Get Out The Vote

It’s 6am on the morning of your election and it is now or never in terms of your get out the vote strategy. You have worked hard over the past couple of months in assembling your team, setting up your social media profiles, doing political debates, putting together campaign messaging, canvassing and so on. Now, however, is crunch time! This is where all the voter identification work you and your team did needs to come into focus and pay dividends in terms of votes cast.

It is a sad reality that many people do not turn out to vote on election day, despite having a real stake in the outcome of the election. Get out the vote for those people who have said they will vote for you, is your responsibility.

Getting out the vote strategy

Let’s break it down a bit here. First of all, let’s take a look at your get out the vote (GOTV) strategy. Day 1 of your campaign you will have gotten hold of a voter file or an electoral register. This database forms the basis of your outreach work to voters, either face-to-face or digitally. Whether you are sending emails, phone-banking or canvassing, what you are really doing is trying to identify if someone is a possible voter for you. If they are then you will want to get them to commit to a ‘voting plan’. A set idea of what they are going to do on election day to get to the polls. You might help them by providing them with transport or a reminder call on the day but either way, getting them to commit to the voting plan is proven to increase turnout rate and should be a cornerstone of your GOTV strategy.

If voters are undecided about coming out to vote for you, your mission is to convince them to do so. If your team have not been able to do that by the week before election day, you should not have that person as a target for GOTV. Make sure to use political campaign software to help in your efforts to identify the right people to target.

In the run up to election day, the targeted list of voters that have pledged to vote for you should be sent direct emails to encourage them to meet their voting plan. On election day itself the GOTV list should be contacted again, either by phone or in person. Poll striking can also be done, whereby your team stand outside polling stations and mark off your pledged voters as they come in to vote (assuming they can recognize them somehow). This will then give an updated list of those who haven’t yet voted, to the GOTV coordinator and they can follow up to try to get them all to the polls.

Getting out the vote is what so much of your campaign efforts have been directed at and having your team well drilled in advance, having functioning communication channels like email and phone, will really pay dividends for your final tally.

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