Hello, is it voters you're looking for?

Oh, Lionel Ritchie, we still sing your praises and lyrics, even here in political communications land. Huge changes and elections are on the horizon for 2024 and Lionel’s question of who we are looking for resonates. Yes, Lionel, you guessed it, we are looking for voters.

In a Presidential Primary Election, there are substantially more voters and most of them will have no idea what is on the ballot after the President. “What we are looking" for are those voters who will vote, but really don’t pay attention. These are likely, but low-information voters. Most of the messaging and campaign effort will miss them if we are not strategic.

Moving low-information voters makes sense. The trick is in the targeting.

What is Dragonfly doing about targets for November? We assume direct mail and field programs will hit the virtually-guaranteed-to-vote universe. Dragonfly is going to focus on the gap of voters that vote sometimes in "off cycle," but always during a Presidential. Not only will they vote, but research continues to demonstrate that low-information voters are seven times more likely to be moved by our message.[1]

As an example, look at the Los Angeles Council District 14 race (we have no affiliation with any candidate or IE in the race, its just a good example).  The district just had a primary election, but only about 27% turned-out despite massive campaigns. The challenge here is connecting to the 100K voters that didn’t show up in March but did vote in the 2020 Presidential. Those are who "We are Looking For."

Campaigns load up likely universes, targeting the voters for November, but a lot of voters have no idea what is going on, especially in local races.

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Dragonfly will focus on low-information, but likely voters with atypical digital communications.  There are a million different ways to deliver an ad to someone digitally, but for this subgroup, we might focus on hitting them with messages outside of the regular path. For example, obtaining consumer data and connecting those voters with messaging outside of where they would expect.

The visceral reaction is to hit voters on news and similar information sources because in the past, we assumed that is where people received their information. Dragonfly clients have polling that suggests that less than 40% of voters get information about voting from local news outlets. So, let's not waste money and time connecting with people where they don't receive information.

In order to communicate with these folks, we assume (1) they are not motivated by campaign mail; (2) probably don’t rely on the local news for information; (3) are not super engaged in local politics. This particular subset of voters are already not engaged locally, so why deliver to them in a place they already don’t pay attention?

The suggestion might seem risky, but time after time, low-information voters are open to being moved, it’s just a matter of connecting them with the message in a place they don’t expect it.[2] Make the impression outside of the normal, because they simply don’t see political advertising like more likely voters and the will be moved by new information.

The Possible Path:

• Pull PDI data for past election turnout

• Compare with November 2020 turnout

• Do a count report to detect a demographic or geographic patterns - age/propensity

• Create a model that will help predict the difference between an UNDECIDED voter and a voter that CAN persuaded.

• Build a consensus message that is brief but tells a story (read this post)

• Set digital buy targets + supplement with consumer data

• Model persuasive voters and their information sources

• Connect your PDI model to your digital buy

• Buy and test your ads for CTR + engagement

• Refine

This is the first step to making a new effort to connect with the low-hanging fruit, the low-information voters whom we know can be moved from political advertising, but are not looking at political information the way high-information voters do.

How?

This won't be an easy task and will take math, spreadsheets and a media consultant to help target the digital buy to new areas. Think apps, non-newsy webpages, think outside the "used-to-do-it" this way model.

We believe there are successes waiting to happen if we can set the right targets and deliver meaningful stories to them about the candidates and measures we work on.

Dragonfly is committed to moving the ball. The data is there, it just has be combed through.

[1] Malchow, H. (2023). Reinventing political advertising. Self Published

[2] Malchow, H. (2023). Reinventing political advertising. Self Published