Voter Contact and GOTV
Definition
The set of methods campaigns use to reach individual voters — door-knocking, phone-banking, peer-to-peer texting, relational organising, mail, and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations.
Voter contact and GOTV are usually distinguished by their goal: voter contact (sometimes called persuasion or mobilisation contact) tries to move a voter’s intention or registration, while GOTV tries to move a known supporter to actually cast their ballot. The two operations have different lists, different scripts, and different volunteer training — and most modern campaigns run them as distinct programmes.
Practitioner guides (Mobilisation Lab, the Analyst Institute’s behaviourally-informed voter-contact literature, the Traindems and Camp Data curricula) treat the data loop as the active ingredient — every voter contact produces a record, every record is updated, and the next contact uses the updated record to start the conversation from where the last one left it.
Full page: [[voter-contact-and-gotv]]. [source: voter-contact-and-gotv] [source: moblab]
FAQ
What is voter contact and GOTV?
Voter contact and GOTV is the set of methods campaigns use to reach individual voters — door-knocking, phone-banking, peer-to-peer texting, relational organising, mail, and get-out-the-vote operations. The full-page version of this definition lives on [[voter-contact-and-gotv]]. The two operations have different goals, lists, scripts, and volunteer training.
How are voter contact and GOTV different operations?
Voter contact and GOTV are usually distinguished by their goal: voter contact (sometimes called persuasion or mobilisation contact) tries to move a voter’s intention or registration, while GOTV tries to move a known supporter to actually cast their ballot. The two operations have different lists, different scripts, and different volunteer training — and most modern campaigns run them as distinct programmes.
What is the data loop?
Practitioner guides (Mobilisation Lab, the Analyst Institute’s behaviourally-informed voter-contact literature, the Traindems and Camp Data curricula) treat the data loop as the active ingredient — every voter contact produces a record, every record is updated, and the next contact uses the updated record to start the conversation from where the last one left it.
Why is the data loop the active ingredient?
The data loop is the active ingredient because it converts each contact from a discrete event into a record that compounds. A campaign without a data loop contacts the same voter three times in three different conversations, each one starting from scratch; a campaign with a data loop contacts the same voter three times in three progressive conversations, each one informed by the last.