Tim Canova is someone I admire tremendously. He and I were two of the most popular early candidates to endorse Bernie Sanders. We supported similar ideas and I was really rooting for him to win. Unfortunately, he came up short this week against Debbie Wasserman Shultz 28,279 to 21,504. While the main line story has been the clash of ideals, the real story of this race is the failure to strategically innovate. Let me explain.
Tim was in a position virtually no other first time candidate finds himself or herself: he was outraising his incumbent opponent. He raised over 2 million dollars; as he will point out to you it was primarily though small dollar, Bernie Sanders donors. That is both impressive and incredibly admirable. That is usually where the story stops. But, let’s apply that number to the ultimate turnout. He spent roughly 2 million dollars and only got 21,504 votes.
He spent nearly $100 per vote! That is astronomically poor.
He’d have been better off firing his staff and walking around his district in Florida giving out $50 bills asking for votes. I’m only half joking.
This is the problem with the Progressive movement (a movement I am a proud member of). We innovate with policy. We are even innovating with fundraising. But, we are using the same horrendous strategy that has not really changed in twenty years. As it was famously said in Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate!” (ok, the context is totally different, but it’s a great line).
Seriously though, the Progressive movement needs to wake up and get off our collective high horse. We aren’t getting whooped in races because we have worse ideas. Our ideas are better. Our candidates are often (but not always) better. We are losing because we SUCK at organizing to WIN.
By the way, Bernie Sanders’ campaign is just as guilty of this as anyone. Jeff Weaver, while excellent in the early days of the campaign, totally squandered a golden opportunity by relying on ineffective TV ads and ineffective rallies. Think about the rallies: they became useless bubbles of wasted time. Tens of thousands of supporters would spend all day hanging out together, waiting to hear a speech, patting each other on the back for being there and for truly getting it. In New York, the rallies in Washington Square and Prospect Park saw probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 unique supporters right at a crucial time in the election. If Bernie would have won New York, despite the legitimate criticisms of the process there, I think he would have carried the whole election. Instead, volunteers were wasted at rallies that did virtually nothing to bring in new voters, and all the money went towards commercials that were entirely ineffective. If it sounds like I am mad, it’s because I am. I really care about this movement. And the numbers are heartbreaking.
If half of those rally attenders would have given a half day shift at knocking on doors/making calls (50,000 people for 4 hours) that means there would have been an extra 200,000 hours. In a typical 1 hour period, a volunteer could have called or knocked on at least 20 houses. That’s an extra 4 million households engaged. That’s 6 million voters from those househols. Bernie only lost by about 250,000 votes. So, every volunteer would have needed to convince roughly 1 new household an hour. I don’t know a single volunteer worth their salt that would back away from that challenge. Even if every dollar were still wasted on commercials, if the field campaign was better organized towards votes rather than vanity, Bernie would have won. It’s maddening.
We have to organize better!
You might be asking yourself, “Alex, so, why didn’t you win your race if you are such an expert?”
While we didn’t win, we got 24,000 votes spending $65,000; that’s around $2.75 per vote. With $65,000 dollars, how did we get more votes than Tim Canova?
We made sure that every dollar spent came with the question: how will this help us get a vote?
That is the key: we need to stop listening to what the highly paid “professionals” say about what we should do with our campaigns and start innovating in our strategic organization.
This isn’t about my campaign. I am referencing that for a case study for what’s possible if we use better analytics, better tools, better strategy geared towards winning.
Now you might be asking yourself, “Alex, so, what is this strategy we need to adopt?”
First, we need to understand that great digital presence is important and doesn’t need to be expensive. Understanding the Internet, understanding online communities and how young people communicate is absolutely crucial.
Second, we need to change the way we target voters. Campaigns need to identify at the beginning who their target voters are in every single town and be able to defend that hypothesis. You’d be shocked at how few campaigns do this at all. Sure, as campaigns collect more data, that targeting might change, but it needs to be data, not gut driven.
Third, TV ads do virtually nothing in anything short of a statewide race. Literally next to nothing when you consider how those dollars could have been spent more efficiently. Campaigns should instead double-down on field. In 2016, most people dislike and distrust politicians. They need to meet you and your team, especially if you are a challenger. We knocked on 109,000 doors. Imagine what we could have done with a 2 million dollar budget.
Forth, campaign field efforts should be coordinated via data with digital, print, and mail advertising. Customize your message based on what you are learning in the numbers. Understand where you are getting your least expensive votes. All votes count the same; you could lose every town but get so many votes from one town that you win. Data is powerful. Let the data guide your decision-making and you will be dramatically more efficient.
Fifth, every week, the campaign leadership should meet and pitch outside-the-box crazy ideas. There is a lot of efficiency to be earned in doing things differently than others. It’s just waiting for you to figure it out.
These are just some basic tips, but the important takeaway is this:
If we don’t innovate our strategic thinking, we will continue to lose.
Even in a complex world, it’s that simple.