“Our campaign is data-driven”
The trade show area of political conferences is lined with of booths filled with vendors and staff from nonprofit groups. Lots of tech firms with the latest in campaign software — for fundraising, for campaign communications and social media, for data management. I feel like strolling through dressed as Darth Vader and intoning, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.”
That sentiment is not mine alone. Micah L. Sifry discusses a survey of volunteers from 31st Street Swing Left, Markers for Democracy and Swing Blue Alliance. He summarizes their report, “The Experience of Grassroots Leaders Working with the Democracy Party,” calling it “sobering.” One bullet speaks to a pet peeve of mine and a current project (bolded):
- None of the respondents could describe their state Democratic party’s mission. “Many state party organizations seem to lurch from election cycle to election cycle without a ‘strategic plan that includes every precinct, and no tactical plan to engage everyone’,” the report states.
- Local volunteer leaders “yearn to contribute their expertise” as well as their legwork, but most “work under the direction of young, overworked field organizers who are not familiar with local issues, culture and relationship networks.”
- Despite that, most field organizers do try to provide a great experience for their volunteers, but they are “hampered by inexperience and a lack of familiarity with the areas in which they are assigned to work.”
- Most volunteer leaders see their state Democratic party’s efforts to organize outreach as “too little, too late.” One in four call their party unresponsive. A majority of respondents said the party does a terrible job targeting voters, saying that its lists are far too narrow.
- Volunteers work with technology and data that is underperforming and out of date. They are too often calling people who have already voted, reaching wrong numbers, or sent knocking on doors of people who have already said they are voting for a Republican candidate.
- Volunteers have no way of accumulating or demonstrating their own experience to party professionals. As one respondent noted, “With the exception of Mobilize, the DP’s technology toolset is not set up to solicit feedback or suggestions from field organizers, volunteers, or voters. There is no efficient way to incorporate feedback into designing the volunteer experience. Another missing element – the tools often don’t provide feedback to the volunteer. Minivan, for example, doesn’t keep track of your doors knocked over the course of a campaign. OpenVPB doesn’t track how many calls you made. There’s no volunteer leaderboard to encourage the volunteer to stick with it.”
- The scripts that campaigns give volunteers to use in talking to potential voters are seen as “out of alignment with social psychological research, the concerns of the targeted demographic groups, and democratic values.” And given how out of touch these scripts are, the report’s authors ask, “if the scripts are out of touch with the conversations that voters are willing to have and that volunteers can reasonably be expected to facilitate, are other aspects of the campaign similarly out of sync?”
- Only one-third of respondents described their volunteers’ experience canvassing or phonebanking with the Democratic party as positive. Most called it “dismal,” “excruciatingly slow,” or “chaotic,” and one ultimately said, “It was actually easier to conduct a powerful campaign without the party support.” Another said, “we see the party … as something to work around while we tackle specific, local actions we feel are effective.”
One volunteer I spoke with recently complained that VoteBuilder/VAN is not only clunky but still has “a 1980s interface.” While Democrats may attempt to update their software, there is a reluctance to update their strategies.
There is a systematic overreliance on tech to solve Democrats’ problems. When I hear, “Our campaign will be data-driven,” I wince. Too many political problems cannot be solved with more tech. NC Democrats’ new chair, Anderson Clayton, 25, scolds, “Democrats don’t have a messaging problem. They have a showing-up problem.”
The critiques from the report may be overbroad. In places such as Lavora Barnes’ Michigan and Ben Wikler’s Wisconsin, the proof is in the wins. But in general, “outside the box” thinking is almost nonexistent and even discouraged.
I’m looking for this new generation of leaders to address that rather than introduce new-and-improved light sabers.
(h/t SR)