Political campaigns need to communicate to voters in order to be successful. We have already learned how to reach voters through free and paid media and via the Web, but nothing is more effective than talking directly to voters in their homes and communities. A good field operation can engage voters, turn undecided voters into committed supporters and supporters into volunteers and donors. Media can create votes, but good field work can create enthusiastic supporters.
Media is impersonal, field operations are very personal. Field operations require enthusiasm and commitment and are fueled by the personal loyalty of supporters to the candidate. We will need to engage positively with volunteers and the public, and political professionals who specialize in field operations must be personable and even-tempered under stress.
Field operations are also capital and labor intensive, requiring headquarters, business equipment, office supplies in prodigious quantities and staff and temp labor. Field staff should not hesitate to advocate for money to be allocated in the campaign’s budget and planning phase.
Writing the Field Plan
Utilizing the budget derived from the campaign plan and the targeting strategy the campaign has derived, the Field staff will write the field plan. It will consist of three phases, which may run concurrently:
- Voter ID: We will identify the candidate’s supporters and opponents to identify targets for persuasion and GOTV and to remove hard opponents from our universes.
- Voter Persuasion: Uncommitted and weak supporters of our opponent are targeted for persuasion. We will run multiple phases of persuasion.
- Get Out The Vote (GOTV): Soft supporters are reminded to get to the polls.
- Election Day GOTV: Critical precincts with large numbers of soft supporters are targeted for reminder canvasses and calls.
We will budget and plan each phase in the field plan using the field allocation in the campaign budget and the number of volunteers projected in our recruitment plan. Keep in mind that volunteers will increase in number with public interest and peak prior to election day.
Field plans should be detailed and specific, and should include a schedule, budget, number of targeted voters and personnel requirements for each phase.
Methods of Voter Contact
Canvassing
Knocking on a voter’s door is the most effective method of voter contact, but also the most demanding. Most campaigns will not be able to canvass their entire districts, which means that targeting and the refinement of the campaign’s universes are very important. Many campaigns have to use temp labor for canvassing, which can be expensive and requires some level of supervision to ensure that the work is actually done. When volunteers are available, care must be taken that their conduct and appearance reflects well on the campaign. While candidates and surrogates may canvass (and a candidate canvass is very powerful for the small number of doors she can cover), this should usually be limited to symbolic use for media exposure unless the electoral district is very small or dense. If we are doing our jobs well, they will have more productive things to do.
Targeted voters are divided into turfs. Each turf is what one or two volunteers can cover in two or three hours. The number of homes in each turf will vary by phase, density and community type. In a typical suburban setting, a turf might include 70 addresses. In an apartment block, it might contain 175. Staff will cut the turf from their canvass list, derived from the current universe and the phase we are working. A walk list will be printed from the canvass list representing the turf. The procedures used vary depending on the software the campaign is using. The Democratic Party’s VoteBuilder is recommended. It uses a web browser rather than a separate piece of software, and the campaign can create multiple accounts with defined privileges that can help assure that field staff have access to only the data they need. Although the cost can be substantial, other products cost even more.
Staff and volunteers then arrange car pools and water for canvassers. Ideally, an entire precinct will be walked simultaneously out of a central dispersal point prepared with water and walk lists when canvassers go out and snacks and drinks when they get back. Scripts should be provided and each volunteer should rehearse the script. Cell phone numbers must be collected. If volunteer canvassers are late returning, staff need to contact them to ensure their safety.
Phone Bank
Calling voters on behalf of a campaign can be effective, but its usefulness has varied over time. With older voters, phone calls can have some of the personal quality that make field contact effective, but middle-aged voters will generally not answer their phones or will screen their calls. Younger voters who use cell phones exclusively may be easier to reach by voice calls, but many may not answer the phone if they don’t recognize the number. Also, cell phones may not be autodialed and cell numbers are harder to come by. Generally, messages are left only in GOTV calls.
Phone banking is primarily useful because many volunteers will not willingly do anything else. Some older volunteers and those with medical concerns cannot walk a precinct for us, so phone banking gives them a role.
If the voter actually answers their phone, the personal phone call can work. It has much of the personal quality of canvassing. Much depends on the attitude of the volunteers making the calls. Volunteers should call from headquarters whenever possible to keep them calling and to provide encouragement, drinks and snacks. Keeping them productive and happy is the key to getting good results.
Again, phone calls are phase-dependent. Voter ID calls are shorter and less demanding than persuasion calls. GOTV calls are very brief, informing callers of poll locations, identification requirements, and operating hours.
Local Events and Organizations
Every community has organizations that are hospitable to our message. Our party will have county committees, clubs and caucuses. Unions will have locals and regional CLCs. Ethnic and issue advocacy groups will have local chapters and Meetups.
The most important reason to spend the candidate’s time at these meetings is to recruit volunteers. The candidate should take staff to these meetings to distribute sign-up sheets that permit the voter to choose to receive the campaign’s email newsletter, volunteer for specific kinds of jobs, or to give money. The campaign should have Business Reply Mail contribution envelopes to distribute to those willing to make a donation.
Direct Mail
Less useful are bulk mail campaigns. Mail can consist of postcards or letter-sized cards designed for GOTV, name recognition or attack; or it may take the form of letters with return envelopes and fundraising appeals. In either event, it must visually striking and provocative. It must engage the emotions of the audience. Most mail will go into the trash unread.
If used for fundraising, the bulk of funds raised will be consumed in funding the campaign. Because of this and the low response rate, direct mail is not recommended for most races unless it is in the form of cards for targeted GOTV or attack.
Social Networking Websites
The campaign may use one or more popular commercial social networking sites to advertise the candidate. Establishing and maintaining these pages is easy and typically done by a student volunteer. This can be an effective and low-cost method of creating name recognition and advertising upcoming events. There aren’t many reasons not to use this, but we shouldn’t expect very much. Response rates are generally small, and other than the young, most users don’t check their page very often.
More promising is a purpose-built social networking site with user-created sub-groups and events. This sounds daunting, but there are low-cost resources available to build these sites with minimal coding. A site like this can help campaigns to build their own communities, led from the bottom up. Recent experience has shown that this can be very effective, but also that it can take a long time to show results. If we are going to set up a site like this, it must be done early in the campaign.
Email is almost useless as a form of voter contact, but we’ll probably use it anyway. Response rates are even lower than with direct mail, but it’s much cheaper and more versatile. When voters do read our emails, they can be connected directly to our websites and social network pages. We can also place a DONATE button prominently in the email. Emails should be visually attractive and short.
As a means of communicating with supporters and volunteers, email is very effective and versatile. They can be informed of upcoming events, reminded of commitments they made to the campaign (always followed up by a phone call,) and encouraged.
Phases of Voter Contact
Each of these phases is necessary to reach vote targets for our election. If we have a Primary opponent we will run through these phases twice. Again, the phases may be concurrent.
Voter ID
During this phase we will identify the candidate’s supporters and opponents. Scripts for phone calls and canvassing are simple. Voters will typically be asked about their preference and scored in numerical terms, with “1” being committed to vote for our candidate and “5” being committed to vote for her opponent. The results are given to the targeting team, who will use them to refine the campaign’s universe. Voters’ issue concerns can also be noted and given to the Communications team to refine the message. Budget permitting, palm cards containing basic information necessary to build name recognition may be distributed.
Hard opponents can be removed from our universe altogether. Supporters can be moved to the GOTV universe. This allows us to concentrate our persuasion efforts on uncommitted voters.
Canvassing visits or phone calls during this phase should be brief. Volunteers should avoid getting sidetracked into prolonged conversations with voters and concentrate on collecting the information the campaign needs to proceed.
Voter Persuasion
Depending on need and budget, uncommitted voters and weak supporters of our opponent are targeted for persuasion. Scripts are more complex and require dialogue. Volunteers must be conversant in the campaign’s message. Voter ID questions are then asked again. Voters who are moved to become hard supporters are removed from the universe of persuadables and into the GOTV universe. Remaining persuadables are then targeted for further persuasion as resources and time allow.
Get Out The Vote (GOTV)
This phase typically begins three weeks before Election Day, although Early Voting has changed the schedule. Now we might begin GOTV canvassing and phone calls one or two weeks before Early Voting begins. Persuasion and GOTV may be concurrent.
Supporters are reminded to get to the polls. We will tell hem where their polling place is, its operating hours, and what identification they will need to vote. We remind them what is at stake in the election. If we have resources for babysitting or rides to the polls, we will note these needs now for later use.
Election Day GOTV
Critical precincts with large numbers of soft supporters are targeted for reminder canvasses and calls. Babysitting and rides to the polls are part of Election Day GOTV. Some functions may overlap with GOTV due to Early Voting.
Recruiting and Managing Volunteers
Volunteers are the most important asset a field campaign can have. They are guaranteed votes, and they are the single most cost-effective tool for reaching voters. Much of our success will depend on how well we recruit, train, and retain volunteers.
We will find volunteers in local organizations and at local community events. We may recruit friends, co-workers and family members. We will use social-networking sites like Facebook and Meetup to reach voters sympathetic to our campaign.
Volunteers should be allowed to do the kind of campaign work they prefer if circumstances permit. Some people are deeply uncomfortable knocking on the doors of strangers and will do it poorly if pressured, wasting our time and theirs. Others are uncomfortable on the phone. The campaign should make appropriate use of volunteers when practical. When we assign them a task, we should supervise them briefly before sending them on their own. This will improve their performance and instill a sense of confidence.
Volunteers should be rewarded and encouraged. They should be provided with snacks and drinks and loosely supervised to ensure that they remain cheerful and on task. If volunteers become stressed or agitated they should be encouraged to return another day. There should be a casual feel to headquarters. Volunteers and visitors should feel at ease. Social and work aspects of the campaign will blend together. People will keep coming back because of the sense of camaraderie such an environment will yield. Staff should try to make volunteers feel like equal participants in the campaign. When volunteers successfully complete tasks and demonstrate competence, we should consider asking them to take on more responsibility. This will offer them a sense of accomplishment, keep them coming back, and reduce our work load as the scale and complexity of the campaign ramps up toward Election Day.
Volunteers should be encouraged to remain involved in our campaign by any means available to us. The campaign should explore low-cost methods of building online communities so volunteers can interconnect. Volunteer team meetings should be picnics or parties. The social and entertainment needs of volunteers should be met within the ability of the campaign to do so.
Understanding the motivations of our volunteers will be of crucial importance. People volunteer for campaigns for a variety of reasons. The may agree with us on issues. They may find the candidate or campaign attractive in some way. Their significant other may be involved in the campaign. We should know our volunteers well enough to understand their motivation and not undermine it. If a woman is involved in the campaign because of her boyfriend’s involvement, we should avoid assigning them canvassing duties on opposite sides of town.
GOTV
All of our work identifying and persuading voters will not help us if our voters don’t turn up to vote. Elections are frequently won or lost in GOTV. In the final weeks of the campaign, we will be trying to ensure that our identified supporters turn up at the polls. We will be canvassing precincts with high percentages of supporters, starting with the largest. We will be phone banking our hard, then soft supporters. We may drop cards showing the polling location and hours and urging recipients to vote. These should targeted at “1”s and “2”s.
We will remind supporters that they can vote early, telling them their early voting location(s) and hours. Encourage them to vote early if possible or to send in their mail ballot if they have one. The more of our supporters vote early, the better for us. If someone tells us they have voted early or by mail, remove them from our GOTV universe. This will allow us to focus on those supporters who have not yet voted.
Early voting sites should have small teams of volunteers doing “visibility.” Yard signs should be posted in a visible manner consistent with local signage code. Volunteers should wave rally or yard signs. These volunteers should have water and relief on a regular basis. Palm cards are probably a waste of time at all but the busiest early voting sites.
GOTV is when we ask our supporters if they need help getting to the polls. If we can muster the volunteers, we should offer voters rides to the polls. Historically, many campaigns have offered volunteer babysitting services, but current attitudes and the litigious culture have probably rendered this impractical. Whatever the campaign and its volunteers can do to help voters to the polls should be done.
Election Day GOTV
Early voting and voting by mail have changed the timing of elections and reduced the importance of Election Day. The majority of votes are still cast on Election Day, however, and the last push can still make the difference between victory and defeat.
Starting three days before Election Day, we will begin canvassing high-support precincts, leaving supporters cards listing their Election Day polling location and hours. This is almost always different from their early voting location. The cards should remind our supporters of identification requirements. Ideally supporters should be “touched” at least once by canvass and once by phone.
On Election Day, most volunteers will be at the polling stations. If the campaign can place volunteers at every polling station, then do so. Usually, however, we will have to choose critical swing and supporter precincts. We will do visibility and offer palm cards to voters entering the polling station. Volunteers must be trained to respect the electioneering boundaries and to comply with the requests of election staff.
At polling stations, we should have yard signs posted. Each volunteer going to the polls should have a route in their community, placing yard signs at each polling station before proceeding to their polling place.
Unless the local party has poll-watchers in every precinct, the campaign should apply to the Supervisor of Elections to post poll-watchers in high-support precincts. Party voters should be crossed off our precinct list. Runners can retrieve the lists mid-day, so phone bankers can remove those who have already voted from their call lists.
Election Day is tiring and difficult for all involved, but volunteers should be rewarded with a party after polls have closed and poll-watchers have returned.
