Memo: Where to Watch the Care Vote in 2026
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Care Can't Wait Action Coalition
RE: Where to watch the care vote in 2026
Overview
With less than four days until Election Day, the care movement is running one of the cycle's broadest voter contact programs with tens of millions of dollars in investment in independent expenditures. Across paid media, canvassing, accountability, and earned media, the coalition is reaching voters in more than 60 races across more than 20 states to highlight the high costs of living and the high costs of care, as well as to hold the GOP accountable and to ensure we retake the majority.
The clearest way to see the strength of the care movement is by looking at a few places where our programs stack up. In Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona, voters hear about the cost of living and the care their families depend on at their doors, from people in their own communities and across channels like mail and paid media. Whatever happens on election night, the cost of care will define 2026, and these are the places to watch.
What the investment does
The care coalition's investment is putting millions of door knocks, calls, handwritten postcards, mail, and ads in front of voters, with messaging delivered by the people they trust most: domestic workers, care workers, and moms from their own communities.
- Canvassing. Knocked on the doors of nearly 11M voters with partners, domestic workers, and union members in states like Ohio, Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, South Carolina, and critical House districts across the country. SEIU has nearly 9,000 volunteers active in the field and has reached 8 million voters through door knocking, phone banking, and relational organizing.
- Phones and texts. Community Change Action has made more than 3.5 million calls to infrequent voters in 20 districts across 10 states. Care in Action has made 300,000+ calls in Georgia and North Carolina, with phone banks every Tuesday and Wednesday evening through Election Day. MomsRising Together has sent 1,200,000 texts and 400,000 calls to low-frequency Democratic mom voters across 21 Congressional districts.
- Influencer Work. Organizations such as MomsRising Together and Economic Security Project Action have worked with digital leaders and creators to amplify the message of care across social media networks in NY-17 and AZ-06. Community Change Action has creators using a Get out the Vote message in English and Spanish.
- Relational organizing. 1 million handwritten, mom-to-mom postcards, and thousands of people signed up to host mom-led voting parties.
- Paid media. The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy PAC has sent mail on health care costs, Medicaid cuts, hospital closures, and the rising cost of living, landing now in Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; digital in Alaska, Iowa, Texas, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, and Virginia; and Senate billboards in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas. Care in Action and Care in Action PAC have launched mail and digital across North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania. MomsRising Together has had a digital ad reach of 12,672,727 to low-frequency Democratic mom voters across 21 congressional districts. SEIU is running a $2.5 million digital ad program in 10 key congressional battlegrounds. Ads began last summer and have been ramping up since Labor Day, with many featuring caregivers discussing cuts to Medicaid, healthcare, the cost of living, child care, and worker power.
- Accountability and earned media. Economic Security Project Action held a week of action with about 20 events in battleground districts, scorecards on 20 vulnerable House members, while SEIU members have joined the Sick of It Bus Tour stopping in 21 battleground accountability districts across nine states this month; hosted care town halls and events in Montana, Virginia, California, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin; candidate “Walk-A-Day in my shoes” events with caregivers and gubernatorial candidates in Alaska, Wisconsin and Michigan; and Keep Your Care events focused on Medicaid in Virginia and North Carolina.
Three places to watch
Coalition programs overlap in more than 30 races, but three places show most clearly what this work looks like on the ground: layered tactics, a focus on high costs and care, and trusted messengers reaching voters in the final weeks.
- Pennsylvania (PA-7, PA-8, PA-10): The most layered care program in the country with a seven-figure investment. Paid canvassers are knocking doors out of Scranton and Harrisburg; Care workers participated in care canvasses in Montgomery and Berks County; mom volunteers are hosting events and writing postcards to low-frequency mom voters; partners are running phones, mail, and digital; the Sick of It bus tour stopped in Harrisburg, Scranton, and Allentown to lift up patients and home care workers hurt by health care cuts; and a lemonade stand tour across the state has put rising costs in front of voters. In PA-8, home care worker Lynn Weidner appears in a Care Can't Wait Action ad about rising health care costs and Medicaid cuts.
- North Carolina: Domestic workers on the doors. From the U.S. Senate race to the state Supreme Court and House Districts like NC-11 and NC-1, care advocates are leading a paid canvass. A Medicaid-focused campaign launches in North Carolina on October 29, ahead of work requirements that take effect in January.
- Arizona's 6th District: Moms and health care in a toss-up House seat. Mom volunteers have made AZ-6 a top priority, with digital ads featuring local mom storytellers and twenty on-the-ground events. Mail on health care costs and hospital closures is reaching tens of thousands of households this month, and union organizers are holding conversations with voters about care across the district.
Why care, and how we reach voters
Voters are telling us the same thing everywhere. Across 20 battleground districts where Community Change Action is working, a quarter to a third name the cost of living as their family’s biggest problem: paychecks that can’t keep up with rent, the price at the pump, the power bill. As one Georgia voter put it, “I just paid $400 for groceries.” Health care comes up again and again, especially in rural communities that have watched hospitals close.
Care sits at the center of that squeeze: child care, home care, and the health care that Medicaid cuts put at risk. New Medicaid work requirements take effect in January, and one estimate says two in three people who still qualify could lose coverage over paperwork alone. At the doors, coalition canvassers make sure no voter casts a ballot without knowing what’s at stake.
Our coalition knows that voters too often written off as impossible to reach can be mobilized and persuaded through conversations with trusted messengers. Moms write to other moms. Spanish-speaking canvassers work in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods. Layered contact at the door, on the phone, by mail, and online means voters hear a care affordability message more than once from someone they trust.
Unprecedented collaboration and momentum
The care movement has never shown up like this. The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy PAC, Care in Action, Community Change Action, Economic Security Project Action, MomsRising Together, and SEIU each bring different members, tactics, and footprints. What they share is a commitment to lowering costs, advancing a care agenda, and electing care champions in November.
After Election Day, the coalition will hold newly elected leaders to their care commitments, from protecting Medicaid to making child care and home care affordable, and will be in Washington when the new Congress returns.