The Campaign Workshop Blog

Political Campaign Strategy: Read Up!

To build an effective political campaign strategy, you need to understand the landscape your campaign is operating in. While talking to voters is always going to be the best way to get to know the issues that drive your community (and the larger American electorate), books are another great resource to inform your approach to politics. Below are five reads I recommend for any politico…

Digital Advocacy Consultant: Is It Worth the Cost To Hire a Online Campaign Consultant to Manage Your Digital Presence?

Digital advocacy seems to be the term of the moment, but achieving real online advocacy results can be tough in both execution and budget.  If you are at a nonprofit where money is tight, (when is it not?), spending money on hiring a digital advocacy consultant to manage your digital and online presence can seem like an easy line item to cut. But don’t be so quick to count digital advocacy consultants out. Depending on your…

Patch-Through Calls for Public Affairs & How to Make Them Count

Organizations and campaigns use patch-through calls when they need a large number of people to reach out to elected officials. Using an outbound dialer, robots, volunteers, or paid callers, they make calls from a contact list. After speaking with the contact, they patch the call through to the concerned elected official. With the increasing need for advocacy and engagement in the age of COVID-19, we have seen a resurgence of patch-through calls. We are fans of the medium, but…

Political Blogs: The Best National & State Political Blogs 

Political blogs as a news source seems very and 2004 but finding local and state specific perspectives on politics and communications matters. As quaint as it seems Try reading national and state political blogs. Here at The Campaign Workshop, we enjoy reading national and state-based political blogs to learn about local politics in states across the country and stay up to date on cutting edge campaign innovation. If you are looking for national political newsletters…

Our Quick Post-election Campaign Shutdown Checklist

Is it time for the post-election shutdown for your campaign? Your campaign is finally over and you might be feeling a bit of that post-campaign emptiness inside. We understand that feeling and have a lot of insight on what to do after a win or a loss.  Like for most things in your campaign you’ll want to be thinking about a plan for your campaign…

It’s the Day After the Election. Now What?

It’s the day after the election — you finally made it. Whether you won or lost your political campaign, your operation won’t end as soon as the results are in. You ran an organization for months that hopefully bore semblance to a well-oiled machine. You likely had people on your payroll, whether it was one campaign manager or a whole team of dedicated staff. You probably had volunteers working around the clock to help get your message out. You definitely haven’t slept enough since the whole shebang…

Election Stress Is Real, What Can You Do About It?

As someone who has been in the world of elections for 30 years, election stress has been a constant in my life and those around me. But this year it is even more  stressful - https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2020/sia-mental-health-crisis.pdf To be clear, I don’t consider myself an expert in election stress, but I have dealt with it for a long time and want to share strategies and…

Start the Day Right with These Top National, Political Newsletters

Political news moves at a breakneck pace, and while following along on social media can be a great way to keep up with the latest blips on the screen, we also like to read a handful of political newsletters before stepping into the office. Sometimes even our own. These newsletters give concrete analysis and offer a little more depth than a tweet, without being quite as long as a full-length article.…

List Matching: The What, Why, and How of Digital Targeting

Political advertising can be expensive, so it is imperative to make sure that every dollar is well spent. A big chunk of that change will go towards figuring out who you want to serve your ads to and where, whether for conversion or eyeballs. Over the past few years, methods for creating ad universes have evolved to become more precise and granular – enter list matching.   The What: List matching is a way to create targeted universes by combining an existing list with the online…

Hal Malchow: 7 Questions on  42 Million to One 

Hal Malchow is the former Chairman of MSHC partners, which was a political consulting firm that pioneered the use of statistical modeling and control group experiments in politics. His work in changing campaign politics is chronicled in Sasha Issenberg’s 2011 book, The Victory Lab, The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns. Over his career, Hal has worked for five Democratic presidential nominees. His first political thriller, No Popes in Heaven, was published in 2018. His new book, 42 Million to…

Facebook Campaign Strategy - Build a Paid & Organic Plan

No matter what level of office you are running for, you will need to establish a comprehensive paid and organic Facebook campaign strategy to be successful. We’ve written in the past about the importance of using digital to elevate your political campaign, and Facebook is an important element of this. Facebook is one of the most powerful communications tools modern-day…

Get out the vote, better known as GOTV is the final phase of any campaign. The whole point of this phase is in the name: get your voters out to vote. This phase applies to electoral campaigns, voter turnout campaigns, and independent expenditure campaigns. As long as your ultimate goal is to achieve a certain number of votes on Election Day, you are going to want to GOTV—you are going to want to reach out to your voters in the last few weeks of your campaign and make sure they have a voting plan and that they go out and successfully vote. There are…

Vote by Mail - What, Why, Who, When and How A hot topic for this coming election is how many people will vote by mail. With COVID-19 still rampant in the U.S., voting by mail will be a critical part of the November 3rd election. But whether or not you’re eligible to vote by mail depends on where you live, even down to the county level. Read on to find out more information on how to vote by mail.   What does it mean to vote by mail? Voting by mail is pretty self-explanatory. After you receive a ballot in the mail from the governing body of your state/…

How to safely use deep canvassing to persuade voters

Deep canvassing is a growing tactic for voter persuasion that uses longer, two-way conversations.  Campaigns, especially electoral campaigns, are always on the lookout to find the most efficient and effective way to persuade voters to support their cause.  In the past, door to door canvassing and phone campaigns were a staple of field operations to identify and persuade voters to vote for…

Black Lives Matter Movement A Conversation About What It Is and Why We Need It.

Black Lives Matter.  Across the country and around the world, we have seen protests demanding an end to systemic racism and police brutality in our country as well as justice for the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Rayshard Brooks, Elijah McClain and countless others.  The Black Lives Matter movement and others like it are incredibly impactful. Social activists are at the forefront, demanding attention be…