This election has become the mega-Zoom election.

On September 5^th, US citizens outside the United States as well as US-residents with friends and family overseas, will be able to dial into an Americans Abroad for Harris-Walz Zoom call.  I and my fellow organizers, including Democrats Abroad, the official Democrat Party arm serving Americans living outside the United States, are seeking to capture the wave, in the words of Michelle Obama, TO DO SOMETHING.  While Democrats Abroad has for years deployed increasingly sophisticated Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) efforts to reach, educate, and encourage Americans overseas to register to vote, and then vote, this Zoom is capturing something far broader, and intensely exciting. 

First, some background on how this election became the mega-Zoom election.

One of the unprecedented trends in Democratic politics, in fact across the broader US political ecosystem, has been the outpouring of enthusiasm and engagement since President Biden passed the torch to the new generation of leaders and Kamala Harris’ campaign rose like a phoenix.  A landscape long known for months-long campaigns, staggering amounts of money raised and spent, endless texts, phone calls and emails urging support for candidates or campaign committees, and ads on every conceivable medium has not seen anything like this before.  August (1^st – 20^th) Gallup polling shows a surge in voter enthusiasm driven by Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (with 78% now reporting being more enthusiastic about voting than usual, up from 55% in March, the highest level ever measured by Gallup).

The statistics charting the soaring amounts of money raised by the Harris-Walz campaign ($540 million in the first four weeks since the Harris-Walz ticket took off – with unprecedented numbers of first-time donors, two-thirds of which who donated during the Convention were women and one-fifth of which were young voters), volunteers signing up (200,000 surged during the week of the Convention and a weekend of action just before the Convention that saw 10,000 shifts contact over 1 million voters) and deployed, localized campaigns launched across campuses, voter registrations filed, fundraising events hosted and to be hosted, and surrogates lining up to stump for the campaign or headline fundraising events, not to mention the outpouring of endorsements of Harris-Walz from Republicans – only begin to capture the significance of the moment.   

A combination of old-world tactics, armies of volunteers knocking on doors, tech-enabled, digital outreach combined with micro-targeting, and more recent features of our digital world, such as TikTok and YouTube influencers, are feeding a grassroots revolution across coalition groups and demographics. 

There is perhaps no better example than the coalition mega-Zoom call – which burst on the scene the night President Biden made his announcement.  A Win with Black Women a Zoom call attracted within hours over 40,000 participants.  That call was followed by Black Men for Harris (with over 200,000 participants) and then countless more mega-Zoom calls targeting every imaginable cohort (White Dudes, White Women (the organizers of which had to reach out to Zoom when the call reached 100,000, prompting Zoom to lift the cap to 200,000), Latino Men, South Asian Men and Women, Educators, Military and Veteran Families, LGBTQ community, Obama Alumni, Young Voters, Seniors, Small Businesses, Business Leaders, Rural Americans, Venture Capital, Republicans, Women Lawyers, Jewish Women, even Dead Heads and Cat Ladies).  Streaming on YouTube allows organizers to work-around Zoom limits.

And, in contrast to the ubiquitous campaign events on Zoom that ballooned during the pandemic and remained in 2022 and to a lesser extent 2024, which required advance contributions and were focused exclusively on raising money, the Harris-Walz calls have a different remit.  The calls allow participants instantly to form a community to capture the energy and excitement of the moment, they galvanize voter registrations, and they provide opportunities to identify the myriad ways people can volunteer to help the campaign. 

And, yes, they also raise money (some as little as $10,000, with others over $1 million), but there is no cost to dial in.  

The 2024 election likely will be very close, determined by a few hundred thousand votes in the battleground states, or less.  There are an estimated 6.5 million Americans abroad who are eligible to vote and Americans overseas hail from all parts of the country.  Anecdotally, it is believed that the margin of victory in the two Senate run-off races in Georgia in January 2021 that flipped control of the Senate were smaller than the number of Georgia voters overseas.  GOTV is a crystal-clear opportunity because in 2020 only an estimated 14% of Americans abroad eligible to vote voted, up from 8% in 2016.  An estimated 50% of voters abroad vote in battleground states.   

GOTV efforts target expats working overseas, students studying overseas, military and diplomatic personnel stationed overseas, and backpackers and other nomads – any US citizen outside the country during the election.  These efforts inherently are more complex than domestic GOTV efforts as voting from abroad, while much easier these days, presents additional questions.  Recall, first, that voting rules are state law based.  People may decide to vote after some years overseas and are unsure from where to request a ballot – where they most recently voted or possibly where they have permanent residents (perhaps where they grew up)?  Voting age children of Americans who grew up overseas present different questions, as do students studying on their junior year abroad.  Some US citizens were born in the US (hence their US citizenship) and never lived there. 

So, the call will be as much about celebrating community (and replicating virtually the energy on the floor of the Convention) as it is about facilitating Michelle Obama’s call to arms.  While Americans overseas cannot knock on doors locally, a number will relocate to battleground states to do so.  Others can write letters or postcards to voters in battleground states, or can call in via laptop (phone banking).   Training is available for all of these.  Most importantly, those dialing in will regularly be directed to the preferred website to register to vote, request ballots and get questions answered about voting.      

Like so many of the other statistics that have soared to stratospheric levels, my fellow organizers and I are hoping to witness record-breaking Democratic voter participation from Americans overseas this year.     

Mark S. Bergman

7Pillars Global Insights, LLC

Washington, D.C.

August 27, 2024 

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