For the 2018 elections, FLIP NC ran multiple forms of voter outreach targeting all left-leaning voters – from moderate to very left-leaning – in competitive legislative districts. These efforts were critical to flipping at least 3 districts in 2018. Following the election, we analyzed all of our voter outreach to determine what worked and with which voters – and what was not effective or worth our time going forward. Here’s what we found.
Overall, 91% of the voters we contacted voted. Impressive, right?
Well, it’s not quite as great as it sounds. First, voters who are already more likely to vote are also more likely to answer their doors and have conversations with canvassers. And second, a statewide blue wave in 2018 meant that voter turnout was going to increase whether we contacted voters or not; to determine what was effective and what wasn’t, we needed to measure our impact over and above the blue wave.
To isolate the impact of our voter outreach, we looked at the increase in midterm turnout from 2014 to 2018 among those we contacted and compared it with the increase in turnout among similar voters who we didn’t contact.
Canvassing
For the 2018 election, we knocked on 20,000 doors in two competitive NC House Districts (NC-H36 and NC-H37), both of which flipped from red to blue for the first time that year. We targeted all left-leaning voters (both registered Democrats and Independent/Unaffiliated voters) from moderate to very left-leaning and those ranging in likelihood to vote from very sporadic to fairly reliable.
We began canvassing a year and a half before the election – well before we had candidates or even final maps – and canvassed through Election Day. We used a “deep canvassing” conversational style, in which the script is only a loose guide for a conversation, highlighting key elements to hit and questions to ask but prioritizing making personal connections and letting conversations flow naturally over hitting each component of the script. We asked voters about the issues that mattered to them and talked with them about how the decisions our representatives in Raleigh make affect our day-to-day lives. We also made sure they knew that they lived in a very competitive district that could come down to a small number of votes.
Overall, we found that our canvassing was very effective at increasing voter turnout – but our impact wasn’t even across all voters.
We had the biggest influence on turnout among very sporadic left-leaning voters, and early canvassing – months before the election – was far more effective at getting these voters to the polls than the canvassing we did during the traditional GOTV (get-out-the-vote) period just before the election. In fact, the canvassing we did in 2017 – a full year before the election – was most effective at increasing turnout among the least-likely voters.
We also had a positive effect on more reliable left-leaning voters, although there is, of course, less room to increase turnout in a group that is already pretty likely to vote.
In contrast, we weren’t able to increase turnout among more moderate voters, who are also much less reliable Democratic voters when they do turn out. Anecdotally, we found during our conversations that these voters were more apathetic about politics, and they were apparently unmoved by our voter outreach in any form.
Text Banking
For 2018, we sent 250,000 text messages to voters in the 21 most competitive NC House districts as well as the parts of 11 competitive NC Senate districts that did not overlap with our NC House targets. We focused on left-leaning voters ranging from very sporadic to fairly reliable.
Like our canvassing campaign, our text banking campaign was very effective at turning out left-leaning voters, and, like canvassing, the impact was greatest among the most sporadic voters we texted. The messaging we used conveyed two things clearly: We named the stakes and named the candidate (e.g. “You live in a competitive district w/a great Dem candidate, [Candidate Name]. Your vote is critical!”).
Letter Writing
Our letter-writing campaign targeted similar voters to our canvassing and text-banking campaigns and featured similar messaging. Volunteers sent 7,000 hand-written letters, using our suggested script, to left-leaning voters in competitive legislative districts to let them know that they lived in a competitive district and to increase name recognition for the Democratic candidate. Letter writers also enclosed printed information sheets with county early voting sites and times.
Our post-election analysis found that, overall, our letter writing campaign was not effective at increasing voter turnout. Among Black voters, we actually saw a slight decrease in voting, although the observed effect was within the margin of error. At best, we can say that it had no effect. There was one group with which we saw a significant positive effect: white voters ages 65 to 85.
While we can only speculate as to what drove the potentially negative effect for Black voters, our best guess is that it might feel condescending for Black voters, who comprise the most reliable Democratic voting bloc, to receive hand-written letters from (often white) volunteers while campaign platforms and resources are typically focused on courting others.
Major Takeaways
Several common themes emerged in our analysis of FLIP NC’s 2018 voter outreach efforts. Our campaigns, which emphasized the stakes of the election and were not transactional, were very effective at turning out strong left-leaning Democrats and Independents, while having no impact on more moderate voters. We had an especially large influence on sporadic, left-leaning voters, for whom there was plenty of room to increase turnout. We also had a positive impact on more reliable voters, but the blue wave was largely responsible for bringing most of these voters out in 2018. On a more disappointing note, the positive effects of our letter-writing efforts were limited to older white voters and may actually have had a negative impact on Black voters.
Based on these findings, FLIP NC created a high-impact 2020 voter outreach plan designed to reach left-leaning, sporadic voters who may need additional information or support to vote, vote safely, and vote the full ballot this year.