Tag Archives: gotv

Michael Taylor

The future of telling?

By Michael Taylor | Wed 24th July 2024 - 11:55 am

I sat for an hour at a polling station in Camborne as part of my very long day on July 4th. I was struck by the change in voters’ habits. Whereas in the past they would bring their polling cards with them, one unexpected side effect of the new rules on voter ID has brought about is that they no longer do.

Now they bring ID with them.

I found it very difficult to get polling numbers at all. It was only possible – and then only in about 30% of cases – to get numbers by being quite pushy in asking voters to get their number from the poll clerk and give it to me on the way out. Those who know me well will have little doubt about my ability to be downright pushy, but I very much doubt that this is the right way to endear us to voters.

Now you can argue that telling isn’t really about the numbers but about being there, but we certainly have relied on telling to reduce our necessity to knock up. Indeed, that’s often how I used to sell telling to would be tellers. Asking people to go and stand in the polling station to be seen is, in my view, a much harder sell.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 15 Comments
ALDC

Getting out the vote – advice from ALDC

By ALDC | Fri 26th April 2019 - 3:59 pm

After we’ve convinced people to support our cause and collected data on who our likely supporters are, we have one stage left to get our best result in an election – Get Out The Vote (GOTV).

How can we use our data to work out our tactics for polling day and the run up to it?

Quite simply: we need to remind people who are likely to support us to use their vote.

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Caron Lindsay

New Get out the vote tactics in the US: Vote, or we’ll be interested in why you didn’t

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 2nd November 2014 - 8:55 am

GOTV, that final part of an election campaign where you make sure that all your supporters actually get themselves to the polls, is vital. Elections can be won or lost by the effectiveness of your GOTV operation. It’s all about giving them a reason to get down the polling station. It could be out of a genuine desire to see your fantastic candidate elected. It could be because you really don’t want to let the other one in.

Everyone will be familiar with the “It’s a two horse race, every vote will count” and the breathless “it’s too close to call, vote before 10pm or the Daleks will win” messages. Ok, I made the last one up. But nobody would ever dream of suggesting a direct consequence for the voters themselves. Until now.

Brooklyn musician Jonathan Coulton tweeted a picture of a letter he got purporting to be from the New York State Democrats today:

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

Opinion: Get your voters out electronically

By Mark Pack | Tue 13th May 2014 - 10:25 am

HTC HD7 8It’s not a surprise to say far more people use social media now than when I first learnt political campaigning because Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the whole lot didn’t even exist back then. Nor even did (glory be, you might think) Internet Explorer. Back when a beta version of Netscape was cutting edge, the scope for successful online political campaigning was tiny compared to now, when there are more people on the electoral register who use social media than will vote next week.

But the story of the last few decades isn’t just about the rise of the online world. It’s also about the increasing problems with traditional ways of communicating with voters on the ground. Fewer phone numbers are in the phone book; fewer households have someone in when you call round; and fewer properties have accessible individual letterboxes.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 2 Comments
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