Now that May’s two sets of elections are successfully out of the way, it’s time to move our campaigning activity onto summer surveys.

Why survey?

Surveys are a fantastic way to generate voter ID, campaign issues and contact with local communities. If they’re used properly, they will establish you and your local Lib Dem team as hard-working, locally focused and approachable. And with proper follow up they can drive your campaign and messages.

The more you know about your residents, the better you can be as a community campaigner/councillor. There’s a lot of useful information you can gain from surveys and record in Connect for future voter contact, e.g. writing target mail.

Five reasons to survey now:

1. Surveying helps us find local issues that people care about and it proves our hardworking local champions credentials.
2. You can collect vital voting intention and contact details to use later.
3. It’ll help us engage with local people. Instead of just telling them what we’re doing, we ask what matters to them.
4. Summer surveying means you’ll have your campaign messages and important reasons to vote for you nailed down early.
5. Surveys are a brilliant easy first canvass session for new volunteers. They’re relaxed sessions that give you an easy conversation starter on the doorstep.

What you can do after the survey

Re-visit the area with a petition – a great way to gather additional information and email addresses. Acting on an issue raised in the survey provides a great opportunity to reinforce your local connections on the doorstep. Alternatively, a ‘street letter’ that outlines the broad results of the survey could go to houses on all streets that were included – another very local piece of literature.

Use the data to work out your ‘target groups’ – the voting intention question, for example, will indicate whether the respondent should be included in letters designed for Labour- or Conservative-leaning voters. You could also use the answers to create issue-specific email mailing lists.

Publicise the outcome – don’t forget to issue a survey results press release to your local paper. The aspect to sell to the press is the depth of local feeling, so survey response numbers are key to making this work.

Publicise the results on social media – tweet individual stats one at a time, e.g. xx residents in favour of more crossing patrols. Make sure you include a link to a story about crossing patrols on your MyCouncillor site and add survey stats to your Facebook page where people who are interested would be able to like or comment.

ALDC summer survey templates

We have produced three new survey designs to help you get out onto the doorsteps without having to create your own. They’re all A4 z fold, available as PagePlus + PDF files and you can choose from two-colour, full-colour and mail-merged addressed versions. Make sure you localise your survey and include any big local issues that need to be addressed.

If you’re an ALDC member you can download the templates.

If you’re not yet an ALDC member, join us in order to download them. We want you to access the best advice, resources and training to aid you in your role as a campaigner and/or councillor. Join us before the end of June and receive a 50% discount from your first six months’ subs by using the code: SUMMER2019.

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ALDC: Liberal Democrat Councillors and Campaigners – we are a membership organisation that provides advice, resources and training to support our members with their campaigning to win elections. Find out more/join.

* ALDC is the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors and Campaigners