Webinar Recap: Well-Being Break with Professor Mark Thurston
Political consultants are of course very busy during an election cycle, and effective stress management is key to staying sharp. AAPC’s most recent webinar featured an expert on mindfulness and well-being who discussed stress management strategies and ways in which AAPC members, and everyone for that matter, can find some relief.
Check out the key lessons from the webinar below, and listen to the recording for even more expert insights.
This webinar has been archived for playback. AAPC members can click here to view all webinar archives.
Key Lessons from the Webinar
- Re-connect with values and meaning: Feeling a sense of meaning and impact in our lives can be very rewarding, and helps individuals to balance stress. If you are feeling stressed in areas that are not meaningful to you, your stress can oftentimes feel far too overwhelming. However, when stress arises in areas of your life that are meaningful, you are more likely to view that stress as a challenge rather than a problem. Re-connect with the areas of your life that make you feel the most fulfilled. Individuals who have a higher sense of meaning in their life often are healthier and happier.
- Cultivating Self-Care: Self-care can be divided into two main categories, wellness and well-being. Wellness includes basic health concepts like staying hydrated, getting enough sleep, exercising and eating well. While these may seem simple or obvious, they can have major effects on your stress management. Well-being includes practices like mindfulness practices and meditation. To get started, choose a couple of the self-care practices mentioned here and focus on them for a week. At the end of the week, evaluate how they have helped you.
- Re-Framing “Stress”: Stress doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Think of the motivation you feel when a big deadline is coming up. Under a bit of pressure, or stress, you often end up doing your best work. Re-frame your idea of stress by attempting to regain your agency over it. Rather than allowing stressing to overwhelm you, work on controlling how you manage your stress and take a proactive approach.
Access the full recording to hear additional tips from our panelists.
Early Voting and GOTV Down the Stretch
The AAPC recently caught up with Danielle Cendejas, Senior Vice President, The Strategy Group, Mark Harris, Partner, Coldspark, and Hunter Hawkins, Digital Director of Policy & Advocacy, The Lukens Company, to find out how the anticipated surge in early voting this cycle is affecting their campaign work.
What are you doing / what’s your plan around turnout for early voting?
Cendejas: I do most of my work in California, and every voter will be receiving a ballot this election. We anticipate many voters, who usually wait to vote close to or on Election Day, will be returning their ballots almost as soon as they receive it. Our team has adjusted our mail schedules and pushed our candidates to ramp up their fundraising efforts to ensure we reach those voters who want to make their decisions earlier. We will also closely monitor ballot receipt data made so we can adjust our mail files, digital ads, and field activities to maximize our client’s resources.
Harris: Our plan for turnout uses the traditional fundamentals of looking at our low turnout voters and reaching them at their doors, on the phones, online, and in the mail to get them out. The difference is this year we have more options to get them to vote by mail in addition to just election day. As people vote each day we can strike them from our list and focus on those who have not. It’s the same principles but on a massive scale.
Hawkins: A good number of our clients have been focused on early voting and voting by mail, which seems to be a bit higher than normal. Obviously with COVID still playing a huge role in this, we have had to recalibrate a bit and rework our schedule. Essentially all of our digital ad calendars had to shift back 2-3 weeks from what we thought we would find when the year started. Our creative has focused significantly more on early voting, and redirecting voters to their state’s early voting websites and registrations. GOTV has essentially turned from a 72 hour push, to a month long push in many states.
What are you going to do the week before the election to GOTV?
Cendejas: For clients, we will be very focused on helping update universes, provide support for organic social media posts, and continue helping set up online phone and text banks until the polls close.
Hawkins: We all know the major role that Facebook has played in the last election, but we have been forced to evolve given the restrictions in place for 2020. Therefore, we switched our focus on display, videos, OTT, CTV, texting, etc. to help pull our candidates over the finish line. As strange as it sounds coming from the digital side, our mail shop has been playing a leading role in the upcoming GOTV since a large number of people in our country are most likely at home, looking at one of their many screens. That lends itself to mail and videos quite nicely.
How is Facebook’s ban on new political ads the week before the election impacting your strategy?
Cendejas: It forces us to be more intentional with placing the buy. Many of our down-ballot candidates have limited budgets and have to choose where they spend their money. The new deadline means we’ll likely be spending less money on Facebook and more on a self-service digital ads platform, text messaging, or door hangers. We’ll also ask our supporters to post on their accounts about the candidate to spread the word.
Harris: It means planning in advance on what creative we MIGHT want to run and trying to get those prepared. This is an incredibly dumb move by Facebook that ultimately will only hurt underfunded and underdog campaigns. Oftentimes, late Facebook creative is made to respond to false attacks elsewhere. We won’t be able to use that tool this year.
Hawkins: In a strange way, our strategy has not had significant edits to it because of the new ban. The only real thing it’s doing is shifting up our creative date one week, so instead of pushing live in the last 48-72 hours before election day, we are pushing our ads live 9+ days ahead of time.
Webinar Recap: Message Deliverability: Ensuring Your P2P Text Messages Make it to Every Voter
Peer to peer texting is perhaps the quickest and most effective way to get your message to voters. But, it doesn’t matter what you say or how many people you text, if your message never reaches them.
Message deliverability is a common struggle and can cost campaigns money and votes. During AAPC’s latest webinar, experts from Text Request discussed how to solve your message deliverability problems. They covered why texting works so well for campaigns, what happens behind the scenes once a text is sent, how to ensure messages are delivered at scale (and stay compliant), and what you can do to improve campaign performance starting today.
Check out the key lessons from the webinar below, and listen to the recording for even more expert insights.
This webinar has been archived for playback. AAPC members can click here to view all webinar archives.
Key Lessons from the Webinar
- Why should your campaign use texting: 99% of all texts are read by the recipient. Comparatively, only 5% of phone calls are answered and 15% of emails read. A voter’s phone is almost always within arm’s reach, so sending them a text message is a great way to ensure that they see your message. Additionally, text messaging sees a 40%+ response rate.
- Compliance: The political world is one of the only industries that enables you to text a non-opted in individual. However, there are rules you have to follow. You cannot use an auto-dialer – which means you have to hit send on every single message. This allows you to have a conversation and create a peer-to-peer relationship with the recipient. You also must include an opt-out message in the first text you send to an individual in order to stay compliant.
- Ensuring your message is delivered: Sometimes, the contents of the message itself might flag the message and cause it to not be delivered. This can happen if you are using a lot of caps, symbols ($,!!!), or sending very long messages. Email addresses and link-shorteners can also cause flags to fly. Cleaning your list and distributed sending can help to ensure that your messages are delivered.
Access the full recording to hear additional tips from our panelists.
Five Digital Lessons for Early Voting and GOTV
For several years now, early voting has decided the outcome of elections across the country before the ballots even begin to be counted from Election Day. Early voting increased from 24.9 million to 57.2 million voters from 2004 to 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. In the 2016 presidential election, 16 states reported 50 percent or more of votes cast early.
The difference between this election and previous elections is more people are interested in voting early than ever before. With COVID-19 changing the way we go about daily lives, state safety guidelines have drastically altered the way clients are driving voter turnout. For some campaigns, ground operations are canceled, fundraising has been difficult, and traditional person-to-person interactions relied on by political campaigns have been called off.
Don’t panic! From a digital perspective, the principles of Get Out The Vote (GOTV) before and during early voting remain the same. With a few exceptions, such as new Facebook regulations.
Now more than ever, digital GOTV remains a powerful tool to identify your voters and drive turnout. In the ever-changing landscape of social media advertising, digital provides candidates and campaigns the means to communicate directly and effectively with voters.
With less than 40 days to go until Election Day, here are five core principles that you should implement in your digital strategy to maximize your GOTV efforts online.
Lesson 1: Be Resourceful
For some voters, finding a polling location can be complicated and government websites can be difficult to navigate. So, be a resource and make it easy for voters. Direct them to accurate information from your website or social media platforms. Create ads with helpful calls-to-action such as “Find the closest polling location to you,” “Your early voting and Election Day polling locations are different,” or “View your sample ballot before going to the polls.” Don’t assume that people know even some of the simple things related to voting.
Lesson 2: Be Responsive
A real-time response online can be a crucial X-factor for your campaign. More consumers (and voters) than ever turn to social media platforms like Facebook as their go-to resource for questions, inquiries, and information. With this knowledge, campaigns should plan to have a dedicated person ready to respond to direct messages and comments that often range from “where do I vote?” to “where does your candidate stand on the 2nd Amendment?” Quick responses can result in quick votes, so be at the ready!
Lesson 3: Be Restrained
A big mistake many campaigns make leading into Early Voting is targeting audiences as if they are still in persuasion mode. Meaning, they are targeting too large of an audience to win over some last-minute undecided voters. GOTV mode should be about narrowing your targets down to people you know are likely to be with you, and then driving them to vote. Specifically, target lists of people you’ve identified as supporters through phone, walking, fundraising, and digital efforts.
Lesson 4: Be Proactive
Because of Facebook’s new regulations relating to political advertising, your GOTV ads need to be set early. Oct. 27 is the deadline to have ads approved (which can take up to 3 business days), placed, and running; after that time, you can alter targeting, increase/decrease budgets and bid amounts, and pause/unpause the ad itself. What you won’t be able to change is essentially the content—text, images, videos, and links. Although inconvenient, this shouldn’t deter your GOTV efforts on Facebook. Design and place ad sets early, even if you don’t want them to run quite yet. Get approval from Facebook, place the ads before Oct. 27, and then throttle the individual ad budgets so that certain sets only run at the designated days and times of your choosing.
Lesson 5: Be Visible
Don’t forget that Facebook isn’t the only place to get out the vote effectively online. Be sure you allocate and spend budget on search advertising. After all, search engines are how people find voting information specifically important to them. So, it’s crucial to have your message at the top of the search results. Use re-marketing to target display ads at people who have visited your website and online platforms. Think of display ads as your digital yard signs; you want your voters to see them everywhere!
If you incorporate all five of these digital lessons into your GOTV plans, you will capitalize on early voting opportunities. Every states’ rules and regulations for early voting are different. In fact, in several states, voters have already started to make their vote official. So, ensure your voters have the information they are looking for when they need it. If your election is decided before Nov. 3, make sure it is in your favor. You can make it happen with smart use of digital.
Tyler Hargrave is a Senior Client Strategist at The Prosper Group, an internationally-recognized, award-winning digital agency specializing in online media, strategy, and fundraising for Republican political candidates, advocacy organizations, associations, and non-profits. The Prosper Group’s best-in-industry work has been recognized for awards dozens of times by prestigious organizations such as the American Association of Political Consultants and Campaigns & Elections.
Webinar Recap: Targeting to Win: Understanding the 2020 Voter Landscape
With only two months left to hone in on persuadable voters, campaigns need to cement their place with party devotees and lock in a win on November 3. But, voter segments are shifting daily and campaigns need real-time voter intelligence to gain an edge this campaign season.
In AAPC’s recent webinar, Resonate’s Director of Data Science, Dan Scantlebury, Ph.D., and Director of Research & Operations, Brent Waddington, MMP, discussed the seven key voter segments uncovered in the 2020 Resonate Presidential Election Voter Landscape, how the global pandemic has impacted voter sentiment and stances on policy issues, and the unprecedented reality of an election during a season when voter sentiment and values are undergoing massive and rapid shifts.
Check out the key lessons from the webinar below, and listen to the recording for even more expert insights.
This webinar has been archived for playback. AAPC members can click here to view all webinar archives.
Key Lessons from the Webinar
- Previous voter outreach methods are changing: With Facebook’s recent decision to allow individuals to opt out of political ads, campaigns are being forced to find new ways to reach voters. Reonate’s research team found that 40% of those polled intend to opt out of Facebook political ads, with another 39% unsure if they will opt out or not.
- Voters are changing their minds: So much has happened in our country over the course of 2020. Voters who had previously made up their minds about candidates are being forced to reconsider with every new circumstance. 20% of respondents indicated they’ve changed their decision with regard to who to vote for, for President, as a result of the civil unrest associated with Black Lives Matter.
- In-flux Inactives: The largest voter segment that will play a crucial role in the 2020 election is known as the In-flux Inactives. These 68 million U.S. voters make up 31% of the U.S. population, and 27% of them have not decided whether or not they will vote. These voters will need a compelling reason to get them to turn out and potentially swing a tight election.
Access the full recording to hear additional tips from our panelists.
Webinar Recap: 5 Things to Know About Swing Voters Down the Stretch
We’ve entered the home stretch for Election 2020, and as they did in 2016, swing voters in key districts across the Upper Midwest and Florida will play a disproportionately prominent role in determining this year’s election outcomes. And over the past 18 months, no one has talked directly to more Obama-Trump swing voters than Rich Thau, moderator and analyst for the Swing Voter Project.
In AAPC’s recent webinar, Rich presented key findings from his focus group discussions and the data he’s collected and analyzed. He covered how these voters are responding to the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic and social unrest in the country, and what, if any, impact it’s had on how they’ll cast their votes in the upcoming election.
Check out the key lessons from the webinar below, and listen to the recording for even more expert insights.
This webinar has been archived for playback. AAPC members can click here to view all webinar archives.
Key Lessons from the Webinar
- Pay attention to those who are not paying attention: Most swing voters do not get their news from major publications, like Politico, The Hill, or The Wall Street Journal. Many prefer to get their news from local TV stations and websites, some smaller cable news, or social media. Despite voting, swing voter focus groups show that this group is remarkably disengaged from politics.
- Personal economy vs. national economy: The economic stability of the U.S. is usually a major campaign talking about and voter value within elections. However, most swing voters reported that they care more about their personal economic well being than the economic well being of the country overall. While they believe the U.S. is worse off economically than it was four years ago, they personally are better off, and are therefore less likely to vote differently than they did four years ago.
Access the full recording to hear additional tips from our panelists.
Webinar Recap: Leveraging Creative to Engage Voters
Quality creative, in combination with research-driven messages, makes a difference when it comes to how voters perceive and engage with your campaign. During AAPC’s latest webinar, a panel of creative experts discussed how to produce and spot quality creative content, cutting through the clutter to move the needle, and seeing your concept through the creative process to execute an effective piece or series. They also shared a roundup of some of the most effective ads of the 2020 cycle so far.
Check out the key lessons from the webinar below, and listen to the recording for even more expert insights.
This webinar has been archived for playback. AAPC members can click here to view all webinar archives.
Key Lessons from the Webinar
- Graphic design requires continual research: Keeping up with what is trending will be your best friend in-between projects and aid in your ability to adapt your next visual strategy effectively.
- Leverage user-generated video content: Or in some cases—candidate generated content! The pandemic has limited many of the ways we gather, including shooting videos. With some guidance from their consultants, many candidates are using video they shoot themselves to reach voters.
- Don’t get stuck in old habits: We have a tendency to default to 30 second ads- a vestige left over from the time when TV was king. Digital gives us the flexibility to create engaging ads and content whose total run time can be driven by the most compelling story – whether that’s delivered in 3 minutes or 6 seconds. Take advantage of that and don’t let the old 30 second standard dictate your creative approach every time.
- Reuse, repurpose, and recycle: 2020 is forcing us all to get creative. If you can’t shoot new content, try repurposing old or unused content to convey a new message. Don’t shy away from the fact that COVID exists. Lean into it, and show that you understand the climate of the world at the moment.
Access the full recording to hear additional tips from our panelists.
This webinar is eligible for one (1) A4 Media Production credit towards AAPC’s Communications Certificate. To learn more about achieving this Certificate, click here.
Fundraising: Mixing it Up
Whether you were ready or not, COVID has forced consultants to think digital-first. In a recent session titled “Fundraising: Mixing It Up” during AAPC’s virtual Digital Politics conference, Jon Adams, President of TAG Strategies, Julia Ager, President & Founder of Sapphire Strategies, Mike Alm, Executive Vice President of Campaign Solutions, Lindsay Jacobs, Executive Director of Majority Money, and Ryan Thompson, Chief Digital Officer at the DCCC, shared insights on how to successfully execute a digital fundraising approach.
Check out the full recording of “Fundraising: Mixing It Up” here for even more insights, as well as recordings of all other sessions held during the 2020 Digital Politics Conference!
What are some of the things you are doing in the midst of this pandemic to fundraise that are different for you and that would be considered mixing it up compared to previous cycles?
Ryan: In speaking to the digital ecosystem as a whole, in this time we’ve had to reimagine our strategies regarding voter contact and have pivoted to text messaging for fundraising, particularly peer-to-peer. We’re seeing success also because it’s a very low-cost tool.
Mike: Texting has taken off as well as video on Facebook. We’re seeing this being a huge funding source for campaigns right now.
Jon: Peer-to-peer texting has been a good tool. Facebook video has been great, but the kicker is direct-to-camera Facebook video. I’ll speak from my experience – I worked at the NRSC for a long time and no one knows what those four letters are. They get them all mixed up, and that happens with pretty much every committee. In the past, running Facebook video for ads from a committee that no one knows the name of hasn’t always been our most successful channel for fundraising. However, this cycle, we’ve noticed that putting senators direct-to-camera, whether it be the campaign or the committee, has taken off and been a huge hit for not only senate campaigns, but also the committee as well in terms of fundraising. I think a bigger thing with COVID and how it relates to fundraising right now is that in the past, campaigns and committees had to rely on what we call their ‘major donor programs’ for events and larger contributions. COVID has really changed the world of those major donors, but not so much our world. What COVID has done to the digital side is that it’s made the campaign actually have to focus on digital because it is the channel right now that is bringing in all the money since you can’t hold dinners, etc. Some major donors have been open to digital options. But compared to major donors previously hosting a dinner at their house, they are now getting ‘Facetime’ or a ‘Zoom session’, which people are not as excited about. They are still bringing in money on the major donor side but it’s not the same set up it used to be, so I think right now the biggest difference is campaigns are having to do digital. They are realizing that they can reach a lot of people and raise a lot of money rather quickly, and are starting to wonder why they haven’t been doing this all along. So, they are having to invest in this.
Lindsay: COVID has created an awareness about the long-term scale of digital fundraising and how important it is to invest early, along with the importance of building a list and using these programs everyone has referenced. When something like COVID happens or if something in your race happens that’s really exciting that could be an opportunity to raise a lot of money, if you haven’t built a list and built up these stable of tools to use in order to get your message out and reach voters you won’t be able to capitalize on the moment. COVID has reinforced how important digital is, so there’s no question now about why it’s important to invest in digital now moving forward.
What are some good ideas for virtual fundraisers?
Lindsay: I’ve seen things like cocktail classes, poker games, folks playing the HouseParty app where you can compete against candidates. There’s ways to make it unique – keeping it small is a great way to promote a personal connection with the candidate.
Julia: Lining up a big-ticket person can be super helpful. Focusing on one bigger Zoom fundraiser with a big-ticket person may be more beneficial vs. overdoing it with a lot of small virtual events. If you do get a big-ticket person with a large list, see if they’d be willing to send an email to their list about the Zoom event and integrate this with your own approach to small dollar donors.
What are you seeing for conversion rates?
Mike: One of our top Senate races had a VIP come in for a Zoom fundraiser. We pitched it on digital, text and email and found the conversion rate was quite low. We realized it’s still major donor fundraising – the major donor team has to get on the phone and make calls. At the end of the day it’s still old fashioned major donor fundraising but using different technology.
Lindsay: All of these virtual tools are enhancements of what you should already be doing. I’ve seen no absolute answer that means you no longer have to make phone calls anymore, etc…
Are there new technologies and tools that you’ve had to be more reliant on or discovered to figure out how to better integrate all of your fundraising efforts?
Jon: At the committee in previous cycles, the way committees typically work, they have a digital team, they have a finance team that goes after major donors, and they may have a one-off mail or phones person which is telemarketing and direct mail. At the NRSC during the last cycle, we integrated so that all those fell under the digital program who worked simultaneously with the finance team. We had a mail and telemarketing person who worked for me but no message went out that wasn’t seen by me, which helped us make sure the mail and telemarketing had the same message as the digital team. And that comes with a CRM. If you have a CRM and are tagging everything correctly, it’s really easy to say “this person donated in a mail piece three days ago, so let’s suppress them from email for 30 days and then we will put them back into the funnel.” If you have the infrastructure set up, it’s a pretty easy process. The key is getting the infrastructure, and at committees where there is turn over every two years, those of us who are there multiple cycles are unicorns.
Does a largely digital fundraising effort really work for smaller or local races?
Jon: I hate to be the Debbie Downer to people, but the reality is that you can implement a good program, and be very good, and still not see results that you want. If you take Donald Trump’s fundraising or his strategy and tactics, or you take Bernie Sanders’ fundraising or strategy and tactics and give it to Hillary Clinton (and I’m just using her as an example) it’s not going to work. You won’t see the same results. A lot of it is making sure whoever is doing your fundraising and strategy are experienced and have worked with a variety of people so that they actually know what works and what doesn’t. We are all figuring out a lot of this as we go. We’ve seen from our experience what works and what doesn’t, so we don’t necessarily knock on that door anymore, but we try stuff all the time. And if something doesn’t work, we just pivot to the next thing. There are three things that are important for fundraising: authenticity, creativity and consistency. If you are not authentic and everything you say is fake and it looks like somebody wrote it down on a piece of paper for you, it’s not going to work. You need to be able to do those three things by having the people that run your fundraising have experience and know what they are doing, and are able to pivot when things don’t work.
These days, going viral can feel like the highest achievement and goal to work towards when thinking about digital fundraising. Is going viral a necessary component to a successful campaign? And are only certain types of candidates going to be successful at digital fundraising, or can a less dynamic/viral candidate be successful as well?
Jon: There are certain types of candidates who will outperform others, even if everyone was doing the same thing. But, consistent candidates always outperform everyone. If you are consistently running a program, you will do better than the one-off person who has a hot moment over the course of a cycle. Being consistent is the biggest take away you need.
Lindsay: There’s a really great example on the Republican side right now about why what Jon said is so important. Kim Klacik is a GOP candidate running for Congress in MD-07. She has been consistently digitally fundraising since mid, if not early-2019 sending out one email a week, doing lead acquisition with not a ton of return. She’s running in a very solidly Democratic seat. So she has chugged along, built a list and made the investment. If you haven’t seen her recent viral ad, check it out here. If she had not built out the infrastructure, she wouldn’t have had an audience to get this ad in front of and a team to take advantage of the fundraising moment. Not everyone will have a viral moment. But if you haven’t spent time building this asset, you won’t be able to leverage the moment.
If you had to give advice to someone starting out in digital fundraising, what is the first thing you would tell them to do? What is most important, especially if you are getting in late in the game?
Jon: The first thing you have to understand is that you are not going to see an immediate return. You have to be committed to what you are doing and trust that whoever you hire knows what they are doing. I will say that now that digital has become the defacto fundraising arm, there are a lot of people out there saying they do digital fundraising but have no clue what they are doing. Hiring someone who knows what they are doing is the second most important thing. And the third is consistency, and that comes with committing to doing it. If you do those three things, you should get off the ground.
Mike: When you find that moment or when something is working, don’t stop it. Go all in. The moment could be fleeting. Take advantage of it when you can.
Jon: If you have one of the moments that Mike referenced, and find that you’ve spent most of your budget when the viral moment happens, get more budget. You can make more money in 24 hours during a high-impact moment than you can in 24 days just chugging along.
Julia: There’s enough digital talent out there where we’re seeing folks move from digital to campaign management. When working with people who have this background, in terms of making split second decisions on spending money and making the investment, they’re so in-tune to this. It’s a lot easier to make the case to invest in digital to someone who has this background.
Do you have any ideas for combatting Zoom fatigue? What are some ways to energize and think beyond it?
Lindsay: Try and get creative. We did a virtual wine tasting. Before the event we had interns drive around in the area of major donors, passing out glasses, etc… You can make it fun, do a game night or something to engage people that’s not just people getting on Zoom and talking.
100 Years of Voting Women: Their Impact Today
This month marked the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment, which granted women (albeit only white women) the right to vote. In honor of this milestone in our democracy, the AAPC reached out to top pollsters for insights on how female voters are shaping the 2020 elections. Ashlee Rich Stephenson, Vice President and National Political Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Celinda Lake, President at Lake Research Partners, shared their analysis.
On the 2020 Presidential Election:
Stephenson: While the political environment continues to be unpredictable and at times simply turbulent, there remains consistency in the intensity among female voters relating to enthusiasm to cast a ballot in 2020. A recent Economist/YouGov survey reported that a majority of women (53%) are “extremely enthusiastic” to vote for president this November, compared to slightly less than half of men (47%). In this same study, a higher percentage of women as compared to men rank ten issues tested as “very important” to them, further underscoring heightened intensity among this majority voting bloc.
Lake: In this election, the gender gap has been quite dramatic, with male voters nationwide statistically tied in their choice between Biden and Trump, but women voters nationwide clearly siding with Biden. In a close race, women voters will determine the election. Democrats need to win women by more than they lose men by, but women are not monolithic. White non-college women trend toward saying they will vote for Trump, while college educated white women trend toward voting for Biden. Women of color are voting overwhelmingly Democratic, as are millennial women. Seniors are voting Democratic for President, and Biden is clearly better with seniors than other Democrats since before 2008.
On the issues:
Lake: One of the biggest issues disproportionately affecting women voters during this time is childcare, as women are having to take on more work than ever to balance their careers and their children throughout the pandemic. School closures are also top of mind for women voters in this time. For many swing voter women, there is a strong view that this election is more important now than ever, and important for their families and communities. The key swing group of women is “guardian women,” who are most focused on security. Leadership and character also matter for women. Women are increasingly turned off by Trump’s character which they tend to think of as an idiosyncratic personality but now see as a governing issue.
Stephenson: By way of issues, contests up and down the ballot will be won by the ability to communicate solutions that address the economy, health care and safety relating to each. We also continue to see that in this environment women are motivated by solutions and results. Those running the most sophisticated campaigns are therefore addressing ways in which they have delivered for their constituents, particularly through the coronavirus pandemic. Look no further than advertising from incumbents in the toughest Senate contests this cycle. The best campaigns are directly addressing female voters’ greatest concerns about jobs, small businesses, the coronavirus and health care with a facts-first approach and thoughtful tone. While few things are certain in 2020, it is clear that this cycle will yield another year of exceptional post-election analysis to discern trends among the powerful female electorate.
On turnout:
Lake: Turnout and persuasion of women are key to this election. In 2016 there were over 43 million women who didn’t vote including over 14 million millennial women and over 16 million women of color. The COVID-19 pandemic may have particular impacts on women’s participation. In 2020 we need to get out the vote.