As a former political consultant and current elected official, I start analyzing my local election results as soon as they come in on election night.  Here are some of the elements that I look for: which precincts I performed the best in (and the worst); where my opponents got more votes (and where I got more than they did); which precincts had the highest turnout (and which had the lowest).

These are just a few of the things that you can include in your local election analysis–and don’t think that you need to analyze your results as soon as they come in like I do.  On election night, especially if it’s the first time you’ve run for office, your focus should be on one thing: whether you are winning or losing.

Once the excitement has died down, though–maybe even a few days or a few weeks after the election–take some time to look at the voting results and see how things played out precinct-by-precinct and ward-by-ward.  Did you end up getting a higher percentage of the vote in precincts where you spent more time campaigning?  Were there any precincts where you did better than you thought you would?  Overall, was turnout higher or lower than you anticipated?

Answering these questions and more will give you a lot of insight when it comes to your strategy for the next campaign–whether you are running for re-election or giving it another shot after coming in short the first time.

The data that you get from running for office the first time–whether you win or lose–is extremely valuable, and will allow you to run an even better local political campaign next time around.  Make sure that you don’t skip the local election analysis after all of the votes have been tallied, whether you do it on the same night or a few weeks later.

Related posts:

1. Following Local Election Results for Your Political Campaign
2. Local Election Map: Political Campaign Precinct & Ward Maps
3. Political Campaign Strategy for Low-Turnout Local Elections

“I think that most people are too busy trying to make a living to consider running for public office. If they live in a town that seems to be well managed they don’t notice anything wrong that makes them question how well their local government is doing its job.”

Which is a great point; the better your town is run, the less interest average citizens will probably have in running for local office to change the system.

When local government is being run effectively by diligent elected officials who do their job well, it doesn’t usually get much notice from the general public.  It’s only when government starts to abuse its authority, and not fulfill its obligations to citizens, that people start paying close attention.

As an elected city official, I rarely get any contact from citizens telling me what a great job city government is doing.  When a constituent calls me, it’s usually to bring my attention to a problem that needs to be solved–and I think that’s great.  It’s an elected official’s job to make sure those problems get the attention they deserve, and a heads-up from an observant resident is often necessary to get the city to take notice.

So what do you think?  Are people more likely to run for office in a local election if they think that government officials aren’t doing a good job?  Or does efficient government actually encourage more average citizens to get involved in political campaigning?

Related posts:

1. First Political Campaign: The Easiest Office to Win?
2. Anyone Can Run a Political Campaign for Elected Office
3. Is My Name Too Long to Run for Political Office?

I’m going to share my answers with all of our Killer Campaigning readers below.  More important than that, though, is the lesson that these kind of political candidate surveys should never just be filled out and sent back . . . they are also a great opportunity for elected officials and candidates to reach out to voters and broadcast their views.

In addition to responding to the student’s questions, I also published my answers to his class survey on my official political candidate blog, and put a link to the post on my official Facebook fan page.  I encouraged all of my fans to click through and check out my answers to the questions.

This is just another example of how having a personal campaign blog and political candidate Facebook fan page can help you reach out to supporters and utilize these kind of opportunities to their fullest extent.  Whenever you get a candidate election survey, you should always put your answers on your own blog and provide a link to it on your Facebook Fan Page or Twitter profile.

Below is the original email from the government class student, followed by my answers.

Hello Phil, my name is Gregg and I am doing a project for my government class and I was hoping to ask you a few questions

A) Why are you involved in local government?

B) What is the most exciting part of the job

C) How did you become a public official? Were you appointed or elected? If elected, have you ever faced a contested race to be a public official?

D) Who do you think are the most powerful individuals or organizations in you community?

E) What are the hardest decisions to make in budgeting?

F) Do political parties or personal alliances play any role in conducting public business?

G) In your opinion, what role does the media play in local government?

I appreciate you taking time out of your day to help me with these questions.

Gregg, thanks so much for the great questions! It’s good to see that LCCC is encouraging its students to find out more about local government and elected officials.

My answers are below. Thanks again and good luck on your class interview project!

A) Why are you involved in local government?

I think that Amherst families are very lucky to live in such a safe and beautiful city, and keeping it that way is very important to me. I couldn’t think of any better way to make sure that Amherst neighborhoods stay safe and beautiful for our children and families than running for City Council.

B) What is the most exciting part of the job?

There isn’t a whole lot of “excitement” involved with local public service, but there are plenty of satisfying experiences. I know that many elected officials don’t like getting personal phone calls from constituents, but I really enjoy it. I always make sure that my cell phone number is available to everyone in the city, and I like getting calls from citizens who have ideas about making Amherst a better place to live.

C) How did you become a public official? Were you appointed or elected? If elected, have you ever faced a contested race to be a public official?

I was elected last year in the City Council at-Large race. It was my first time running for office. There were four candidates running for three Council at-Large seats. I was honored to be the top vote-getter.

D) Who do you think are the most powerful individuals or organizations in you community?

Amherst is lucky to have quite a few local service organizations that do some great things in our community. The Amherst Rotary Club, Main Street Amherst, and the Historical Society come to mind, and there are several others.

E) What are the hardest decisions to make in budgeting?

Because of the difficult economic times we’re facing, the city can’t always finance projects to the extent that we would like to. As elected officials, I think it’s our job to balance two important priorities: adequately funding our city services so that residents remain safe, and being good stewards of taxpayer money.

Amherst has been blessed with a great administration–led by Mayor David Taylor–that does a fine job of protecting taxpayer money while providing adequate funding to vital safety and public services.

F) Do political parties or personal alliances play any role in conducting public business?

No, not for me. If something isn’t good for the city, I won’t consider supporting it . . . regardless of what my personal friends or political party leadership thinks.

G) In your opinion, what role does the media play in local government?

The media might play a more significant role in the local government of larger cities, but it isn’t much of a factor in the City of Amherst. Personally, I couldn’t care less what the media thinks. I don’t make my decisions based on how it will play in the newspapers.

Related posts:

1. Campaign Ready Town Hall: Microsoft Politician Social Media Platform
2. Using Social Media to Win Your Political Campaign
3. Social Media Strategies and Tactics in Political Campaigns

The Blogosphere is home to thousands of politics websites, thanks in large part to the development of user-friendly, inexpensive blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger.  Most local political blogs, though, are only read by a small audience–and don’t have very long lifespans.

I live in Ohio, and two of my favorite local blogs that cover Buckeye State politics are Matt Naugle’s Right Ohio and Anthony Fossaceca’s Ohio Daily.  Right Ohio is an unabashedly Republican blog, and Ohio Daily is unabashedly Democrat.  I’m subscribed to both blogs, and always look forward to reading their posts . . . although they often have very different viewpoints on Ohio politics.

Right Ohio and Ohio Daily are very popular in their respective partisan corners, which is why I’m using them as case studies in this post.  If you want to ensure that your politics blog quickly becomes a popular online hub for the local political community, there are some simple steps you can take to help ensure success . . . and these two Ohio blogs are great examples of how to do it.

1.  Optimize Your Blog for Local Political Keywords to Generate Relevant Organic Traffic

Many local political bloggers make the mistake of jumping right into their first website without doing any competitive keyword research or search engine optimization planning.  If you want more free traffic for your politics blog, then you need to make sure it’s optimized to rank highly in search engines like Google for phrases that locals are actually searching for.

One of the most powerful things you can do to rank highly for a specific keyword is making sure that it’s included in your website’s domain name.  If you’re kicking off a politics blog that focuses on Cleveland, Ohio, for example, then you want to make sure that you try to include the keywords “Cleveland,” “Ohio” and “Politics” in the URL.

One word of warning, however: don’t stuff your domain name with too many keywords and make it difficult to remember.  It’s equally important to practice good branding, and a blog that has a short URL is much easier for new readers to remember and recommend to their political friends.

Right Ohio and Ohio Daily both grabbed great domain names: they’re short, easy to remember, and include “Ohio,” an important targeted keyword.

There are other important on-site search engine optimization rules to keep in mind for your new local political blog, too.  Make sure that you intersperse your targeted keyword phrases throughout your site, in sidebars and footers, to help your site rank higher and faster.  And when you’re writing posts, put some thought into your titles.  Always include a keyword phrases that locals might type in if they’re looking for information about your post topic.

2.  Build Backlinks & Followers by Forming Relationships with Other Local Political Bloggers

Building good links back to your political blog is vital to driving new traffic and subscribers, and not just because people will click on the links and find your site.  The search engine algorithms put a lot of weight on the number of incoming links that a website has when calculating its authority.  In layman’s terms, that means that the more high-quality links your new blog has pointing to it from other websites, the more free traffic you’ll get from Google.

If you want to make your politics blog popular fast, then you should be aggressive in building high-quality backlinks.  You can do that through link exchanges with other like-minded political websites, by guest posting on other blogs, and by publishing shout-outs to other local bloggers in hopes of a reciprocal link.  It’s actually easier to build incoming links to political blogs than most other websites; local bloggers are very likely to include you in their blogroll if they like what you’re writing.

Right Ohio and Ohio Daily are good examples of political blogs that are deeply involved in the local blogging community, with extensive blogrolls and incoming links from other Ohio politics websites.

3.  Keep Things Partisan for More Reader Interaction, Controversy & Attention

We keep things strictly non-partisan here on Killer Campaigning, because our target audience consists of political candidates who run as Democrats, Republicans and everything in-between.  You can take the high road and keep things non-partisan on your local politics blog, as well, but writing with a partisan slant will generate far more buzz, interaction and traffic.

Reader interaction is one of the best Key Performance Indicators that a blog can have, and if your posts are generating a lot of comments and links then you know you’re on the track to success.  By keeping things partisan on your blog, you’ll be providing like-minded readers with red meat that will make them coming back for more . . . and you’ll give your detractors plenty of stuff to get worked up about and mention on their own blogs.

Remember: the more mentions your political blog gets on other websites and social media outlets, the faster you’ll build success.  It doesn’t matter if your incoming links are from people who love your blog or hate it; controversy is one of the best ways for a new site to rocket into the spotlight and generate huge amounts of traffic.  If you steer away from partisanship, you might have a very well-written, impartial blog . . . but most people will find it too boring to comment on and link to.

When it comes to delivering partisan red meat for their readers, both Right Ohio and Ohio Daily do an outstanding job.  Their supporters love them, and their detractors hate them.  That’s exactly the kind of formula that leads to huge success for a local politics blog.

4.  Gossip & Scoops are Good, but Libel & Slander are Downright Dangerous

In order to generate attention, there’s nothing better than being the first to break some local political news or get the dish on link-worthy gossip.  In fact, one of the reasons that many main-stream journalists dislike politics blogs is that the smaller local sites often get the scoop on big media organizations.  The elite media doesn’t like to play catch-up on juicy stories they missed or ignored, and local bloggers often do a better job than professional reporters at digging up great scoops on local politicians and political issues.

Here’s an important aside, however: while breaking a story or publishing the “word on the street” can help build traffic, you need to be very careful that your juicy posts don’t stray into the realm of libel and slander.  If you’re publishing a scoop about a politician, candidate, group or organization, then you had better ensure it’s substantiated . . . or make it clear that your information is unconfirmed.  The best practice is to never publish anything on your politics blog unless you’ve done your homework and can provide proof of your claims.

If you’re a local politics blogger, everything you write is going to be underneath a microscope and examined for accuracy by your enemies.  And believe me: if you make a mistake, they will never let you live it down.  In fact, there are plenty of local political bloggers who have been sued for publishing stories without checking their facts first.

I’ve seen some great political gossip and scoops published on Right Ohio and Ohio Daily, but neither (as far as I know) has ever gone as far as slandering a political adversary.  While the other side might not like their posts, Right Ohio and Ohio Daily both seem to do a good job of checking their facts before hitting the “publish” button.

5.  Don’t Damage Your Career with Careless Writing or Publicity Stunts

You might love being involved in politics and generating controversy on your blog now, but keep in mind that the things you write today could come back to haunt you if your career goals change or your employer catches wind of what you’re publishing online.

Local politics blogs, while they can be very fun and personally rewarding, almost never become a full-time income generator for their owners.  The vast majority of local political bloggers have day jobs outside of politics (although some are lucky enough to work for local parties and politicians), and they need to be careful about offending current or potential employers.

Here’s the thing about the Internet: you can safely assume that everything you write online is going to be there forever, available for anyone in the world to read.  Even if you decide to publish as an “anonymous” blogger, you always run the risk of being outed by someone online and being forever associated with all of the stuff you posted on your site.

I believe–although I’m not certain–that both Matt Naugle (of Right Ohio) and Anthony Fossaceca (of Ohio Daily) have full-time careers in politics, which makes it easier for them to publish the kind of partisan commentary they specialize in.  Regardless of their day jobs, however, I’m certain that both Matt and Anthony are savvy enough to realize that their online writing will be forever available to to the world . . . and that they publish their content accordingly.

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I admit that I haven’t read every book, guide and plan out there that claims to show political candidates how to win a local election, but I did check out quite a few of them before I ran for office myself.  Most of them won’t teach you anything that you couldn’t learn right here on Killer Campaigning, but there is one that actually maps out the exact same steps that I personally used to win my first local election.

Joe Garecht’s How to Win Any Election Kit is without a doubt the best single political campaign advice product that I’ve ever seen, and it’s a resource that I’ve personally used.  In fact, I use it so often–both in my own campaign planning and here on Killer Campaigning–that I have the entire kit in a folder right on my computer desktop  (it consists of a HUGE amount of templates, advice and pre-written plans and fundraising letters).

Joe Garecht isn’t just some bozo who worked on a couple of political campaigns–he’s America’s foremost expert on winning state and local elections.  He’s consulted and managed some of the biggest names in politics, and he’s quoted frequently in the media–including The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Hotline and Roll Call.

As someone who has run a political campaign for local office and won, I can tell you that the How to Win Any Election Kit has everything that you need to build your campaign from the ground up.  Even if you’ve never run for office before, Joe’s kit will show you exactly what you need to do get on the ballot, gather a team, and start your campaign.

Like I said, this kit contains a MASSIVE amount of information.  In addition to the 178-page “How to Win Any Election” E-book, you also get a master’s class on advanced tactics to build political momentum; a professionally-written sample campaign plan; sample fundraising direct mail letters; a sample political press release, and more.

I’ll let you go check out the How to Win Any Election Kit over on Joe Garecht’s site yourself, and I’m sure it will end up helping you as much as it helped me.  Don’t forget: if you’re a candidate in a political campaign, then campaign consulting items like Joe’s kit are legitimate campaign expenses, and can be purchased from your campaign funds!

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If you’re a candidate in a local election race for city council, mayor and even county commissioner, don’t expect to see any polls for your race unless you plan on hiring a professional polling company yourself.  Most local newspapers don’t have the interest or the resources to conduct polling, and well-known political polling firms don’t usually poll races unless they stoke national interest.

The only poll results you are likely to see in your local political campaign will be the results that are tallied by the Board of Elections on voting day.  I’ve been asked by many local candidates about the best way to conduct amateur polling to get a feel for which candidate has momentum, and I’ll share a few pointers with you.

First of all, I suggest that you drop the idea of conducting your own private, unscientific election polling.  Even if there were a way to do it yourself, it would likely take an enormous amount of effort on your part and from volunteers.  As a local candidate, you don’t need to be spending your time doing anything but campaigning.  Ironically, taking the time to conduct your own local election poll could end up losing the race for you.

Secondly, if you have the extra campaign funds to pay for a professional firm to do polling for you, I highly suggest that you use that money for more targeted direct mail, instead.  Election polling done by experienced companies can cost quite a bit of money, and I can’t think of any reason why a candidate in a local race would want to drop so much cash on something that isn’t going to help them get a single vote.

In congressional, statewide and national races, election polling doesn’t just let a campaign know where they stand with the voters; it also supplies them with data that can be spun to showcase their numbers in a good light for the public.  Even if a candidate is behind in the polls, a significant gain over the last results can show growing momentum.  And polls showing that a candidate is ahead can be publicized to rally supporters and discourage contenders.

Even if you could somehow get your hands on accurate polling for your local election, the data simply wouldn’t be as useful to you as it is to a candidate in a larger race.  Putting out a press release bragging about the fact that you are five points ahead of your challenger would probably seem downright strange to voters who aren’t used to seeing those kind of tactics in a small, hometown race.

Having said all of that, though, there are a few methods that you can use to get a general feel for how well your campaign is going without doing actual polling.

The first is your door-to-door neighborhood canvassing efforts.  If you really are getting out into the neighborhoods every day, knocking on doors and meeting voters, then you’re going to get a pretty good feel for how people feel about you.  If you start to realize that every person you meet has heard your name and has a generally good feeling about you, then the odds are that you’re doing pretty well.

Additionally, you’ll be able to do some unscientific polling of your own if you make regular nightly phone calls to your targeted list of likely voter households.  The greeting that you receive from voters who you have never met, and their reaction when they hear your name, will help you get a feel for how your campaign is doing.

I know that these methods are far from exact and will never let you know for sure how you’re going to perform on election night . . . but to tell you the truth, in many ways it’s a good thing that local candidates can’t do scientific polling in their races.

Why?  Because it makes you work harder.  Running a campaign like you’re ten points behind–right up until the end–is a great way to motivate yourself to outwork your opponent.  Seeing an election poll showing that you are a few points ahead of your challenger, while encouraging, can also have a bad side effect: it can make you rest on your laurels and take victory for granted.

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1. Casting Ballots at Polling Places: Local Election Voting in a Pub?
2. Polling Places & Minimum Distance for Political Campaign Signs, Candidates
3. Incumbent Candidates: Political Campaigns for Re-Election

When figuring out what issues you’re going to focus on in your local campaign, there are two potential pitfalls that you need to be cognizant of: focusing on too few election issues, and focusing on too many election issues.

As a general rule, I usually advice local political candidates to limit their campaign message to three core issues or themes.  Any more than this can work against you on several fronts: your overlying message becomes too muddled and confusing to voters if you focus on more than three issues, and it becomes much more difficult and expensive to make the electorate understand your position on all of the issues.

Keeping your message simple and easily understood is vital to a successful local election.  Many new candidates think that they are going to impress voters by showing them how many different issues they have opinions on, but in reality it’s only likely to make your audience roll their eyes and tune you out.

Even statewide and national campaigns, in which a huge diversity of issues come into play, usually keep their message focused on no more than three or four specific issues that are important to voters.  A gubernatorial or presidential candidate might devote a lot of attention to issues like the economy, taxes, healthcare or the like, but if their campaign strays into too many more issues, it tends to take focus away from reinforcing their messaging on the core topics that matter the most to voters.

Once you’ve identified the two or three election issues you’re going to focus on in your campaign, there a few simple rules you can follow to make sure the voters identify you with these issues and understand your position.  First, make sure that your general door cards, flyers, advertisements and campaign literature always mentions these core issues and gives a brief overview or description of each one.

Secondly, consider devoting an individual mail piece or other advertising options to each specific issue.  After giving a broad overview of your campaign’s election issues in early advertising, focus in on each of the individual issues and go into more depth about it for the voters.

For instance, let’s say that you’ve decided to focus on the issues of local business development, safer streets and lower taxes.  In your early campaign literature and advertising, you should merely mention that these three issues form the core of your campaign, and get the voters used to identifying you with them.

If you have the funding to do so in the final weeks of your campaign, though, it can be very effective to send out an individual, targeted mail piece to voters focusing on each of your three themes.  Three weeks before the election, you send out a mailer that goes into detail about your position on local business development; two weeks before you send out a mailer about safer streets; and one week before, you send one focusing on lower taxes.

This kind of “one-two-three” punch on your core local election issues can help reinforce your position with the voters and ensure that they understand exactly what your message consists of.

More on the topic of political campaign issues later on Killer Campaigning, but it’s worth mentioning that focusing on too few issues can be just as dangerous as focusing on too many.  If voters don’t identify you with any issues or message at all, then you run the risk of being looked at as “just some person” who is running for office.  While that might work for some candidates, your odds of earning the constituents’ votes is much higher if you actually make an effort to tell them about the issues that are important to you.

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As a proud American who believes that we should all practice our civic duty and get out to vote one election day, I would love nothing more than to see every eligible voter get to the polls each year.  As a political candidate in a local election, though, you need to realize something very important: a higher voter turnout is not necessarily going to be good for you.  In fact, if the majority of voters are not inclined to support you, then you probably shouldn’t be working to get as many people as you can to show up and vote.

The trick to effective GOTV efforts isn’t in increasing the overall voter turnout, necessarily, but rather in increasing the overall turnout of voters who you know are likely to support you.  There are several ways to identify these groups of likely supporters, but the most reliable way to do so is by their political party.

Although most Americans simply don’t like partisanship in politics–especially on a local level–it remains an unfortunate fact that the main criteria that most voters use when choosing a candidate on the ballot is this: what letter they have next to their names.  A Democrat is much more likely to vote for you if there is a “D” on the ballot next to your name, and a Republican is more likely to vote for you if you have an “R” next to your name.

Another depressing fact: regardless of how hard you work in your political campaign, there is still going to be a chunk of the electorate that will have no idea who you are when they go to vote (take my work for it).  This disconnected group of voters is going to be much more likely to simply vote for every candidate on the ballot who is a member of their party . . . which is all the more reason for you to make sure your GOTV efforts are concentrated on increasing the turnout of your party’s voters.

We’ve talked in other posts about creating targeted voter lists in your local election and how to figure out which voters are most likely to show up at the polls.  These targeted voter lists always include “super voters,” or people who cast a ballot in every single election regardless of how little general interest in it.

With GOTV efforts, your targeted list is going to be a bit different.  The literature you’re going to send to your GOTV list is going to be a bit more partisan and more likely to appeal to people in your respective party, since you won’t be reaching out to any voters from the competing party.  Your partisan GOTV materials don’t need to have a negative tone or play to any political stereotypes, but they should be fashioned in a way that makes these voters identify you with their political party.

Additionally, GOTV efforts need to let voters in your party know that it’s vital for them to get to the polls, regardless of how insignificant the election might seem to them.  These voters need to have an active interest in your campaign, and they need to know that it’s important to remember what date the election is being held on (which, of course, you will make very prominent on your literature, in your phone calls, and during your door-to-door efforts).

That’s all I’m going to write for now in this introduction to get-out-the vote efforts, but we will visit the topic again and provide some more specific examples of how you get people in your party to show up at the polls.  Make sure you subscribe to the Killer Campaigning RSS feed, follow us on Twitter and become a Facebook fan to keep up on our daily political campaign advice!

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When you’re running in your first election  for local office, it’s easy to get so emotionally invested in your race that you end up overspending on campaign materials and advertising.  You want so badly to win that you start to overlook costs if you think writing a check can make winning the election just a little bit more likely.

Don’t get me wrong: if you’ve done a great job at campaign fundraising, attracting contributors and raking in donations, then you deserve to–and should–spend your money in the most aggressive and intelligent ways that you can.  But smaller, local elections just don’t attract the kind of big donors that larger races do, and you simply aren’t going to have the budget to purchase many of the things you would like for your campaign.

There are three things that political candidates can do about a shortage of campaign funds: 1) shrug their shoulders and do nothing, 2) put their own personal money into the campaign, or 3) roll up their sleeves and work even harder to get their message out to the voters the old-fashioned way.

There’s nothing wrong with putting your own money into your political campaign to help guarantee a victory.  Candidates across the country do it every year, and donating your own personal cash is a great way to show the voters how dedicated you are to your campaign.

But if the money you are putting into your campaign would be better spent taking care of your family or fulfilling your other financial responsibilities, then don’t do it.  I’ve said this before on Killer Campaigning: winning elected office isn’t as important as keeping your family safe and happy.  If you’re on a limited budget, then gambling your own money on a political campaign isn’t a responsible thing to do.

If you find yourself lacking the funds to buy materials or advertising that you had budgeted for in your original political campaign plan, don’t think that you have to dip into your own bank account to make up the difference.  While statewide and congressional races can become doomed to failure if the donor wells dry up, the same can’t be said for local races.

In districts with smaller numbers of registered voters, you really can make up for a deficit in money by working harder in the field.  Spending an extra few hours every weekend knocking on doors can win you as many votes as an expensive bulk mailer.  Dedicating an hour every night to personally calling voters can be more effective than buying an ad in the local paper.  And filling out hand-written postcards to absentee voters asking them for their support can make you more memorable as a candidate than a few dozen extra yard signs.

So when it comes to political campaign costs and spending in local elections, don’t think that you need to spend an obscene amount of money to win your race.  If you’re a candidate who isn’t afraid of working hard, then you already have most of the capital that you’ll need to be a winner on election night.

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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.

Related posts:

1. Get Out the Vote (GOTV): Increase Election Turnout
2. How to Increase Voter Turnout with Campaign Phone Calls
3. Planning a Political Campaign: Voter Turnout