CEO Update: We’re really good at what we do, let me tell you why
We’ve identified the top 10 most competitive congressional districts in the country - all located in Arizona and Nevada. To reach more than half a million students across 26 key campuses within these districts, we still need to secure $2 million by September 12 – and you can help us close the gap.
The number one question I get at VoteAmerica is: what are our priority states? We don’t have any. At VoteAmerica, we are looking for the people who can vote in the greatest number of competitive races up and down the ballot. Which is why we have priority congressional districts instead. This cycle, the top 10 are in AZ and NV. Getting this right is important because it is how we maximize the impact of our voter mobilization efforts.
And we’ve been getting it right year after year. Why did we know in March of 2020 that Georgia was competitive when so few others were making investments in the state? For starters, because we always start by looking for the people who can vote in the greatest number of competitive races up and down the ballot. So we began by using data from the Cook Political Report, and we assigned points and a ranking to every race from state legislative races up to the presidential race. Here’s what we put together: this master 2020 program targeting spreadsheet (take a look, it’s pretty cool).
Every race received a certain number of points based on whether it was “safe,” “tossup,” etc. Then it was weighted by what type of race it was, gubernatorial, state house, etc. We ranked the congressional districts by totaling the points for all the races taking place within that district, with the highest point earners being the most competitive and highest priority. What we found was that all of Georgia’s 14 congressional districts were in our top 15 most competitive districts in 2020.
It was clear to us, Georgia was going to be one of the most important states we worked in. We knew this BEFORE the sprint to invest there – ahead of their Senate runoff elections, and before early voting started and it seemed more likely that the state would flip. From the very beginning, we saw Georgia as one of our most promising investment opportunities. When I told people how we were gaming out our targeting, they thought it was crazy (including some of you). I wasn’t intimidated by this. I’ve gambled on new and innovative ways to run programs, and I trusted the data our team gave me. We weren’t going to write off certain areas just because other groups didn’t see the possibilities. I’ve always been a fan of zigging while everyone else is zagging.
So where did we see our data-driven targeting pay off? Well first and foremost, we were right about Georgia. It was one of, if not the most competitive states this cycle both at the presidential level and for the Senate races. According to Pew Research, voter turnout in Georgia increased 8.6 percentage points in 2020. Obviously, I’m not saying VoteAmerica alone is responsible for this, but I am trying to show you how our data and targeting really did help us make informed decisions on where to focus our resources and how this paid off. We believe you can’t judge a district at face value alone (that’s why we have our 2024 targeting spreadsheet).
After seeing what an asset this targeting method was for us in 2020, we did it again for the 2022 midterms. In 2022, we found that the most competitive districts were in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, three states where we put considerable resources towards our mobilization programs. Below are some examples of our campus media program that ran at schools in these states.
Fast forward to 2024, and we’re continuing to use this method to inform our program targeting, with some slight improvements. With abortion access top of mind for so many, we started including whether a state has an abortion ballot measure. Abortion on the ballot significantly increases the competitiveness of a state over all, like Florida. While Florida may not be as competitive for the presidential election, there is a real opportunity to pass their abortion ballot measure and that deserves significant investment in voter mobilization. We’re also factoring in whether a state could end up with a trifecta (Governor and both state legislative chambers held by one party). This cycle, our targeting has AZ-01, AZ-06, NV-03, NV-01, and NV-04 as the top 5 most competitive districts in the country. The remaining districts in Arizona and Nevada round out the top 20 along with a few in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.
In the top 20 most competitive districts, there are 52 college campuses and over 774,000 students. These students could be the deciding factor in these incredibly competitive elections, and VoteAmerica’s campus program will help get them to the polls. VoteAmerica delivers comprehensive GOTV coverage on campus in the form of digital takeovers, premium print ads, out-of-home advertisements, campus email integrations, transit ads, and posters that mobilize students. We deliver informational messaging, a strategy backed by years of original research: telling students when to vote, where to go, what to bring, and who to contact if they need help. We’ve been running this exact program for 7 years now, and have produced as high as 8 point boosts in turnout, depending on the amount of investment per student. These 20 districts are just the start – a fully funded program would reach 6.3 million students across 519 campuses.
