Think about each of the following statements and decide whether or not you agree with them:
1. My campaign message appeals to everyone, and I expect voters will cross the aisle to support me because of it.
2. My job as the candidate is to knock on every single door in my district myself.
3. A statewide candidate is letting me access their voter contact system for free, and they’ve done all the voter targeting for me.
4. Yard signs and sign-waving parties are a great way to win lots of votes at once.
If you agree with one or more of these statements, beware. You could be wasting your time talking to the wrong people or actively making things worse by turning out voters for your opposition.
A new candidate came to me after reading a recent e-guide I wrote on voter analysis and targeting.
Tom, the new candidate, had agreed with his local party chair that he should meet every single voter in his small district. He now realized his mistake. There were 30,000 voters registered. Was it really worth his time hitting all these doors? Knowing only a third of voters would turn out on Election Day, he realized he had to narrow down the list.
So, how do successful campaigns decide on their target list? If there isn’t enough time to reach everyone, how do we decide who we’ll leave out? Common wisdom is to start by removing voters who’ve gone inactive, who’ve not voted in several years, belonged to the opposing party, or were already in the bag as supporters. After this, we just had to decide who to contact and who he should not.
In the end, with a limited time frame between today and Election Day, it’s hard to go wrong prioritizing efficiency. That means maximizing the time spent at doors where a volunteer would be impactful and minimizing time spent at the wrong doors. The less time he spent at the wrong doors, the more time he’d have at the right doors, persuading undecided voters or motivating his supporters to show up at the polls.
Now, a large part of Tom’s district was in a rural area, which can prove challenging. Voters here don’t often receive candidates at their door. This makes door knocking more challenging, which can impact your timeline significantly. But, if you’re the only candidate doing door-to-door, it might allow you to stand out. You just might have to adjust your strategy in creative ways, such as call ahead to make sure someone is home and plan only a single-door pass, adding two extra call passes instead.
Tom’s district also contained a small city. With condos and apartments, instead of farms, his campaign faced a different problem, but came up with a similar solution: more calls and texts into the areas he couldn’t walk, and more door passes in the areas with easy-to-walk townhouses. Cities also offer plenty of events and volunteers to choose from. Within no time, Tom had found Mike, the perfect volunteer. Together, they recruited a team dedicated to their cause and got down to business.
Additionally, we noticed a growing trend within his district. Voters aged 18 to 30 were voting in increasing numbers, but they rarely answered the campaign’s phone calls and were almost as difficult to reach at the doors. So we decided to remove them from call lists and instead added in a round of conversational texts aimed at getting responses.
Meanwhile, the segment of voters 55 and over was slowly shrinking from year to year, but they still showed up to vote at incredible rates. Because this group was more likely to be available when others were at work, we made special contact lists for him to go through during the day.
Also, this demographic is deceptively diverse. For example, a 55-year-old and an 85-year-old are unlikely to have the same level of technological literacy, especially with new tech. So we decided to make only one text pass to the whole group and cut subsequent texts down to just those who responded to the first one.
Things would have looked completely different for Tom if he had been running in a presidential year or if his district was entirely suburban. The fact is, that what works in one year for one candidate will not always carry over to the next.
Voter strategy is not a one-size-fits-all solution. If you’re not tailoring your campaign plan to your exact circumstances, you’re losing efficiency, leaving voters on the table, and maybe handing your opponent the advantage they need to win.
Caitlin Huxley is a campaign strategist and certified project manager. Her company HuxleyStrategies provides training and guidance for new campaigners.
