Don’t Wing It—How To Adapt To Suddenly Scrambled Voter Turnout Expectations

Suddenly, so many assumptions about this year's election seem scrambled. Remember the "double-haters?" That term has flown the coop in just the few weeks since Vice President Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. An election cycled that just in mid-July appeared destined for historically weak turnout, now seems likely to bring flocks of infrequent and low-information voters to the polls. In one major survey released this week, some groups of voters report double digit increases in their likelihood to vote.

Higher turnout means that it is imperative for every campaign to speak to low information voters, and you won't reach these audiences with traditional campaign tactics. This newsletter lays out how to reach these critical targets, who just a few weeks ago may not have even been in your campaign plan.

Three Ways To Get Egg On Your Face

Let's divide the surefire losing strategies for reaching low-information voters into three main categories.

First . . . the campaigns who ignore the issue.

This isn't so much a strategy as it is just sticking your head in the sand.

Second . . . the campaigns that carpet bomb every voter.

This strategy suffers from several obvious flaws. Most importantly, few campaigns have the resources to speak to every voter. But even if you're one of the very few campaigns with unlimited resources, speaking to high-information voters the same way you would speak to low-information voters is an eggs-traordinarily bad idea for countless reasons. Low-information voters tend to be much less partisan than high information voters, and often must be persuaded why they should continue to vote down the ballot past the presidential race. Conversely, high-information voters tend to be far more partisan, and typically need no persuasion about the impact of their vote. Birds of a feather may flock together, but comparing high-information and low- information voters is like comparing apples and chickens.

Third . . . the Rube Goldberg contraptions.

Finally, some campaigns acknowledge they must speak to low-information voters, but engineer complex paths for doing so. This often involves in some form the elusive "social media" solution, which as we recently discussed is like a chicken running around with its head cut off. Every step you introduce into the process, is another opportunity for mission failure. It's time to go cold turkey on social media advertising in politics.

Four Strategies To Rule The Roost

If you're looking for strategies to smoke the competition, here's 4 tactics to bedevil the other side.

🔱  Natural Language Processing

Through AI-based natural language processing, we build audiences based on the content they are consuming online. This real-time data is a powerful way to meet low-information voters where they are. These voters may not be consuming information about your candidate or ballot measure directly. But if they are researching colleges for their kids, it's a time to speak to them about your candidate's education policy. If they recently made a major purchase, you might focus on inflation. If they live near a recent shoplifting outbreak, it's a chance to speak to them about public safety.

When you find and connect with voters based on kitchen table issues, it's truly poultry in motion.

🔱  ACR Data

As we recently discussed, ACR or "Automatic Content Recognition" data is a powerful way to reach audiences based on the content they consume on TV. This tactic effectively stretches the power of natural language processing to the big screen, helping you build and target audiences based on local news, lifestyle, and other content that your targets are watching. Critically, this content includes your opponent's ads. Every time the opposition makes a peep, you can respond precisely to the voters who saw the content.

🔱  Geo-Fencing

With geo-fencing, we can tailor messages to low-information voters on a home-by-home basis. This allows us to build audiences based on countless demographic criteria including: primary language, age, gender, income, voting history, and virtually any other factors you can imagine. Geo-fencing lets you speak to a low-information voter in one way, and differently to a high-information voter who lives directly next door.

🔱  Tailored Creative Content

You can maximize each of the above strategies with tailored creative content designed for your specific audiences. Because the newest AI-tools drive production efficiencies, it is now practical to produce 4-5 ads for the price of what one ad cost in the last cycle.

3 Suggestions To Operationalize This Email

🔱  Reconsider your voter turnout assumptions in light of the recent changes in the presidential race. Low-information voters won't be chicken feed in November. If you fail to update your assumptions now, the chickens will soon come home to roost. 

🔱  "Peck" which tactics you will use to reach low-information voters this cycle. Don't chicken out. You might ruffle some feathers with your clients by poaching this subject now, but it's feather than being grilled after it's too late. And don't put all of your eggs in one basket. A combination of the above tactics will perform best.

🔱  Consider what different messages you will use with low-information and high-information voters in the coming weeks. What's good for the goose will not be good for the gander. And you won't get over it easy if you fail to plan now. 

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🔱  If you'd like to learn more about ways to reach low information voters, contact us today to chat.