Political campaigning tactics for 2021… and beyond?

Today's blog is about getting people out to vote... while we're all staying in.

I’ll be looking at some strong trends from last year’s American elections, and helping you understand why they worked and how you can apply them to your campaigns. For as long as I’ve worked in politics, most of Europe has looked towards campaigning trends in the US. Smart, agile campaigners look at how the Americans are innovating, trial the strategies in their own countries and adopt what works in their cultural context (this is going to be a reoccurring theme on my blog over the next few months). This year, COVID and social distancing will continue to change and challenge our conventional wisdom. It’s time to get proactive, not reactive about the unusual social landscape for campaigning in 2021.

Increase voter participation during COVID 

While the US elections last year saw record high turnout during early voting, that’s not the story everywhere. According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), turnout was down in two thirds of all national elections and referendums, and down in three quarters of all sub-elections. Some countries postponed elections, others went ahead as planned or with some changes. The picture for this year’s elections is similar. 

Lacking clarity until later in the year, campaigners need to step up and help voters be prepared for anything. There are two elements of voter participation to consider: getting them registered, and having them cast their ballots. 

First, get as many supporters as possible to register for postal voting, or early voting if available. This especially holds true if your target segments are older, and therefore more likely to be isolating due to the COVID crisis. 

Second, once they’ve registered, help them make a concrete plan to vote. This is crucial to create a structured way of getting supporters to cast their ballots. Making plans to vote is now a commonplace tactic in most American elections, and there’s a good reason why. It’s a strategy that can increase turnout between 4 and 9%. I’ve only seen it used a handful of times this side of the pond, but this year in particular it could be the powerful strategy we need to help eliminate pre-election confusion and drive voter turnout.

Through a conversation or an online survey, ask your voters to consider the specifics of their voting plan. Where and when will they cast their ballot? How, and with whom, will they get there on the day? Or is a postal vote a better choice? Campaigns can even use digital tools to send reminder emails to voters with their own personalised plans to vote, making the experience personal and meaningful.

Get smart about socially-distanced canvassing

For more than a decade, it’s been impossible to talk about getting out the vote in the US and UK without also talking about the impact of door-to-door canvassing. Now, suddenly, street stalls, canvassing and in-person events (which could even include leafleting) are out. 

In their book Get Out The Vote, world-renowned experts Donald P. Green and Alan S. Geber show that phone canvassing by volunteers can be almost as effective as door-to-door canvassing. They estimate that door-to-door canvassing by volunteers costs $33 per vote gained, while phone canvassing costs $36 per vote. So it makes sense that many campaigns are now looking to ramp up their phone canvassing efforts.

Phone canvassing is not without its challenges. It’s been increasingly hard to reach voters as they switch from landlines to mobile phones. No longer can you simply open up the local phonebook or the electoral roll and find the phone numbers you need to contact voters in the most marginal areas. Reliance on mobile phones also makes it harder to make educated guesses as to the location of the voter. You might waste time calling people who no longer vote in the area you’re targeting. Similarly, technology has made it easier to screen calls—in some countries, people can even enrol in nuisance prevention programmes that make it illegal to phone them.

On the volunteer side, it can be hard to get novice canvassers to make phone calls, even from the comfort of their own home. For most people, making phone calls to strangers is a scary thing. It’s also incredibly hard to train them and to conduct proper quality controls for new volunteers working from home.

So if we can’t rely on breadth in our phone canvassing, how about depth? What if we spent more time and effort investing in both volunteers and potential voters?

Joint phone call evenings over Zoom could help create some of the camaraderie you get during an in-person phonebank. New volunteers could shadow experienced callers to learn the ropes and receive individualised coaching. Alternatively, it’s not uncommon for commercial phone software providers to provide inbuilt coaching features, that allow an experienced coach to guide someone new through the process. Devoting time to coaching new volunteers and building camaraderie is the kind of strategy that could pay off not just when we’re all social distancing, but in your future campaigns. 

Deep phone canvassing is also starting to gain momentum. A group called People’s Action gained global coverage with their research results during last year’s US elections. Deep phone canvassing consists of deep, empathetic phone calls to undecided voters. Callers focus on listening rather than on pure data collection. The callers undertake fewer calls; just one call with a swing voter will often take up to thirty minutes. This strategy is hard to scale, but it could be easily deployed and highly effective in very marginal or special elections. 

Reach out to people who are less comfortable online—safely

We’ve all had to transition more online over the past year, and I even recommended in my last post that campaigners beef up their digital strategies. Still, we should remember that not everyone finds it easy to connect over the internet. 

Door-to-door canvassing, direct mail or blanket drop leaflets were common pre-pandemic options to target these segments. However, cost and data quality often prevent campaigns from doing direct mail, especially in countries where no official voter register exists. And, a blanket drop of leaflets in key geographical areas is also expensive, with no guarantee that volunteers will be allowed to do that work with pandemic restrictions in play. Most campaigns are keen to use text messaging, but few have the consent to text most voters directly as collecting these consents has not been a priority over the last few years. There is a growing demand for SMS-based campaigning in Europe, and yet the cost is a big barrier to entry in many markets.

For economic, practical or emotional reasons, many people and demographics are simply more responsive to a peer-to-peer approach. Especially right now, when people are really feeling isolated and seeking meaningful connection, campaigns can focus on having friends, family or neighbours reach out to get the message across. 

Many campaign professionals have been talking about relational organising for years. My friend and campaign consultant Alex Wilks asked me on a forthcoming episode of his podcast, is this the year in which it becomes mainstream? I can’t predict the future, but I think it should be.

Relational organising is when a volunteer reaches out to someone they already know—a friend, coworker, neighbour or family member—in order to persuade them to support their cause, volunteer or vote. Meeting at home or out and about (nearly impossible due to COVID, although what an interesting concept to explore on Zoom), making a phone call to a grandparent or sharing the link to a petition on your social media account, all count as relational organising. When COVID has taken many in-person options off the table, this approach is even more crucial in order to reach all segments of society. 

For years, I’ve been advising every campaign I’ve worked with to try relational organising. Getting people together in their own communities, talking to people they know, like and trust, is the most effective way of changing minds and increasing turnout. While campaigns in Europe aren’t able to use the same peer-to-peer tools due to advanced privacy legislation, they’re still able to encourage supporters to talk to their own local networks.

So what have we learned?

Build deeper relationships and community with your core supporters, invest in your volunteers, and encourage informal peer-to-peer engagement. Use digital tools to connect safely, but don’t forget who might be left behind by that approach. Let voters know you’re there for them by helping them get registered and making a plan, so that they show up for you on election day.