Democrats Roll Out New Voter Contact Strategy Ahead of Midterms

Democrats are launching an ambitious voter contact effort with the goal of engaging more than a million infrequent voters in the first quarter of the year.

As part of the effort – dubbed Local Listeners – the Democratic National Committee said that it would train thousands of volunteers across key battleground states and congressional districts on a “listening first” approach to voter contact. Those volunteers will go through a seven-week training program focused on “active listening” and how to have “difficult conversations about politics.”

Those volunteers will also be charged with collecting qualitative data on their conversations with voters, enabling the DNC to identify key themes that it can share with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to help shape messaging ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The program marks an effort to address a long-running complaint from local and state Democratic groups and activists, who say that the national committees’ voter contact efforts frequently come too late in election cycles to make a meaningful impact on turnout, especially among less-engaged, infrequent voters.

DNC Chair Ken Martin said that the program is built on the idea that if Democrats “want to keep earning back the trust and support of voters, we have to listen to them.” 

“This program modernizes the way we are talking to and hearing from the voters that we need to win elections now and for years to come,” Martin said in a statement. “The Democratic Party is done with waiting until the last minute to engage voters — these conversations need to happen early and often.” 

More than 2,000 volunteers have already signed up for the program, according to the DNC, with 93 percent of them volunteering for the first time since 2024. Over the coming weeks, those volunteers will aim to engage with more than a million likely Democratic voters, who cast ballots in 2020, but sat out the 2024 election. 

The goal is for volunteers to conduct over 250,000 phone conversations with voters in battleground districts, host 50-plus in-person grassroots events and register thousands of new voters in priority congressional districts, the DNC said.

Last month, the DNC announced that it would spend seven figures on a new, partisan voter registration push, reversing course after years of entrusting such efforts to nonprofit advocacy groups and individual political campaigns. That program is slated to begin in Arizona and Nevada – two fast-growing states with competitive House and gubernatorial races in 2026.

The committee also announced new hiring initiatives aimed at recruiting and training campaign talent ahead of the midterms.

“While Republicans ignore Americans, preferring to serve billionaires instead of everybody else, Democrats aim to reach over a million voters in the next few months,” Martin said. “And we’re going to talk about what matters in their lives: affordability, freedom, a shot at the American Dream. That’s how we win in 2026 and beyond.”