Changes in technology, demographics, and media behavior are driving major changes in the way voters engage. Unfortunately, our campaigns are not able to keep up. Instead, they are relying on old tactics that just don’t work very any longer.
In previous cycles, the ways to reach voters were fairly straightforward. Today, they are highly fragmented and in constant change. This is making voter outreach much more complicated, well beyond the capabilities of most down-ballot campaigns.
Campaigns are short-term boom-or-bust operations. Win or lose, shortly after Election Day, most campaigns and advocacy orgs close up and move on. This model naturally leads the next set of campaigns to just follow the same plan as before.
There are few widespread efforts to measure and understand the tactics that work (or don’t). These efforts tend to be post-cycle and show that most current tactics don’t work. Also, with a rapidly changing media, what works this cycle may be less relevant next.
In 2008, around $10B was spent on all state and federal campaigns. By 2020, that total was $24B. Our response to rising complexity, so far, has been to focus on raising more and more money but with very little attention to improvement.
A disproportionate share of Democratic funding goes to the most visible campaigns. This leaves state and local orgs with very limited resources to run increasingly complicated campaigns.
The short-term nature of campaigns makes them not well-suited for running increasingly complicated campaigns. Yet, our approach relies on them to work through the challenges and a growing plethora of tools on their own.
Our mission is to fix our broken approach to campaigns and lay the groundwork to win on Election Day through better campaigns at every level.
We must start with the process of uncovering new tools and tactics that are having an impact and fostering those the use of these new tactics for the next wave of campaigns.
We have a multi-year plan to answer critical questions around voter behavior. We need to measure what tactics motivate a person to vote on election day. And that system must measure in real-time and in a constantly changing environment.
Next, we support state and local campaigns. First, we support them with funding. Second, we help them execute new promising tactics and test how these impact voter intent and actual behavior.
Knowledge isn’t enough. Campaigns are short-term and fast-paced. What’s needed in that environment is a system that guides proactively. We coordinate with progressive-only tech providers to incorporate best practices directly into the tools that campaigns use. This approach makes it much easier for any progressive campaign, of any size, with any level of sophistication, to run an optimized campaign.
Quite simply, our vision is innovative campaigns that win elections up and down the ballot. With the knowledge and proof of what works, we can stop spending ever-growing amounts on ineffective tactics. We can usher in an intelligent system that guides progressive organizations toward running hyper-effective campaigns and where real-time measurement and constant learning enable new tactics to be instantly adopted at every level.
Help us build better Progressive campaigns, support candidates, and help us win!
ProgressiveLabs is a Social Benefit Organization, dedicated to helping down-ballot Progressive organizations run effective, optimized campaigns that win on Election Day.