Since 2015, the Women Effect Action Fund has supported programs in New Hampshire and Virginia that communicate with women voters about family friendly economic policies like paid family and medical leave, paid sick days and affordable childcare and eldercare. Our experience in these states has proven that messaging emphasizing what women voters care most about – meeting the day-to-day needs of their families – has the power to influence who they vote for.

In 2019 and early 2020, we expanded our successful electoral work by supporting innovative voter contact programs in Wisconsin and Michigan. Our goal was to replicate the unique approach we successfully piloted in Virginia and New Hampshire and use family-centered economic messaging to reach and persuade enough women in Wisconsin and Michigan to win these states for family friendly candidates for both the U.S. Senate and President. Over the course of the 2020 cycle, other large independent committees made major investments to expand the project to a 11-state, nearly $27 million voter contact program.

Across Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Iowa, Montana, Virginia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida and Georgia the programs we supported made nearly 15 million voter contact attempts, including 2.2 million door knocks. Results indicate that the very voters the programs we supported targeted, especially in our early investment states of Wisconsin and Michigan, were instrumental in securing the election for Joe Biden, who centered the importance of care policies throughout his campaign. Following our successful general election investments, we also supported a door-to-door canvass that educated Georgia voters regarding where Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff stood on care issues.

The results of the 2020 and January 2021 elections, combined with the growing recognition that our care infrastructure is fundamentally broken, have created unprecedented opportunities to pass family friendly economic policies. Currently, the Women Effect Action Fund is supporting efforts to frame the election outcomes as a mandate for care policies, advance meaningful federal progress on these issues and hold elected officials who do not support these policies accountable to their constituents.