voter turnout in the city, some Philadelphians changed their voting method. Voters in the city cast about 176,000 fewer absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, an expected decline as more people stayed home and voted by mail during the pandemic. Compared to four years ago, approximately 157,000 more people took part in the polls in person.
Democrats question ‘elderly school tactics’
A tender turnout in Philadelphia, combined with a rightward shift of several percentage points, meant Trump carried just 20% of Pennsylvania’s most populous city, but he won thousands more votes than in 2020, when President Joe Biden won the state.
» READ MORE: Philadelphia voters voted for Donald Trump in greater numbers than ever before
This expresses concern among Democrats, who are used to dominating in a city where they have a 6-to-1 advantage, but have been worried about low turnout for several years. Some party members question how they communicate to voters – especially those who are disenchanted with the political process – and question whether the party is investing in the right methods of reaching people.
“We have a lot of outdated tactics that we’re using in this new reality,” said JJ Abbott, a Democratic strategist who worked with a coalition of unions and progressive organizations that supported Harris. “The idea that at the end of the day it’s just going to take a lot of pressure to get people out of the country is not going to be enough to get people through the path to becoming voters and picking out disaffected people.”
Democrats’ nationwide assessment has prompted party officials, elected leaders and strategists to question their own tactics, including massive investments in time-consuming field operations such as door-knocking, calling and texting to reach voters.
The Republican field operation on the battlefields was relatively miniature. The Trump campaign emphasized a customary field approach, but also placed greater emphasis on Election Day polling place staffing and litigation. Billionaire Elon Musk has run a super PAC focused on voter outreach, but it’s unclear how effective those efforts have been.
In Philadelphia, some of the post-election accusations were directed at the Democratic City Committee and its longtime chairman, Bob Brady. The local Democratic Party is responsible for the city’s turnout, but critics have long argued that the operation is ineffective and inconsistent.
Brady said in an interview that voter turnout in Philadelphia was “just a little bit lower,” but that an boost in turnout would have made no difference to Harris, who lost all seven battleground states.
“We did a great job. We did everything we could,” he said. “The problem is the economy.”
‘Deep canvassing’ as Democrats start with deficit
Some Democratic City Committee leaders conduct their own voter drives that complement the party’s organization. A few years ago, for example, progressive elected officials joined forces with precinct leaders in South Philadelphia to create the South Philly Voter Project, an organization of volunteers who knock on doors and work to increase turnout.
Riverwards Democrats created their own version of the project and knocked on more than 18,000 doors in the Fishtown area this year, said Lauren Rinaldi, Democratic leader of the city’s 18th Ward. Its branch is one of the few in the city where attendance has increased this year compared to 2020.
“Part of that is engaging neighbors, voters and everyone throughout the year, not just in the weeks before Election Day,” Rinaldi said. “It has to be deeper. It must be inclusive, friendly, transparent and open.”
» READ MORE: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s strategies to win Pennsylvania included 50 stops and $500 million in ads
Febo, a Democrat supporting Harris, said such tactics are crucial and that the Democratic Party has failed to effectively establish relationships with voters, especially the working class, which leaves voters feeling like those relationships are transactional during election season. For example, he noted, Harris introduced the Puerto Rico agenda during a campaign stop in Philadelphia, but that was just nine days before the election.
Some progressive organizations and labor unions have made so-called deep canvassing – that is, reaching out to the same voters repeatedly over an extended period of time – a key part of their strategy. Salaah Muhammad, organizing director of the Progressive Working Families Party of Pennsylvania, says that’s evident in the qualitative results.
“When we really connect with voters, when we show up at their doors and invite them to meetings, they stay connected with us,” he said. “It gives me hope.”
But regardless of the vigor of those programs, some Democrats say the party is starting with a deficit. Abbott said Republicans have a much larger network of media personalities and influencers operating outside the political world and facilitating “deeper cultural connections” with the electorate, whether through churches or a podcast channel.
“The liberal movement in general is far behind,” he said. “At the end of the day, we’re trying to catch up by spending a lot of money on various tactics, when the reality is that we have to make huge investments up front in all these other things to move the movement forward.”
» READ MORE: Democrats kept calling Trump a fascist, but Pennsylvania voters thought he could help pay their bills
Ryan Boyer, who leads a coalition of the city’s politically powerful construction unions, agreed that Democrats “need to communicate more with voters beyond the year.”
However, he said turnout was low because voters did not feel inspired by either presidential candidate. Boyer said the “murky tone” of the Trump campaign was off-putting to some, while Democrats failed to effectively address voters’ concerns about the economy and inflation under Biden.
“The economy is doing better, but these are indicators. How are people feeling?” – Boyer said. “It needs to be more tangible and we need to connect the dots about what the government is doing and how it affects you.”
