CHALLENGE:
Deciding Whether or Not to Spend Money in a Race
BACKGROUND:
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During 2018, our client needed to strategically decide which races they should engage in, at what level (simple endorsement, RPAC check, Independent Expenditure (IE)), or whether to just remain neutral.
SOLUTION & TOOLS:
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Leverage REAL Strategies’ REALTOR® Party Plus (RPP) Elections Dashboard and the Voter Dashboard.
HOW OUR CLIENT UTILIZED OUR TOOLS:
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By toggling a few filters, our client was able to look up historic race results in the RPP Elections Dashboard, including vote counts for each candidate, turn out scores, the map of each district based on partisanship, and turnout by partisanship. The data showed staff the previous ‘temperature’ of the district, and which party had the best likelihood of showing up and winning based on past trends.
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They also employed the RPP Voter Dashboard to display the current modeled party composition of the districts and modeled turn out for the 2018 election (before the election!). Through this, staff and members could see a modeled/future outcome of the election based on turnout and partisanship trends.
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For example, a republican candidate in a purple-turning-blue seat had been a strong champion for the client. The RPP Elections dashboard, through turnout and partisan modeling, was able to predict which voters (Rs & Ds) were going to turnout on election day - thereby predicting the results. Our client found that in this candidate’s situation, the model showed her losing the seat and accurately predicted the turnout within 700 votes (in over 24,000 cast). The candidate did indeed lose.
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With this data, the GADS could present facts and let their Board of Trustees make an educated decision (based on data) on whether to engage and at what dollar levels they should/could engage.