Winning depends on candidates, people, money, and a strategy to make maximum use of them.
For our progress in recruiting candidates see my page on our progress.
It’s well known in the political world that people are typically more excited about volunteering for candidates than the party. With more candidates on the ballot we will collectively have more volunteers. And as we have in past years we’ll be augmenting our efforts with paid block walkers to promote the entire ticket.
For our fundraising plan, see my post on the topic.
Finally, none of these resources can be effective without the right strategy. So let’s look at what’s ahead of us for 2020.
In Collin County typically about 67% of registered voters turn out in Presidential Election years. This is about average for the nation, much better than the state average, but low for similar counties in the rest of the nation. We have room for growth. With the high level of enthusiasm and critical nature of this year’s election my own guess is that we’ll have a 75% turnout as a baseline. If we work hard to reach some of the people who don’t even routinely vote in Presidential election years, we may hit 80%.
With current registration trends and the rate of population growth, by Election Day we should have about 650,000 registered voters. If we assume a 75% turnout, yields with rounding around 490,000 votes. That means we need around 245,000 votes to win county wide.
Our 2018 turnout of 61% turnout was unusually high for a midterm, which is usually around a 35% turnout. Of the 357,000 votes cast for US Senator Beto got 166,000, or 47%. With a turnout of 75% there will be about 133,000 more voters than in 2018. Assuming everyone who voted in 2018 votes pretty much the same way this year as they did then, to win we need to get 79,000 of those additional133,000 voters, or 60%. All of our analysis suggests that more than a majority of our non-voters lean Democratic, so this is eminently feasible. On the other hand, if we instead assume that we’ll see what we did in 2018, some movement to Democrats among those who have voted Republican in the past, then we won’t need to win as many of the new voters. Finally, every new Democratic voter we register and get to the polls, and every no-voting registered voter who we gets to the polls, further benefit our margin.
So, how do we get those 133,000 people who voted in 2018 to vote Democratic again this year, win 79,000 of those who didn’t vote in 2018, and a majority of those newly registered voters? Without giving away too many details of the strategy to our opposition, we’ve already planned and are rolling out a multifaceted campaign based on reaching voters where they are:
- Year round, every year targeted voter registration with follow up, using new tools like Map The Vote
- Building neighborhood teams that will work for all of the candidates on the ballot
- Outreach to communities of color that typically vote at lower than average rates
- Building strong partnerships with candidate campaigns to make sure we get our base votes out along with their more targeted efforts to attract swing voters
- Using all of the most efficient tools and technologies for mass communications to voters. These include digital advertising (including some matched to on-line profiles and devices), text messages, printed materials, and possibly regional broadcast TV ads in partnership with other counties in the DFW media market.
- Working with candidates to promote a tested, unified message that promotes Democratic values and policies, and is well received by the unique demographics of our county.
- A tightly coordinated campaign that efficiently touches the Democratic base, with minimal duplicated effort.
- Close coordination with efforts of the Texas Democratic Party in their various initiatives
All of this requires experience. Importantly considering that we have to work with candidates – and particularly judicial candidates who primarily target our base voters – we need a County Chair with established relationships with the major candidates, leaders in other county parties, and leaders and staff in the Texas Democratic Party. I’ve spent the past five and half years building those relationships and gaining that experience.