Guest Column: Only A Few Voters Are Actually ‘In Play’
SYRACUSE – In the last week of every campaign, every candidate says, “Whatever you do, make sure you vote.” They have to say this. The truth is, the establishment would prefer that new and infrequent voters didn’t vote in the fall if they didn’t vote in the spring.
You might remember the Obama-Romney election when someone at a Romney event recorded the Republican candidate describing the 47-47-6 reality: 47 percent will vote Republican for President no matter what. 47 percent will vote Democrat for President no matter what. Six percent of the voters are at play. You will also remember that the press and the Democrats denounced Romney for saying this. What you might not remember is that the Republican organization didn’t come to his defense. That’s because the 47-47-6 reality is in both parties’ best interest, but they don’t want you to know it.
Your standard general election campaign, even down to the state legislature level, looks like this: You get your party’s election database. You pull out every voter who voted in your party’s primary in at least one of two of the last primaries and voted in both of the last two fall elections. You phone them. You send mail to them. You send them messages on social media. You ring their doorbell. You target these first. Why? Because you know they will vote, and it’s very likely they will vote for you. You need to make sure they are still breathing and can get to the polls. Your cost-per-vote is lowest with this group. Spend a quarter of your money going after these.
You then do the same thing for voters who voted in one of the last two fall elections and at least one of your party’s last two primaries. There are a lot more of these. They are a little harder to reach, and it takes more convincing to be sure they will vote for you. A fake “phone poll” to identify the most available of these is often a good idea. This is your second-lowest cost-per-vote. Spend about half of your money going after these.
Search the first two groups for common traits, use the most reliably-found package of traits to search the remaining November voters, who don’t vote in the spring. Abortion and gun control views are usually among the top traits. Spend about a fifth of your money going after these. Frugal campaigns will watch the county clerk’s lists to see if these people request an absentee ballot, and reach out to them immediately thereafter. These people have a lower cost-per-vote too because they identified themselves as “in play” when asking for the ballot. The non-absentee voters in this group become the target of the GOTV campaign.
Now you’ve reached that 47 percent of voters, and about 25 percent of the population.
You can filter out your opponent’s likely voters the same way that you found yours. Leftover is that 6 percent, the uncommitted voters, mixed in among 50 percent of the population. Spending money to talk to everyone in this group means it is likely that 84 percent of the money will be wasted. That’s just not cost-effective. It is much more effective to take that little bit of money and invest it back into your already-identified voters, or actions to discourage your opponent’s voters.
If you haven’t voted before, and your first vote would be in November, each party knows they didn’t talk to you ahead of the election. In their mind, then, it is a fifty-fifty crapshoot at best for whom you will vote, and the odds only go downhill. Each party would prefer, then, that you just stayed home.
That’s what’s good for them. It isn’t necessarily what’s good for you.