Through all platforms available, they hammer away the message that no matter whether workers show up or don’t show up to vote, nothing will ever change. Futility is a strategy. An indispensable aspect of this is to make people associate the unionization election itself with the pain and discomfort of the polarized, harsh language coming at them from all sides: The sooner the election goes away, the better they will feel. Things will return to “normal,” since they will stop fighting with friends and family, and the once-bad normal — the reason for the struggle in the first place — suddenly feels better, until their employer cuts benefits weeks after the election. Futility makes the act of voting, discussing and even thinking about the election feel bad. A persistent refrain in the fall of 2016 was “I can’t wait till this thing is over already.” Making Americans want to make the election (democracy) “just go away” is a main tactic of the futility strategy.

Second, you must build supermajority participation, because, as the election approaches, the opposition will succeed at stripping support from a key percentage of previous yes voters. All effort must be focused on what successful union organizers call “going to the biggest-worst”: spending all our time with workers who are undecided or leaning anti-union. The biggest mistake inexperienced union organizers make is spending precious time preaching to the choir, i.e., talking to pro-union activists.

The activists, about a third of any work force, don’t need attention. It’s the workers who get misled by the consultant’s lies who need focus and energy. These conversations are hard, so people avoid the urgent and instead do the easy (and lose). In hotly contested districts, building a supermajority means identifying the neighbor, congregant or family member who can help hold or move undecided or shaky voters (strangers simply can’t do this) and making sure the conversations are happening. To win, forget wishful thinking and build to the number needed to win assuming you lose 10 points the days before the election.

Third, to counteract the litany of outrageous lies from the employer’s hired guns, it takes discipline to constantly connect the undecided and anti-union voters to the issues they themselves think matters most, like reasonable workload limits, on-the-job safety, putting sexually harassing managers in their place and the right to retire (to know this, you have to have asked them first). Union organizers help the voter realize that the union buster offers zero solutions. The most important aspect of defeating the avoidance specialists is to inoculate people against the opponents’ lies before they start and throughout the campaign.

That means saying all the nasty things about unions that the employer will use to bombard workers as the campaign heats up. When we reveal the limitations of the bad unions first and discuss, in concrete terms, the many real examples of how workers themselves can build good unions, it helps people understand the message war. Likewise, in today’s highly polarized election debates, it’s important to get out front by saying, “In the final weeks of this election, you will hear the opponent say, ‘Raising wages kills jobs.’ Why do you think they say that?” and “You will hear that immigrants stole your jobs.” And it’s important to ask — not tell — “Do you think C.E.O.s are making the decision to send your job to countries where they can pay people $1 a day, or did immigrants make that decision?” You have to let the person actually think, then redirect back to why their low wages or underemployment make life impossible. These are conversations in a sustained ground game, not one-way media.