Voter Data Cycle

Assess political terrain Assess organizational capacity targeting Assess demographics Assess voter behavior Assess political terrain Assess organizational capacity Assess demographics Assess voter behavior Assess political terrain Assess organizational capacity

Prepare voter contact database Develop voter contact data workflow Pull voter lists Merge voter lists with membership lists Develop voter contact data workflow Pull voter lists Merge voter lists with membership lists

Produce outputs for voter contact Develop phone/walksheets based on campaign needs Develop reports to assess progress/performance during campaign Develop phone/walksheets based on campaign needs – spaces for questions you’ll be asking, does the sheet reflect all the information your walkers/callers will need? Develop reports to assess progress/performance during campaign – how many people have we talked to? How many voters? How many have said “yes?” How many potential members? How many volunteers?

Enter voter contacts into field database Using data entry tech and volunteers, get canvass data back into database Generate new phone/walksheets based on results of prior contacts Using data entry tech and volunteers, get canvass data back into database – barcode scanners and an army of data entry volunteers – get the info back into your field operation database as quickly as you can, so that you can: Generate new phone/walksheets based on results of prior contacts – don’t talk to the same person more times than you need to, if you’re doing a three contact strategy, need to be able to track contacts so you call the phone people, face to face the face to face people, and mail the mail people.

Post-election

ID Voter Contacts for follow-up Pull the people who are likely members for follow-up

Store results of voter contact Are you going to talk to voters again? You need to store the results of the voter contact so you can do things like talk to a voter next year and say something like “hi Mr. Phillips, we talked to you last year about the incinerator and you said you were opposed to it, we’re out talking to voters again this year to thank voters like you for your support and to talk with you about the new bill…” The results of your voter contact, collected over time, are what enable you to amass a block of progressive voters. So, what you need to do is two things – 1) you need to store the info on people that you contacted and what they said in response to the questions you asked, and 2) you need to store it in a way that next year, or five years from now, you can look at the information and understand what it means. In other words, will you know, five years from now that a “Y” response to “Ballot Measure 75” is in fact a response that is supportive of your organization’s position? Here, what you really need to do is think about what information you need, and how you can document what the information means to help your future voter contact work.

Merge voter contacts into member list Finally, you probably want to pull your voter contact information with your membership into your membership database so that you know who, in your membership you’ve contacted through your voter campaign, how they responded to your questions, and whether they actually voted or not.