By Charlie Lindauer
Have you ever felt like your campaign is slipping into a catastrophic vortex because you cannot pinpoint the right group? You know that the ‘undecideds' will determine the outcome, but you are unable to find them.
Every election is ultimately determined by your ability to locate and influence the swing vote your way and to get those on your side to the polls. Like the real estate aphorism ‘location, location, location,' job one is finding the voters you need to put the election into the win column.
Devoting time to voter targeting, however, can be a challenging task if the resources and methods are unknown. Fortunately there are numerous processes available to you that are tried and tested, including the use of voter propensity maps.
Targeting is used for directing resources for mailings, phone calls, GOTV efforts, advertising, and candidate visits. To be successful in today's campaigns, one must rely upon sophisticated targeting tools. Simply identifying concentrations of democrats and republicans is not good enough; detailed targeting is paramount.
Evidence of this is the fact that ‘NASCAR dads' and ‘soccer moms' are a part of the political lexicon. This task of detailed targeting, however, can be challenging due to limited human, temporal, and financial resources.
One effective and successfully proven method of identification is to create a voter propensity map. A profile of voter propensity indicates which way a group of voters is leaning or likely to vote based upon historical election performance, census attributes, and/or polling. Propensity profile mapping gives the campaign a birds-eye view of the district by illustrating which precincts or neighborhoods have a propensity to vote for specific issues and candidates.
Early in your campaign after defining your support group, propensity maps should be created and could be updated throughout the campaign as the race evolves. The types of voter propensity maps are endless. The following are just a few examples of voter propensity that one could map: moderates, pro-labor, green friendly, historic apathy, welfare families, and progressive voters.
Voter propensity, perhaps best measured as an index, is more detailed than just party registration statistics. A voter propensity index measures multiple observances that have voter commonality (i.e., election results, survey responses, demographic characteristics) and calculates a value to indicate the strength or propensity of a voting group.
All of the variables collectively measured in the index must share the same base geography (ex. voter precinct, ZIP code, block group). Some indices are calculated by taking the average of the variables examined, others are simply a total of the variables measured. More sophisticated voter indices may include variables that have been multiplied by a weighted measure to give importance of one variable over another. How one derives a propensity index should be based upon the target group and the data available.
The Right Tool
Voter propensity maps can be created using a variety of ‘off-the-shelf' desktop geographic information systems (GIS). The mapping applications are designed to manage multiple sets of tabular and spatial data in a single system. By using a GIS's sophisticated querying and statistical tools, campaigns are able to generate voter propensity profiles.
Where is the Data?
Hitting your county's voter registrar office is a great start. The clerk should have on file historical voter results, party registration, and turnout statistics. Another place for valuable data is the US census bureau. The agency's online website (www.census.gov) will have attributes for census tract, block group and block levels. The census is ideal for targeting a specific ethnic group, income, and household types.
You may also have valuable data that you have collected throughout your years of political research ‘sitting around' your office in file cabinets and backed up on computer disks. This data may have come from campaigns of yesteryear that involved polling, campaign walking or voter files.
Voter Propensity Maps In Action
Several political specialists have harnessed the power of using voter propensity maps for targeting voters in a campaign. Marc O'Hara, president of Precision Politics, had an interesting approach for targeting progressive voters in San Francisco. He collectively examined voter support in elections of selected liberal candidates and propositions over a four-year period.
Three progressive-platform candidates (including Tom Ammiano, an openly gay mayoral candidate) and three progressive propositions were analyzed at the voter precinct level. O'Hara created a progressive voter performance index based upon voter support for each race. An initial query was performed in a GIS that filtered precincts that met threshold criteria for at least five of the six selected races. Next, the filtered precincts were classified based upon average voter support and assigned progressive categories based upon the ranges: Proven Progressive, Likely Progressive, Neutral, Likely Status Quo, and Proven Status Quo.
The voter precincts were assigned colors for each precinct category (see Fig. A). As a result, dramatic and clear spatial patterns jumped out of the San Francisco landscape. The map clearly illustrated concentrations of targeted progressive voters (green precincts), which turned out to be a great asset to the campaign. According to O'Hara, a true believer in the mapping technology, ‘The maps quickly aid strategic-decision making. They were the difference in a tight, come-from-behind victory.'
Another example of voter propensity mapping includes David Binder Research's voter guidebook of San Francisco. The compendium includes a series of 17 voter propensity maps broken down by the city's neighborhoods. His propensity profiles incorporated not only census data and voter statistics, but also internal polling data.
The guidebook, used by candidates, strategists, lobbyist, and interested citizens, shows which neighborhoods are likely to support specific types of candidates (democrats, republicans, green party, African-American, gays/lesbians, Latino, and Asian) and propositions (bond measures, tough-on crime, homeless, environment, pro-labor, pro-diversity, stadiums, progressive taxing, and pro-tenant measures).
The maps allowed readers to understand the intensity of public opinion at a micro level. When the maps were scanned, the reader could immediately identify neighborhoods that are base supporters (or opponents) and target swing neighborhoods. According to Binder, ‘The maps provided the reader an understanding of the political make-up of a very diverse and complex population.'
Using voter propensity maps will give your next campaign untapped strength. The propensity maps will provide a quick, accurate, and unique method for targeting voters. It is probable that your opponent is aware of these tools and is not waiting around for the results to pour in, hoping for a victory. Action, influence, and the right tools are all components of successful, sophisticated campaigns. Using propensity maps strategically will not leave you wondering, ‘What happened?' the day after the campaign.
Charlie Lindauer is the president of SpatiaLogic which
specializes in political mapping and geographic
information services.
You can reach him at Click here to contact this Author.
