It seems a little risky in retrospect, but since launching three years ago, the Poor People’s Campaign has been executing its political strategy on a dearly held hunch: namely, that increasing the volume of poor and low income voters will make for more democratic elections and more equitable social policy. Putting their intuition to the test, the national advocacy group, which garnered 3 million attendees at its virtual Moral March on Washington in June, commissioned a study to learn if their best guess, which Poor People’s Campaign policy director Shailly Gupta Barnes calls more of “a motivating belief,” was even in the ballpark.

What they learned made them glad they’d followed their political instincts. According to Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, a co-director of the Poor People’s Campaign, the data empirically prove what the organizers themselves have long understood—“poor and low income people can become a transformative new electorate.” Especially in the South, where they’ve already made a difference in competitive gubernatorial races in Kentucky and North Carolina, unseating incumbents even in the face of extreme voter suppression.