The North Star
Mobilize Black voters in high numbers. Keep them civically engaged. The strategic spine of the Love Shows Up™ campaign, grounded in the data and the call.
Mobilize Black voters in high numbers, and keep them civically engaged between elections.
— The Love Shows Up™ North Star Goal
MOBILIZE — drive Black voter turnout in 2026 above the trajectory that has been declining since 2012, especially the steep midterm drop.
SUSTAIN — keep Black voters civically engaged after November 3, refusing the cyclical pattern of high mobilization in presidential years and disengagement in between.
These two halves are not sequential. They are simultaneous. We do not mobilize people and then ask them to stay. We invite them into a community that already plans to stay, and the mobilization is one expression of that ongoing community.
Black voter turnout peaked during the Obama elections of 2008 and 2012, when Black Americans voted at rates near parity with white Americans for the first time in modern history. Since 2012, that turnout has trended downward. The Black-white turnout gap has reopened. Most concerning, the decline is especially steep in midterm elections — the cycle we are now entering.
1. Are more Black voters in our partner communities voting in 2026 than would have without us?
2. Are the people we registered and mobilized in 2026 still engaged in 2027?
— The two questions we ask annually