Targeted Universes: How do you find yours?

Now that you know how important mail and walking is you need to come up with a universe of voters to mail and walk to.

I remember one potential client that was running for elected office for the first time that sat down with me for about 2 hours and picked my brain about how to campaign in a local city council race. I wasn’t busy that day and he was an acquaintance so I gave him the whole nine yards of what I know. I didn’t hear from him in several weeks until one day I was driving down the street and saw him knocking on doors and campaigning. I parked my car to observe and noticed he didn’t have any list of voters with him. I watched a little longer and realized he was knocking on every door in the district and passing out his campaign business card.

What was he doing wrong? First, he didn’t listen to me. Second, he did not buy from a political list vendor a list of registered voters that show there voting history so he could determine what households to go to that are likely to vote in his off year race. The voter turnout in this race historically has been around 20% of the registered voters. At best, only one in ten doors he knocked on had a chronic voter inside that never missed an election. Let me explain in rough numbers.

Total Population of District: 20,000 Individuals / 15,000 Households
Total Registered Voters: 9,000 Individuals / 7,000 Households
Voter Turnout for 11/98 Presidential Election: 5,400 Individuals / 4,000 Households
Voter Turnout for 4/97 City Council Election: 1,800 Individuals/ 1,500 Households

Look at all the time my potential client was wasting. Which would you like to do? Knock on 15,000 doors or 1,500 doors?

The same goes when first time candidates want to stand in front of the local super market and pass out campaign brochures or put fliers on all the car windshields in the district. This is only effective if you’re running for student body president. Probably only 5% of the material your passing out this way is getting into the hands of a key voter.

Of course, if your election is held during the presidential or primary elections, you’ll have to increase your campaign universe accordingly.

The way you come up with a universe is by first finding out what the turnout has been in previous election for this race. You find this out by calling the city clerk office. Lets say the turnouts have average about 22%, and there is no big issue that will probably bring out more voters to this election. Then your overall universe should be around 32%. You always want to mail and walk to a bit more potential voters then what has been the case in the past to allow for a cushion.

Below, are some examples of overall universes to choose from:

Election Date	Universe Select
Off Year or Odd Month	Voted 11/98 and also voter in one out of three off year or odd month elections.
Major Primary	Voted any of the last 2 major primaries.
Presidential	Voted any of the last 2 presidential elections or a new registered voter.

These are very basic selects. In fact, the universe select combination of different turnouts to choose from is almost endless. But you can get help from the political list vendor who does this everyday. Ask him or her for a basic count sheet for your race and advice on what your universe should be for your race. They can also fax you a list of all the different counts and selects to choose from like: total voters, total democrats, republicans and other parties, gender break downs, age groupings, absentee voting turnouts, ethnic surname totals like Spanish, Asian, Jewish, Greek, Armenian, and voter history.

But be careful not to drive the list vendor crazy by asking him to pull all the different possible count selects your brilliant mind has come up with. You just need to know who to mail to without missing a bunch a voters and who not to mail to so you don’t waste your money. The basic selects above are a guide and your list vendor can help you fine-tune it.

More: Special Targeted Universes

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