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CEO Update: All in.

Debra Cleaver

Debra Cleaver

— 3 min read
CEO Update: All in.
Photo by Parker Johnson / Unsplash

Today – November 5, 2024 – is Election Day. 

Let’s all take a deep breath and start with the essentials:

Registered? Fantastic. Here’s your Election Day game plan:

  1. Find your ballot drop box or polling place 
  2. Close this email
  3. Vote!

If, for any reason, you’re not registered: Find out if your state has same day voter registration and if so, where to go and what to bring. If you voted early, you can track your absentee and mail ballot.

 Remember, we probably won’t have a winner on election night. That’s okay. Keep calm and let the election officials count the votes. 

 Okay, now that that’s handled— I want to say THANK YOU.

 This election cycle, VoteAmerica hit a new record: $11.5M invested in research-driven, data-backed strategies to boost voter turnout. If you’re wondering how our $11.5M cuts through the noise in a multi-billion dollar ad market, here's a good place to start: we didn’t spend a single cent on TV ads.

Instead we put our dollars where they’d make the biggest impact: high-visibility billboards, college media, and even a flyover (yes, an airplane). VoteAmerica is goal-oriented and tactic-agnostic, which means test, adopt, and abandon tactics based on how effective they are. Here is what’s effective: straightforward, informative messaging that reaches millions of voters in the most competitive elections across the country through channels they can’t ignore.

Billboards:

We ran 811 billboards from El Paso to Flint to Philadelphia with one clear, powerful message: There will be record high voter turnout this year. Before a single billboard went up, we tested this message against a dozen others to determine that it boosted voting likelihood more than any other, hands down. Across 21 markets in 10 states, we added state-specific information on early voting and always, always the date of Election Day. You’d be surprised— shocked, even— how often that critical detail gets left out, despite the fact that the single best predictor of whether or not you vote is whether you know the date of the election.

College Media:

As long as our college media program drives a 2-8 point turnout boost, it will remain a cornerstone of our voter mobilization efforts. This year, we went big: $2M invested across campuses nationwide— from Arizona State and UNLV to East Carolina and Penn State— reaching nearly 1.5 million students. In all 7 states we targeted, student voters alone could surpass the 2020 presidential margin of victory.

 

We saturated 127 campuses with high-impact physical and digital ads across college-owned channels: full-page ads on the back page of campus newspapers, digital takeovers of campus websites, on-campus transit ads, screens, buses, billboards, prime spots in college emails, and posters blanketing campus. For all the reasons I’ve written in every email this cycle, there is simply no other mobilization strategy that is as nimble, as cost-effective, or as impactful.

This year, we also took our college media message airborne. On Saturday, November 2nd, we flew a banner above Michigan State’s packed football stadium, projecting our message to a crowd of 75,000.

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All of this was possible thanks to each of you, who recognize the value in data-driven tactics that are under-invested, scalable, and have shown to produce significant increases in turnout.

Your contributions fueled our biggest, boldest push yet, mobilizing millions of voters across the most competitive states and congressional districts in the country.

So now… We wait. Order takeout. Do a puzzle. Take a nap. 

Either way, know this: VoteAmerica went all in. We spent every dollar laser focused on making voting easier, increasing turnout, and strengthening our democracy. And we’re scaling our impact every cycle. No matter the outcome tonight, we’re in it for the long haul— backed by research, real-world results, and all of you.

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