Precinct Chairs On The Web And On The Phone

“The most important job I ever held was that of precinct committeeman.”

-President Harry Truman 

A friend called the other day and started a discussion about communication with precinct chairs. As often happens with this friend, we covered many related topics and went off on many tangents. Because these are common challenges in every county, I decided to share some of our ideas online. Unfortunately, there’s one chronic problem that is beyond the scope of this conversation— the degree of commitment and enthusiasm of those who volunteer to be a precinct chair. These suggestions assume a strong selection, development, and leadership process by the party; to be successful, leaders of volunteer-fueled organizations must maintain the same high standards and expectations that we have of workers in the business world.

 A Node in a Network

I approached the communication question this way: the precinct chair is a node in a communication network. The specific issues that triggered our conversation could be broken down into voter access to this node and party access to this node. First—for the voters. Being a precinct chair in a political party is by definition a public job. It must be understood that a key responsibility is outreach to voters. So the precinct chair must be accessible to the public. Those who are extremists about privacy may be in the wrong job. 

Warm Web Presence

 Online, the party website must project warmth and it must welcome the visitor. Each precinct should be shown as a neighborhood with the chair being a real person. Photos are essential—especially of the chair, but also of the neighborhood. A few lines of text from the chair welcoming newcomers should accompany each section. For examples, look at your legislator’s home page which likely describes both the person and the district. I encourage a short video plug-in where each precinct chair can display their personality to the voter. Also, notice how real estate agents market themselves.

Immediate email connection

Voter connection with the precinct chair must be easy and convenient. The party should provide an email address for every precinct. 

Direct Telephone Conversation

Telephone numbers are essential because not all voters are comfortable with email, and some issues are too urgent or complex to work online. We recommend RingCentral, which can provide a virtual phone number with multiple extensions and an audio directory. This number should be featured on all publications. Each precinct chair can configure their extension to forward to a personal number, with many voicemail and screening options. Both the phone number and email can be reassigned as necessary. The privacy of the chair is maintained and the party maintains continuity over time. www.RingCentral.com

Internal Contact

As for the party’s communication with its precinct chairs, it must be understood that this is an important position and the chair must be available and responsive. Precinct chairs should provide every home and work phone number—especially their mobile number. Any precinct chairs that are not comfortable with text messaging technology can be trained. Communication to the troops can be by email or by text as is appropriate to the content and the context. It is not efficient for the leadership to spend their time making live telephone calls for every communication. If a deadline applies, it must be made very clear by the sender.

Inward and Outward

It is a truism that effective communication is essential to any team. For the precinct chair, this communication must be 360 degrees including the voters in their precinct and the leadership in their organization. The standards for a volunteer must be every bit as high as those for the employees of a business. This is how the party will grow.

Exit Polling Strategies

Exit Polls Discontinued in 17 States

When it was announced that the National Election Pool consortium had abandoned 19 non-swing states, including Texas, the decision was roundly criticized by Daily Kos and others. I became curious. Why? What’s so important about the major broadcast networks and the Associated Press predicting election outcomes before the polls close?

Valuable Background Data is Lost

Well, it turns out that there’s more to an exit poll than its predictive utility. The questionnaire includes questions about voters’ reasoning and attitudes behind their decision. This information can inform elected officials when they take office. This data can provide feedback to unsuccessful office seekers for their next campaign. The so-called “internals” are studied by the pundits to understand the meaning of the election. The Roper Center at the University of Connecticut is a rich source of information about exit polling and includes the scripts used for many exit polls.

How Hard Can It Be?

The National Election Pool eliminated those states to reduce expenses. You have to pay a lot of money to hundreds of people with questionnaires and clipboards standing outside polling places, and we all know the pressure on traditional media outlets to cut costs. But wait. Because of the increasing importance of Early Voting, much of the polling has been done by telephone anyway. Couldn't you conduct a telephone poll after the election and still get those important insights into voter motivation? Who cares about the pundits predicting election outcomes when we’re going to know it in a few hours anyway!

We’re suggesting after-action interviews with voters by telephone—either automated or live—to analyze their reasoning and motivations. 

Your Telephone Exit Poll

Why not design your own exit poll and contact the voters by telephone? Use publicly available data to create a sample of those who actually did vote. There’s no need to model likely voters after the election; we know who they are.

Ask them the questions that you want answered. Why did they vote the way they did? How do they feel about the issues that you will face when you take office? How do they self-identify in important categories? You aren’t limited to the standard questions if you run your own program.

We can conduct live interviews with the voters using our professional agents and online script and data collection platforms. Or you can choose our surprisingly affordable automated polling service.

Elections administrators will be releasing voter history data soon after the election. Let’s start Wednesday morning with the planning and design of your customized exit poll.

Robocalls Don't Work

Robocalls don’t work, and the evidence is overwhelming. Here are two examples. 

During the 2002 General Election campaign, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials delivered two Spanish language celebrity robocalls to more than 250,000 Latino households in California, New Mexico, and Texas. Researchers found no statistically significant difference in turnout between groups receiving the calls and those not receiving the calls. (Ramirez 2005 - Multi-method Mobilization Among Latino Voters) 

Another example also resulted in a statistically insignificant difference between voters receiving the robocall and those who did not. Governor Rick Perry of Texas used micro targeting experts to identify his personal supporters; he delivered a robocall in his own voice asking them to vote for his endorsed Supreme Court candidate in the primary. (Green and Gerber, 2008 p. 83). 

For a comprehensive resource on Get Out The Vote research, visit this Yale University Institution for Social and Policy Studies website.  

So Now What? 

So knowing this about robocalls, what should you do? Paid callers are expensive. And nobody has enough volunteers to get the job done. So we have to be creative with the use of technology. First, don’t waste your money on robocall voice blasts. Our minimum service includes an invitation in your script for voters to press 1 to talk to your campaign, and to press 9 to be removed from your list. In the GOTV stage of a campaign, this finds the voters who really need assistance. You know if you are generating votes because you provide practical information, arrange for rides, and provide human contact and encouragement. The press 1 choice also gives you a measurable indicator of voter engagement. 

The ability to opt-out by pressing 9 is equally important. It disarms those who would be negative about your campaign. Those opting out feel that they are respected, and they know it when they cease to receive calls from you. In the earlier stages of a campaign, automated calls can be used to identify your supporters, as well as those who are not going to vote for you. Voters are invited to press 1, 2, or 3 to answer questions. 

Another valuable enhancement is to personalize each call by including polling locations and hours. Creative scripts present this as useful information and it doesn’t come off as just a sales pitch. 

The collective impact of these features is that the negative impact of a recorded call is ameliorated, and the positive potential is enhanced. For more invitation, please call us at 214 450 9553.

Bringing Polling to Local Campaigns

We’ve been very pleased lately with the value of information delivered by low-cost automated polls conducted for our clients engaged in local campaigns. People often think of polling as something that only big campaigns can do with expensive Washington D.C. consultants. In fact, an automated poll empowers even municipal campaigns to explore the issues that their voters care about, and to measure a candidate’s standing. Over the years, we have conducted polls using both live agents and recorded voices. Granted, for a long and complex interview, you must use live agents. However, we are getting very useful information and good participation rates with well-designed automated polls, and we’ve found we can ask as many as eight questions of voters in those calls. 

It’s human nature—people want to express their opinion and to be heard. All you have to do is make it easy for them. Write a script that is short and to the point; don’t go overboard apologizing or trying to be polite. We’ve found through testing various scripts that the most economical wording, while still maintaining basic respect for the voter, gets the greatest participation. 

Of course, the community, the issues, the timing, and the environment result in different degrees of enthusiasm by voters for any survey. But in general, calls to a group of voters will reach a person about one third of the time. Of those people, we typically see about one quarter responding to the first question and about one fifth staying through the seventh question. This gives a big enough sample to get meaningful information about the important issues of your campaign. 

Without going into the formulas used to calculate margin of error, let me say that we recommend starting with a target list of 10,000 phone numbers to end up with a sufficient sample size. If your area of interest includes more households, then we take a random sample. If it’s less, than we work with what we have. The resulting participation will give you a very good idea of where voters stand on the issues. 

We also use the call logs for another purpose—identifying supporters. The call logs are uploaded to the voter file to mark supportive households as well as those who favor the opponent. Individual household responses on issues can also influence future communication with that household. This bonus results as a byproduct of the polling activity. 

Finally, if there’s still anybody out there who questions the accuracy of automated polls relative to live polls, all you need to do is to check Public Policy Polling and Rasmussen’s polling results on the national stage. Their automated polls have been among the most accurate. If you want to go deep on this subject, I recommend a multi-part series of articles written by Nate Silver on nytimes.com:  The Uncanny Accuracy of Polling Averages*, beginning with Part I: Why You Can't Trust Your Gut: http://nyti.ms/An2Umz.

Get Out The Vote Research-Based Tips

This article has two parts—first the framework of a GOTV call, then suggested lines that have been proven effective.  Links to articles and research are included.

Our basic script framework (that has general applicability in fundraising and sales, too):
*Intro - Name and organization
*Engage – Make it relevant – hot issue
*Viability – Credible statement to show we can win
*Personalize – Why their action or inaction is pivotal
*Call to Action – This is called “The Ask” in sales.
*Logistics – Where, when, do they need a ride?
*Confirm- Repeat their commitment
*Close - Goodbye

This article titled Nudge the Vote is an overview of several techniques used to motivate voters.  

Impressive results have been demonstrated by communicating to voters that their voting history is public.  This article summarizes one such social pressure experiment in Michigan

The best book on the subject is the classic “ Get Out The Vote” by Donald Green and Alan Gerber, now in its second edition. 

Here are our tips that combine conclusions of these sources and others.  Use words like "now" and "last chance".  Use days of the week rather than month and date; that's how people think.  Get their commitment to vote and talk to them about the details.  How will they get there?  What time?  This visualization alone makes them more likely to vote, plus it uncovers any problems so you can solve them in advance.

To engage, demonstrate viability, and personalize:
*Ride the wave:  “Turnout is expected to be high in this important election.”
*Social pressure:  "Many in your neighborhood have already voted." 
*Emphasis on civic duty:  "The issues are too important this time; as an American you must vote in this election." 
*The power of their vote:  "Recent elections have been won or lost by as few as 30 votes; yours may make the difference."

Apply these concepts to your voter mobilization efforts to maximize their impact.