Misc
- Notes from Ethan Epping talk
- Most common modeling are for “support” (who they vote for) and “turn-out” (whether they vote at all) responses
- Messages around civic and community engagement is better at encouraging low propensity voters than pushing your candidate’s policy agenda
- Turnout Model
- Features: previous vote history of an individual; feature that influence turnout in general
- NCOA data (National Change of Address)
- Voter file info can be outdated
- When people move, nobody calls to cancel their voter registration
- Geocoding
- Commercially Available
- Mobile phone data
- Experion
- Government
- Gun and Boat Registration
- College student lists at public universities
- Data collected through contact by the campaign
- Support Model
- Features: survey data + other data
- DNC Stack
- BigQuery/SQL for a db and analytics,
- Python for engineering;
- Datascience does some R but more python
- Voter File
- List of registered voters in every state
- Publicly vailable
- States have various restrictions
- OH and NC publish online and is free
- Some cost thousands and only available to campaigns
- Not available for commercial use though
- Includes everything that’s on voter registration
- Addresses. phone numbers, etc.
- Vote history (participation)
- If you don’t vote in 2 straight federal elections you are usually eligible to be removed from the registry
- “Arbor” (sp?) tool
- For registration drives
- At census block or precinct level, take census estimate of eligible voters and subtract the number of registered voters
- Helps to figure out where to prioritize efforts (i.e. where the biggest pool of unregistered, eligible voters are)
- “Election Base” tool
- De-aggregate results down to the census block level
- Resolution is usually at the census block level because precinct boundaries often change
- Early voting data
- Want to find voters that have requested a ballot but have yet to mail it in
- Best time to talk to them
- Rejection data: talk to voters who incorrectly filled out a ballot
- Voter needs to talk to county clerk
- Or show up on voting day
- Jobs