LOCATING VOTERS BEFORE DECIDING TO RUN

Political campaigns need to know what percentage of the vote it takes to win. If you’re one-half of a two-person race, you’ll need at least 50 percent plus one. If you’re one in a multi-person contest, less than 50 percent can advance you to a runoff primary for your party’s nomination or runoff position if your race is a nonpartisan one. Either way, target voters you believe will, or can be convinced to, vote for you. Mobilize enough of them so that your winning margin makes recount unnecessary.

A candidate estimating a potential vote total is like a cook facing all new ingredients with a tried-and-true recipe. The recipe is the district’s makeup, its total registered voters, and past election results for candidates who ran there. Ingredients are current political climate, type of election year, presidential or off year, pressing local issues, controversial candidates or issues on the ballot, and possible circumstances affecting voter turnout.

Cost-Effective Targeting

Why would you waste time and money searching for voters who moved, died, or never would vote for you? With current voter data tailored to your needs, you assure that your outreach expenses yield highest returns. So if you are serious about winning, then early, accurate voter targeting is essential. A detailed precinct-by-precinct study reveals where to devote scarce financial and volunteer resources to turn out the vote in precincts that often support candidates like you.

Lists and Dividends

Concentrate on those likely to vote for you. You base your campaign on them, so knowing how many there are is vital. Voter digital data or on lists are among a campaign’s lowest expense overall and, when chosen well, they yield high dividends, among them aiding you to effective budget for your campaign. Your target group determines, for example, numbers of direct-mail pieces and yard signs to purchase as well as how many neighborhoods to canvass and whom to canvass when the time comes.

Voter data allows accurate budgeting for each line item. Furthermore, having a list of voters likely to favor you helps when meeting with potential big-ticket contributors and interest groups looking to endorse political candidates. By summarizing for them the district’s makeup, you not only show that you know the district, you imply that tapping you for elected office is in the district’s best interests.

Candidates who fail to analyze precincts or neglect findings may go to neutral or hostile areas thinking that in-person meetings may change minds. A few votes might be picked up, but the reality is that a majority will not change. In fact canvassing those areas can motivate voters to turn out for the opposing candidate in greater numbers than they would otherwise.

Getting the Lay of the Land

Precincts must sit within political jurisdictions: states; cities; legislative city or county council districts and their boundaries often trace those of major natural or man-made geographic features. Each voter is assigned to a precinct based on residential street address. Here is a map of precinct:

Precincts are foundational to every district, a fact which makes it important to learn voter makeup and voting tendencies throughout your district before you commit to a run for office. You need to know how candidates and issues fared in your district, the locations of those who vote for, or identify with, your party and how often. If your candidacy is nonpartisan, you want to know how similar candidates fared in each precinct.

You also need to know where candidates with similar platforms to yours are rarely supported. If your research reveals a rock-solid history of defeat for candidates like you in enough precincts, pass up a run for office. At the end of the day it is the precinct analysis that influences your political plans with data like these to know at minimum:

• Your potential strongholds – Precincts with a history of high voter turnout for candidates of your party or for non-partisan candidates with philosophies similar to yours. Those areas require your attention if you are to rally your base to vote for you and attract volunteers and financial contributions.

• Your opponent’s likely strongholds – Precincts where your party’s candidates or non-partisan ones who share your philosophies go down to defeat on Election Day most, if not all, of the time. Avoid your opponent’s strongholds.

Making Contacts

Type of race determines which voters to go after. If you face a partisan primary, focus on your party’s loyal supporters. If yours is a non-partisan race, concentrate on those precincts the turnout favored candidates with similar philosophy as you espouse. Also include frequent voters in precincts where bond or taxing issues fared well or poorly depending on which side of the taxation question. So you should identify areas where voters who favor candidates like you or issues similar those you support. Take these traits into account:

• Voting Frequency

A key factor to consider is how often voters vote. Do they vote in local elections? Most data sources sort by voting frequency. Local elections departments and vendors of election data provide lists of those who voted in four of the last four consecutive elections, three of last four, two of the last four, and one of the last four. Make a point of focusing, at minimum, on the three of fours and the four of fours as well as the newly registered because those groups are most likely to vote. And see if your vendor includes who voted in the past for candidates running for your office. If this information is available be sure to target these voters.

• Party Affiliation

If you are in a partisan primary, target all voters who registered with your party, especially those who voted in the most recent two or three party primaries. If you are in an open-primary state where no party registration is required to vote for partisan candidates in primaries, target voters in precincts where candidates from your party or those with similar positions as you are running on receive the most votes.

• Previous Non-Partisan Races

Take voting results for candidates from recent previous races and see how they play against your philosophy, liberal, moderate, conservative. Then concentrate on precincts where the most recent two elections yielded higher turnouts for candidates with a philosophy similar to yours.

• Incumbents

When challenging an incumbent, identify precincts where he or she did worst and focus there first.

• Recent Referenda

Review results where voters favored or opposed a bond election or governmental change. Precincts supporting tax increases to fund public improvements reflect favorable attitudes toward government services. If you are running on a good- government platform, concentrate on precincts like that. But if you are a small-government, low-taxes candidate, concentrate on precincts which voted down a recent bond election or other initiative which, if approved, would have increased taxes.

• Voters per Household

To economize on printing and mailing costs as well as make door-to-door canvassing as effective as possible, order voter lists (digital for smart phone or hard copy for walk lists) and labels (hard copy or digitally transmitted to printer) where all voters living at each address are combined.

The Take Away

By conducting voter research before you file, you reap the benefits later as a candidate because the guess work and emotion will have been taken out of your decisions. By knowing how many voters to target long before your campaign takes off, you have solid data on which to base your campaign budget, which when presented to contributors and interest groups, shows you to be a savvy candidate worthy of funding and support. Then when the campaign is in full swing, you know which voters to contact and later through your GOTV efforts. On the other hand, if findings suggest that you might very well not win in your district, you are spared the expense and effort well in advance.

Read a follow up blog to learn what data is available from government and private voter data sources as well a list of the major voter data vendors.