Political Campaign Strategy for Low-Turnout Local Elections
Ed (no location given) loves Killer Campaigning and has a question for us about what kind of political campaign strategies you should use if you’re a candidate in a local election with low turnout:
Hello, I love your website, extremely helpful information! Here’s my question. I am running this year for Township Council in a town of 14K registered voters. This election will be a low-turnout election (~40%)…..House of Reps, County, Local, that’s it. Do you have any specific strategies for low-turnout campaigns?
Thanks for the compliments, Ed–good question. Here’s the answer: in low-turnout campaigns, you should laser-focus your campaign on people who you know for sure are going to vote . . . and ignore the rest.
I know, I know; “ignore” is a harsh word, and I don’t necessarily mean that you should turn and run away from a voter if he isn’t on your list. But you do need to be aware of how important it is to focus your campaign efforts on the people who classically show interest in elections even when most of their neighbors are tuning out.
If this is your first time running for office, you’re very lucky to be doing so in a low-turnout election year for several reasons. The first is that you won’t have to spend as much money to get your message in the face of every single voter. If you do a good job of building a likely voter list that identifies who is going to show up at the polls with a high degree of accuracy, you’ll be able to contact everyone on your list twice as many times as you would in a high-turnout election.
Putting together your likely voter list can take a few days to do, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll enjoy the project. First, take a look at voting records from the last several election years (many county Board of Elections offices publish these online or offer copies for a small fee). Armed with this info, you should be able to identify a recent election cycle that has a lot in common with your campaign circumstances: the same offices on the ballot, a similar number of issues, etcetera.
When you’ve identified the election cycle that you think will have the most in common with your circumstances, take a look at the numbers from the race you are running in. How many votes did the winner need to get elected? What percentage of voters actually showed up at the polls to cast their ballots? What do you think your “winning number”–the actual number of votes you need to win your race–will be?
Now it’s time to really dig deep and comb through the valuable voter information that will help you win your election. Although every county Board of Elections operates differently, mine will supply anyone with a CD that has Excel-organized lists of voter records for the last several years. Getting your hands on this list–even if you have to pay a few bucks to do it–is well worth your time.
In addition to using this voter list to identify all of the registered voters who cast a ballot in the last election that mirrored yours, you can also look at who can be considered a “super voter”– or someone who votes in every election, primary and general, regardless of how little interest there is in it. Voters who cast a ballot in the last election that was similar to yours–and especially the “super voters”–will comprise the majority of your likely voter list.
Now that you have your likely voter list, you can further break it down by precincts and wards, and identify where in your city or district most of your votes are going to come from. If one precinct has very few likely voters in it, then you know to spend less door-to-door campaigning time in it and more time in precincts that are rich with super-voters.
Instead of spending a bundle of campaign cash sending one campaign mailer to every registered voter, you can spend the same amount to send two or three mailers to your shorter, likely voter list. This targeted, multi-hit approach will help you win a higher percentage of the vote from people who actually show up at the polls, which will make victory more likely on election day.
I hope this helps–honestly, I could keep writing stuff all night about strategies to use in low-turnout local elections, but I’m going to cut it short here and take another look at it in a later post. Just remember what I always say here on Killer Campaigning: the harder it is to do in a local campaign, the more effective it is in winning votes. Just because you have a targeted voter list doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t spend every spare minute walking neighborhoods, knocking on doors, and leaving campaign literature to increase your name recognition.
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