How to avoid losing because of the Under Vote!

What is an undervote?  An undervote, as seen in the example below, is the vote of a voter which isn’t cast for any candidate in a race.

An undervote is someone who voted in other races but not in the race you are looking at.  This happens in all elections but really tends to happen in low vote turnout races in off years.  These elections might be for school board, city council or a tax levy.  You can see from our example that if all of the Undervotes had voted they could have easily changed the outcome of the election.

Why do people NOT vote in all the elections?  Don’t they have information about each race?  Don’t they know it is important?  Evidently not.  In most major elections, you have alignment information about the candidate’s party.  This is often a guide to those who want to have party affiliation as their guide.  However in these off year elections, you often lack a knowledge of party alignment.  You might have candidates who aren’t putting much money into the race.  Because of this there isn’t much information out there for voters to take a look at in order to see why they might vote for one candidate over another.

So what can be done?  A real estate friend of mine told me that they try to have 33 touches with their base of followers.  How can these candidates in low voter turnout and low budget races get more touches so people know enough to vote for them?   How can they get to 33 touches?  One good way is with an automated message where the  candidate calls asking for the vote with a reason they are running. Or an endorser with the message of why they are backing the candidate.  The leader of the local party offering an endorsement, and the website where interested voters can look up candidates or measures that have a recommendation for voting, can be a powerful aid to help voters find the alignment of the candidates or measures they might want to support.  An automated call can provide the TARGETING you want so that those who would vote against your candidate based upon the party alignment won’t  hear about that information.  Only those people you want to vote will tend to find out.

Getting touches with mailings, TV, and other means might be way too expensive.  But there is nothing that can beat an automated call with targeted “bang-for-the-buck”!

Action Solutions can help your candidate get the name identification needed to get voters to vote for them!  We can also help your group with the promotion of a measure or in fighting a measure in the same way.  We have many examples of stories where the flexibility, targeting and effectiveness of automated calls have helped win the day!  Automated calls (robocalls) work best with careful message development and good planning.  Call Jeff at 503-914-1082 or email jeff@actionsolutions.net