Polk County (IA) - How they did it....
That margin of 35,009 votes meant Cindy Axne got elected to Congress, even though the Republicans kept every other county in the 3rd District red. It meant that we flipped Republican seats in the suburbs for Karin Derry, Jennifer Konfrst, Heather Matson, and Kristin Sunde. It meant that we helped elect Michael Fitzgerald, Tom Miller, and Rob Sand to statewide office. And it meant that we held on to every incumbent seat in Polk County.
So, how’d it happen? First, we had exceptional candidates. All four of the pick-up races were women and the women of Polk County were more mobilized than ever before. The volunteer campaign teams behind these candidates were some of the sharpest I’ve ever seen. We’ll spend the next several months talking to those teams about what they did well, how we can even better support them, and how we can replicate their results.
The new Polk County Democratic Party helped those numbers too. Our aggressive voter registration efforts helped us beat the Republicans in 3rd District registration in October. Our countywide mailer brought in thousands of absentee ballots. Our 19 billboards on Election Day directed voters to our Polk County homepage which had every polling site in Polk County along with the number for our Polk County hotline (ie my cell phone number). Our three day ballot chase operation with more than 100 volunteers made more than 7,000 calls, picked up every ballot, transported every voter, and answered countless questions in several different languages.
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Sean Bagniewski
Polk County Democratic Party Chair
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