Run for Office · Numbers
How to Read Your Numbers
Campaign plans are full of figures. This page explains which ones you control, which ones are estimates, and how to respond when reality differs from the plan — without demoralizing your team.
One idea first
Hold people to commitments. Do not hold anyone to an estimate that is still waiting on the voter file or a first weekend of real contact rates. Getting this distinction right keeps volunteers motivated and keeps the scorecard honest.
Commitments vs estimates
- Commitments — shifts people agreed to walk, names on a written roster, “I will be there Saturday.” These are promises. Misses here are capacity problems you fix the same week.
- Estimates — assumed contact rates, size of a target universe, projected conversations from a given number of attempts. These are planning tools. When the real rate differs, you restate the estimate; you do not treat the difference as a personal failure.
What the evidence prices
Field experiments consistently find that doorstep conversations are the unit that moves votes in local races. Raw attempts matter only as the input that produces conversations. Phone programs are useful but weaker; digital advertising alone shows effects near zero on persuasion and turnout in randomized tests.
Practical takeaway: protect face-to-face contact first. When you are short on people, cut weaker channels before you cut doors. See the Field Program page for how to structure the week.
A simple scorecard order
- Banked / early ballots among identified supporters — the number that best predicts the result once early voting opens.
- Identified supporters (new this week and total) — the pipeline that feeds the final chase.
- Doorstep conversations — the unit the research prices in votes.
- Door attempts and shifts filled vs planned — effort and capacity.
- Anything missed, and the one-sentence response — the item that keeps the rest trustworthy.
Report conversations and supporters before attempts so the team does not optimize for the wrong number.
When you miss
- Report the miss the same week it happens — not three weeks later.
- Name the cause in one sentence without blame (“four of nine shifts unfilled because two regulars were away”).
- Cut the target rather than carry a fiction. If you cannot staff nine shifts, size the universe to the shifts you have and tell everyone.
- Make up phone shortfalls inside the same week when you can. A missed canvass weekend is gone; do not “double next weekend” and burn out the people who showed.
- Do not quietly raise a weaker channel to compensate for a door miss. That moves effort from the best channel to a weaker one and only makes the scorecard look better.
Three moments that can change the plan
- Roster deadline — committed names and dates in writing before the first full canvass weekend. If the roster is short, recruit against the gap or size the program down now.
- Calibration weekend — measure real contact rate against your planning assumption. If the rate is much lower, cut the universe, not the honesty of the quota.
- Mid-cycle review — one scheduled look at pre-agreed thresholds (for example in early October). If two thresholds are crossed, use a short menu of pre-agreed responses: more personal contact, tighter turf, release of reserve effort.
Writing the thresholds while everyone is calm is the point. An October decision should not be made by whoever is most anxious in the room.
If you read only one page
- Banked ballots among identified supporters is the number that predicts the result.
- Doorstep conversations are the unit the evidence prices; attempts are the input.
- Hold people to commitments. Restate estimates when the data arrives.
- Confirm next weekend’s roster every Sunday.
- Report misses the same week and cut the target rather than carry a fiction.
- A campaign that hits its controllables and still loses has still built capacity for the next cycle.