Hopefully you’ve already organized your raw data and are ready to actually start contacting voters. So how exactly do you do that, anyway? And once you’re with them, what do you say?
The next step to building your voter database will be going door-to-door and/or phone banking in order to collect new information about registered voters and to clean up the lists you have by deleting people who have died or moved, or listed under the wrong party, or whatever.
First things first: Questions to ask. Much of these will depend on your race and your district, and maybe what’s going on with your opponent, but here is a list of suggested questions to ask as you canvass:
- What is your party affiliation?
- (If Independent,) do you lean conservative or liberal?
- What issues are most important to you? I like to leave this one open-ended so you can get the most candid response. You may discover many people are very concerned about an issue you weren’t even aware of.
- Do you know of/have you heard of (incumbent)?
- Would you vote to re-elect (insert incumbent here) for (insert office here)?
- Would you vote for a Republican candidate for (insert office here)?
- Do you know of/have you heard of (insert YOUR candidate here)? This helps determine your name recognition.
- What is your opinion of (your candidate)?
- Would you vote for (your candidate) for (insert office here)?
- In a race for (office), would you be more likely to vote for (candidate) or for (incumbent)? To make sure there’s no bias based on order, switch the order of candidate and incumbent every other voter.
- (If the respondent seems supportive of your candidate) Would you like to get involved as a volunteer for (candidate)?
- In September/October, we will be distributing yard signs. Would you like a (candidate) yard sign?
- Do you have any questions about (candidate)? Your volunteers should be educated in advance on his bio and platform, and any questions they are unable to answer can be addressed in a follow up contact, possibly by the candidate himself.
- Can I have your email address for our newsletter?
These questions and others that you think of can be weaved into a detailed script for your volunteers to use both door-to-door and over the phone.
Once you have a solid idea of the data you intend to collect, create columns in your database system for those attributes. You’ll be able to use this information for your communications planning, most especially crafting your message and planning paid media. You’ll also be able to strategize your candidate’s voter contact time around the information you dig up, and focus your campaign efforts in a geographically advantageous way.
Stay tuned; next post we’ll be discussing the actual mechanics of door-to-door and phone bank logistics during the canvassing process.
