Political Campaign Management TipsRun for office or become a campaign manager

News media coverage of public opinion polls invariably spotlights the “horse race” aspect of the polls.  Who is ahead, which candidate is losing ground and which candidate is gaining.  If you are reading a poll as a political candidate or campaign manager you will, of course, be interested to know where your campaign stands with the voters, but your main focus will be in using the poll to determine what you need to do to win the election.

First, you want to identify what issues are likely to motivate people to vote for your candidate.   Voters who strongly agree or disagree with a particular position are much more likely to vote for or against a candidate based on her position on that issue.  You want to find those issues where there is not only support for your candidate’s position, but strong support.

Second, you want to identify items in your candidate’s biography that will appeal to voters in your district.  For example, a candidate who is known as a local political activist may have built a business and may also have an impressive record of community activities.  You might find that certain of these characteristics are worth highlighting while others are neutral or even negative.

Third, you want to take a careful look at the cross tabulations (also known as “cross tabs”) that break the voters down into groups based on political party, age and other differences.  Try to identify specific groups of voters you can target your message to.  This will help you to use your resources more efficiently and minimize the number of voters who receive advertising on issues where they disagree with your position.  Party affiliations usually show the clearest differences on the issues.  You may also find other variations in opinions by age,  gender,  income and community.

A new road might be viewed very favorably by voters in a community that will find it convenient for commuting, but voters in the area the road will run through may absolutely hate the fact that the new road will divide their community.  Couples with school age children may support a bond issue to build more schools, but senior citizens on fixed incomes may be strongly opposed if it means their taxes will increase.

A close look at the cross tabs will help you identify which voters you should target with your message.  However, keep in mind that the smaller the sample you are looking at, the less valid the results will be.  If you have an overall sample of 1,000 registered voters, your sample of Republican women under 25 years old could be fewer than 30 voters.  You can’t draw particularly strong conclusions from such a small sample.

When your campaign takes a poll, you can also look at verbatim responses that were volunteered by the people who were polled.  These can be very interesting.  First, they help you find out how the voters phrase a particular issue.  A pollster who asked voters to name their top issue might put “gang violence,” “graffiti taggers,” “we’re not safe on the streets” and “drug dealing” all under the heading of “Crime.”  If you look at the verbatim responses and find that a lot of people specifically mention a particular type of crime or use specific terminology, you may want to pick up on that in your advertising.

Reading the verbatim responses may also show you whether people have strong and specific opinions about a person or issue or whether they just came up with a quick answer because they had to respond to the pollster’s question. A poll in one campaign I managed against an incumbent city council member showed surprisingly specific results when voters were asked what they liked about the incumbent.  People mentioned specific problems the incumbent had solved for them.   You usually get much more vague responses like “she’s doing a good job” or “I think she’s honest.”  When a significant number of people who are polled know the incumbent and have had a problem resolved by her office, the candidates running against her are in a lot of trouble.  And, sure enough, the incumbent got over 50 percent of the vote in the primary against several opponents in that race.

If you’d like to examine some cross-tabs, you can view a PDF file of a recent poll by the Pew Research Center on gun control and abortion.  Results in your district may vary from those in this poll, but, if you haven’t really looked at detailed information in polling data before, you can learn from both the design and content of this poll.  If you would like to look at some other Pew Research Center polls and learn more about their methodology, you can find a list of recent polls here.

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