Latest / Decision Desk HQ Podcast / Episode 42: Understanding Modern Campaigns, with Eric Wilson from Center for Campaign Innovation

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Episode 42: Understanding Modern Campaigns, with Eric Wilson from Center for Campaign Innovation · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_02: That is not what voters mean when they want someone who's authentic.
0:03
SPEAKER_02: They want someone who acts and behaves like they really believe.
0:07
SPEAKER_02: We used to say a gaffe was when a politician says what they really believe,
0:10
SPEAKER_02: but now campaigning is all about having gaffes,
0:13
SPEAKER_02: which is saying what you believe at all times, even when it's unpopular.
0:17
SPEAKER_01: In a lot of competitive races, it is a bit of a trench warfare kind of analogy, right?
0:22
SPEAKER_01: And so you're just trying to find what little thing might move the needle just a little bit.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm Geoffrey Skelley, your host, the chief elections analyst here at Decision Desk HQ.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: You know,
0:48
SPEAKER_01: 30 years ago,
0:49
SPEAKER_01: Bob Dole's 1996 presidential run became the first presidential campaign to have
0:53
SPEAKER_01: a website.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: Amazingly, it has been preserved and you can still visit it today.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: And I'll make sure to link that in the show notes for folks.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: But needless to say,
1:03
SPEAKER_01: the digital political realm and the tools of technology have gotten
1:06
SPEAKER_01: a lot more complex ever since Dole-Kemp 96 first appeared on the World Wide Web.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Nowadays,
1:13
SPEAKER_01: campaigns use all sorts of tools to engage supporters,
1:16
SPEAKER_01: raise money,
1:17
SPEAKER_01: win over persuadable voters,
1:18
SPEAKER_01: and move the conversation in a favorable direction for their efforts.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Folks who work on campaigns have had to adjust,
1:25
SPEAKER_01: often quite rapidly, to a changing technological landscape.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: Practitioners on both sides of the aisle have looked to gain an edge for their party
1:33
SPEAKER_01: through an assortment of tools, trying to figure out what works best.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: So to talk a bit more about the modern campaign and some of those tools and some
1:40
SPEAKER_01: of what's out there, I'm excited to welcome Eric Wilson to the podcast.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: Eric is the Executive Director of the Center for Campaign Innovation,
1:48
SPEAKER_01: which bills itself as the Right’s R&D Lab.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: The center puts together regular reports,
1:53
SPEAKER_01: including conducting its own field experiments
1:56
SPEAKER_01: about how technological innovations can help campaigns.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: Eric is himself a veteran of many political campaigns,
2:01
SPEAKER_01: and he also runs the Campaign Trend newsletter and podcasts.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: So with that, Eric, welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Geoffrey, I'm glad to be at the desk with you today.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: Ah, well, thank you.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: We'll see if there are any decisions that come along the way.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: But hey, thanks again for joining.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: You know,
2:21
SPEAKER_01: I think for folks who follow politics and campaigns,
2:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:25
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of times people most interact with the campaign when they,
2:29
SPEAKER_01: you know, get an email saying, you know, it's the last hour to donate kind of thing.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: But but obviously there's a lot more to it.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: And so I guess just to start out with,
2:38
SPEAKER_01: I want to talk a little bit about what I guess your background and the Center
2:43
SPEAKER_01: for Campaign Innovation.
2:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:45
SPEAKER_02: Well, my background really started with digital marketing.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: We called it e-campaign or new media at the time.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: Really blogs is what we were talking about.
2:55
SPEAKER_02: And then social media comes along and now we have advertising.
3:00
SPEAKER_02: And we used to talk about getting a seat at the table was sort of our goal.
3:07
SPEAKER_02: Now it's given that digital has...
3:10
SPEAKER_02: Has sort of found its way throughout every aspect of the campaign.
3:16
SPEAKER_02: But something that stuck with me is that we always need to be figuring out what is
3:21
SPEAKER_02: the thing that we should be doing?
3:23
SPEAKER_02: You know, the old adage about half of our advertising works, we just don't know which half.
3:28
SPEAKER_02: And so with campaigns that are resource constrained in terms of capital allocation
3:33
SPEAKER_02: and time, We have to make those trade-offs.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: So the Center for Campaign Innovation is really about figuring out,
3:41
SPEAKER_02: well, how do we come down on making those decisions?
3:45
SPEAKER_02: Where does new technology come in?
3:47
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes, yes, proving that this stuff actually works.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I know you've worked on some campaigns.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: I was curious between that and some of the research you've been doing and
3:59
SPEAKER_01: the reports you've been writing and things you've observed
4:02
SPEAKER_01: and how things have shifted.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: I was curious sort of what you think has,
4:07
SPEAKER_01: I guess to your point,
4:09
SPEAKER_01: obviously digital now automatically comes to the seat at the table.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: And I guess I was curious about any,
4:15
SPEAKER_01: any experiences you've had that sort of showed the, the,
4:18
SPEAKER_01: the evolution of that,
4:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
4:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously it's, it's 2026 now, but you know, 2016 or something or 2018.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know,
4:26
SPEAKER_01: a lot of time has passed here where digital tools have become,
4:30
SPEAKER_01: you know, really,
4:30
SPEAKER_01: I guess,
4:30
SPEAKER_01: going back to even the Barack Obama campaign 2008 in a lot of ways,
4:33
SPEAKER_01: I think is sort of viewed as one of
4:35
SPEAKER_02: the earliest sort of hugely,
4:39
SPEAKER_01: more hugely digital driven efforts.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: And so I guess I was curious for any observations you had about some of the things
4:45
SPEAKER_01: that stick out.
4:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well,
4:47
SPEAKER_02: I think some of this is a mindset shift,
4:51
SPEAKER_02: but also the data has changed on this,
4:54
SPEAKER_02: which is I think a lot of people kind of lag behind,
4:57
SPEAKER_02: which is when we first started out,
4:59
SPEAKER_02: we thought of the internet as being sort of for those early adopters.
5:03
SPEAKER_02: You know, you would frequently hear candidates say, oh, well, we're in a rural state.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: Most people don't have the Internet.
5:08
SPEAKER_02: That was probably not true at the time,
5:09
SPEAKER_02: but it was kind of their excuse to not invest in things like websites
5:15
SPEAKER_02: or social media.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: And then I remember very distinctly at a training for members of Congress where
5:24
SPEAKER_02: the criticism was, why would anyone want to know?
5:28
SPEAKER_02: What I had for breakfast because that was their conception of what social media was.
5:32
SPEAKER_02: Well, fast forward to 2016 and Donald Trump tweeted himself to the White House.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: And so we take it for granted now that social media has an impact on politics.
5:45
SPEAKER_02: That wasn't there when social media first came on the scene.
5:50
SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the big things that We continue to fight
5:54
SPEAKER_02: against is this perception that it's just young people who are online.
5:59
SPEAKER_02: And our data show very clearly that voters of all ages, all types, all backgrounds are online.
6:07
SPEAKER_02: This is essentially where real life is happening for a lot of people.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: And so it is as real as what's going on in the field.
6:17
SPEAKER_02: And so there's this misconception,
6:19
SPEAKER_02: I think,
6:19
SPEAKER_02: that campaigns stick with where they say,
6:21
SPEAKER_02: look, The Hanover Tomato Festival is this weekend.
6:24
SPEAKER_02: We got to make sure that we have our booth staff because 5,000 people are going to be there.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: Well,
6:31
SPEAKER_02: what are you doing to be on Facebook every single day or TikTok every single day
6:35
SPEAKER_02: where thousands of people are gathering and we just haven't quite made it to
6:40
SPEAKER_02: where we view online life as real life.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: I think that seems so true,
6:47
SPEAKER_01: just thinking about some of the,
6:48
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
6:49
SPEAKER_01: some of the campaigns we've seen in recent years,
6:51
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:51
SPEAKER_01: I guess just one that immediately came to my mind while you were talking about it,
6:55
SPEAKER_01: the idea of being on TikTok and just constantly out there,
6:58
SPEAKER_01: the Zohran Mamdani campaign,
7:00
SPEAKER_01: of course,
7:00
SPEAKER_01: is just an example,
7:01
SPEAKER_01: like just sort of a constant,
7:05
SPEAKER_01: is it the idea that it's like you're sort of constantly there,
7:09
SPEAKER_01: you're constantly available to people if they want to,
7:12
SPEAKER_01: if they,
7:13
SPEAKER_01: And out front so that they can find things out about you,
7:15
SPEAKER_01: even if they seem mundane,
7:17
SPEAKER_01: with the thought being, hey,
7:19
SPEAKER_01: you are like me,
7:20
SPEAKER_01: or you're kind of like,
7:21
SPEAKER_01: there's an approachability factor even that this is encouraging maybe?
7:26
SPEAKER_02: It can be that, but let's pick apart a few different aspects here.
7:31
SPEAKER_02: One, in our surveys and focus groups, people always say, I want a politician who's authentic.
7:39
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes people will say,
7:40
SPEAKER_02: oh, well, that means doing the silly dance or showing that you like to eat burritos.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: That is not what voters mean when they want someone who's authentic.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: They want someone who acts and behaves like they really believe.
7:54
SPEAKER_02: We used to say a gaffe was when a politician says what they really believe,
7:57
SPEAKER_02: but now campaigning is all about I guess having gaffes,
8:03
SPEAKER_02: which is saying what you believe at all times, even when it's unpopular.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: So you look at someone like Zohran Mamdani,
8:09
SPEAKER_02: who might have been pushed to the center after he won the primary and didn't do that
8:15
SPEAKER_02: because that wouldn't read as authentic.
8:19
SPEAKER_02: For all of the acclaim that he got as sort of an online candidate,
8:23
SPEAKER_02: he himself was pretty straightforward.
8:27
SPEAKER_02: The piece that's important here is that he connected it with the real world of
8:33
SPEAKER_02: the campaign, right?
8:34
SPEAKER_02: So I think a good contrast for people would be to look at
8:37
SPEAKER_02: the Mamdani campaign versus Spencer Pratt's campaign.
8:40
SPEAKER_02: Spencer Pratt's campaign got a ton of attention,
8:43
SPEAKER_02: was really optimized for grabbing eyeballs,
8:46
SPEAKER_02: but you never saw that translate into sort of offline campaign activity,
8:52
SPEAKER_02: people going and knocking on doors.
8:53
SPEAKER_02: Whereas with the Mamdani campaign, Yes,
8:56
SPEAKER_02: you were getting social content from Mamdani,
8:58
SPEAKER_02: but you were also seeing people marching around with drums or knocking on doors
9:03
SPEAKER_02: and all those sorts of things.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: And it tied back to sort of an offline community,
9:08
SPEAKER_02: which is the leap that a lot of people have to make.
9:11
SPEAKER_02: But to your point about volume and frequency,
9:15
SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of people misunderstand what algorithms do
9:19
SPEAKER_02: and algorithms really buffer all of our attention right now.
9:24
SPEAKER_02: And so because they are mathematical constructs,
9:27
SPEAKER_02: we have to generate lots and lots of content, right?
9:31
SPEAKER_02: So if you want to be an effective campaign online,
9:35
SPEAKER_02: you're going to have to be giving lots of content to these algorithms
9:38
SPEAKER_02: to figure out, Okay, what's the piece that I'm going to show to this person?
9:41
SPEAKER_02: It's a little like the transition from sort of fighter jets to drone warfare, right?
9:47
SPEAKER_02: Where it's kind of a quantity over quality.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: I like that.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: I like that.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: Or as a conf, that's really interesting.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: Because,
9:55
SPEAKER_01: you know, I mean,
9:55
SPEAKER_01: it brings to mind some of the stuff that's going on,
9:57
SPEAKER_01: like the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, oh, Ukraine's just flying drones into Moscow and stuff.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, what?
10:04
SPEAKER_01: And it's just a very, it's, to your point, quantity.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: It's like, It's not that expensive to put out.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: In
10:13
SPEAKER_01: fact, all you need is an iPhone or any kind of phone and you can put the content out there.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: Maybe if you want to ramp it up a little bit, you've got some Adobe Acrobat Photoshop and stuff.
10:29
SPEAKER_02: But so much of our campaigning is optimized for this,
10:32
SPEAKER_02: hey, I'm going to do a 30 second TV ad and I'm going to run it through.
10:36
SPEAKER_02: And yes,
10:36
SPEAKER_02: TV ads are still getting in front of voters,
10:38
SPEAKER_02: but that's a very different style of combat than rapid iteration.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: So I guess,
10:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:47
SPEAKER_01: in your work and,
10:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:50
SPEAKER_01: talking to other practitioners,
10:53
SPEAKER_01: people working in this field,
10:54
SPEAKER_01: I guess,
10:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:57
SPEAKER_01: what You know,
10:59
SPEAKER_01: it sounds like adoption can be a challenge and adjustment,
11:03
SPEAKER_01: but I guess I'm also interested in sort of, I mean,
11:08
SPEAKER_01: at this day and age, I mean,
11:09
SPEAKER_01: excuse my interest,
11:10
SPEAKER_01: but I assume that a lot of campaigns just have like a digital point person,
11:13
SPEAKER_01: like they have, like, or at least a major campaign would want that, or do they not?
11:18
SPEAKER_01: And this is still a lag, like lagging in a way.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: So this is kind of a sore spot.
11:23
SPEAKER_02: So on the right, it's pretty uncommon to have an actual digital staffer on the team.
11:30
SPEAKER_02: On the left, it's a different story.
11:31
SPEAKER_02: You'll see, you know, sort of more active digital folks.
11:35
SPEAKER_02: And I often describe,
11:38
SPEAKER_02: you know,
11:38
SPEAKER_02: sort of Republican campaigns and Democratic campaigns are like Darwin's finches.
11:42
SPEAKER_02: They evolved on separate islands to fill different niches.
11:45
SPEAKER_02: Different voters, different styles of campaigns.
11:48
SPEAKER_02: And so where the digital landscape is primarily on
11:52
SPEAKER_02: the right currently is It's fundraising and getting commissions on
11:58
SPEAKER_02: the dollars raised or placing ads and getting the commission on the dollars spent.
12:04
SPEAKER_02: That middle of the organic content of making sure that your website is easy to find.
12:09
SPEAKER_02: And what does Chat GPT say about your candidate when someone searched for it?
12:14
SPEAKER_02: That really is not owned by anyone.
12:17
SPEAKER_02: And that's a big gap for my side and something I'm working to fill.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: But it really is...
12:24
SPEAKER_02: Down to the business model of where does digital talent sit
12:28
SPEAKER_02: and what does it get compensated to do?
12:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean,
12:33
SPEAKER_01: I guess conversely,
12:34
SPEAKER_01: are there things that you've, I mean,
12:35
SPEAKER_01: I think there is a narrative and to some degree it seems true,
12:40
SPEAKER_01: at least in some cases, that the left has been a bit ahead on this.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: But I was curious actually where you think that
12:46
SPEAKER_01: the right has made up ground particularly,
12:50
SPEAKER_01: or I mean,
12:50
SPEAKER_01: I know that,
12:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
12:51
SPEAKER_01: For example, ActBlue gets talked about all the time, obviously, for donations.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
12:55
SPEAKER_01: they're in a little bit of a mess right now
12:57
SPEAKER_01: over potential foreign donations being cycled through and other things.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: But ActBlue still has been this huge source of small-dollar donations
13:09
SPEAKER_01: for Democratic candidates and causes on the left.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: And I know, obviously, that Republicans have pushed back with WinRed, for instance.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: And I guess I was curious for your thoughts on sort of where...
13:20
SPEAKER_01: You've seen,
13:20
SPEAKER_01: I guess,
13:22
SPEAKER_01: the GOP make progress where, I mean,
13:24
SPEAKER_01: it sounds like there's still things that could change,
13:26
SPEAKER_01: but also maybe where they've surpassed Democrats on some of this stuff.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: So I'll give you an example
13:31
SPEAKER_02: where I think both sides would agree Republicans are ahead, and that's with data.
13:37
SPEAKER_02: So after the sort of lessons that came out of the 2012 campaign,
13:42
SPEAKER_02: the Republican ecosystem got together and said,
13:45
SPEAKER_02: look, we've got to be smarter on data.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: And they developed Data Trust, which is kind of the shared
13:52
SPEAKER_02: hymnal when it comes to voter data for the entire ecosystem.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: And because of its structure,
13:57
SPEAKER_02: you have coordination that's allowed to happen totally legally
14:02
SPEAKER_02: and even more permissible now post Supreme Court.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: And so that has been the model that the Dems are trying to recreate for the last several years.
14:13
SPEAKER_02: Their challenge is the business model for state parties.
14:16
SPEAKER_02: On the Democratic side was selling that voter data.
14:18
SPEAKER_02: So there's sort of a resistance to move away from that model.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: And so that's caused some headaches for them.
14:26
SPEAKER_02: We also see on the Republican side,
14:28
SPEAKER_02: you point out WinRed,
14:30
SPEAKER_02: but the Democrats seem to be more aligned in terms of cooperation and movement
14:42
SPEAKER_02: and adopting shared platforms, which is not the case on the Republican side.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: So I think there are lots of examples of this,
14:50
SPEAKER_02: but WinRed's kind of one of them where,
14:52
SPEAKER_02: you know, we identified a problem, we said, here's a solution.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: And then you have the ecosystem on the right saying, well, I still want to use my own thing.
15:00
SPEAKER_02: And so that, again,
15:02
SPEAKER_02: I think people can see some differences between collectivist thinking
15:07
SPEAKER_02: and independent sort of thinking and libertarian streaks that show up inside
15:13
SPEAKER_02: the small-p politics of the parties and the campaign industry.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's so fascinating.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: It's like,
15:19
SPEAKER_01: where are the things that connect to certain ideological viewpoints pop up even
15:25
SPEAKER_01: when it comes to adoption and use of different campaign tools?
15:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, actually,
15:33
SPEAKER_01: as an example of that,
15:34
SPEAKER_01: I know you've done,
15:36
SPEAKER_01: I mentioned earlier that the Center for Campaign Innovation does a lot of reports,
15:42
SPEAKER_01: does some of its own field experiments.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: And I thought one,
15:46
SPEAKER_01: and I think this gets at something that I feel like I've only sort
15:52
SPEAKER_01: of more recently developed a greater appreciation for as someone trying to send out
15:56
SPEAKER_01: a newsletter.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: Sort of IP addresses and sending out things.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: And I know you did a report a little while back talking about how Democrats had
16:05
SPEAKER_01: an edge in sort of the partisan email divide,
16:10
SPEAKER_01: obviously sending out emails and getting people to click on those emails, well,
16:14
SPEAKER_01: even get them in their inbox and then read the content and engage with,
16:17
SPEAKER_01: click on it,
16:18
SPEAKER_01: you know,
16:18
SPEAKER_01: take them wherever for donations in particular,
16:21
SPEAKER_01: I would imagine is a main, you know, main focus.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: You know, you note that Democrats mainly use one source, which has actually helped them.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: And I thought it'd be really cool if you would explain a little bit
16:32
SPEAKER_01: to folks what's going on there.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: Because I do think this is something that's going to pop up more and more
16:38
SPEAKER_01: as people sort of, I mean,
16:39
SPEAKER_01: especially I think in a world where we get more and more sort
16:41
SPEAKER_01: of independent news creators and other things.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: This is very interesting for campaigns, but it's also applicable even beyond that.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, if any listeners are driving,
16:50
SPEAKER_02: I want them to pull over because this is going to be really exciting.
16:52
SPEAKER_02: We're about to talk about email deliverability and IP addresses.
16:56
SPEAKER_02: Hey, I think it's really interesting.
16:57
SPEAKER_02: And so I'll try to describe this in a couple of levels.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: First, think about, I think it was a bad idea to call email, email after postal mail.
17:09
SPEAKER_02: So think about what happens when you send a letter,
17:11
SPEAKER_02: if you've Had that experience where you write the address correctly,
17:16
SPEAKER_02: you put the stamp on it,
17:17
SPEAKER_02: you put it in the right box and it's going to get to that person.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: It's very unlikely that a monster is going to eat the mail delivery vehicle or
17:28
SPEAKER_02: a sinkhole opens, but these things happen.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: Well, with email, assume that that's going to happen 70, 80% of the time
17:39
SPEAKER_02: And the deliverability,
17:41
SPEAKER_02: what I mean by this is actually reaching the inbox and being in front of
17:45
SPEAKER_02: the eyeballs of your intended recipient is so difficult with email.
17:50
SPEAKER_02: Why is that?
17:53
SPEAKER_02: There's this industry of spammers and they are trying everything they can
17:57
SPEAKER_02: to get one unsuspecting person to click on one link
18:02
SPEAKER_02: and give their entire life savings away.
18:04
SPEAKER_02: And they are incredibly sophisticated,
18:07
SPEAKER_02: but you have companies like Google and Yahoo who provide inboxes who say,
18:11
SPEAKER_02: look, we're going to protect that from happening.
18:13
SPEAKER_02: And legitimate senders kind of get caught up in that.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: Well, think about One of the signals that they have to look at,
18:21
SPEAKER_02: which is how long have you been sending mail, right?
18:25
SPEAKER_02: And so you look at the Democrats
18:28
SPEAKER_02: and they pretty much all use one platform called NGP Van,
18:33
SPEAKER_02: which allows them to basically send from the same IP address or sort of like the
18:41
SPEAKER_02: The location of the computer.
18:42
SPEAKER_02: And they've been doing that for decades now.
18:46
SPEAKER_02: And so if you decide that, hey,
18:48
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to run as a Democrat for Congress,
18:50
SPEAKER_02: you start off on the same IP address that Barack Obama was using
18:55
SPEAKER_02: and Nancy Pelosi has been using.
18:57
SPEAKER_02: And so you have really good reputation.
18:58
SPEAKER_02: You're more likely to make it to the inbox.
19:01
SPEAKER_02: Republicans on the other side,
19:02
SPEAKER_02: on the other hand,
19:03
SPEAKER_02: because they are not on a shared platform, Again,
19:08
SPEAKER_02: we're seeing this difference between collectivism versus sort
19:14
SPEAKER_02: of self-reliance play out.
19:16
SPEAKER_02: Each campaign starts fresh from day one with an IP address that they may share with
19:23
SPEAKER_02: a bunch of unrelated industries.
19:25
SPEAKER_02: We looked in this study, we found one very competitive house race.
19:29
SPEAKER_02: Is sending email alongside a bank from South America,
19:32
SPEAKER_02: a ski lodge
19:34
SPEAKER_02: and a medical equipment sales company.
19:37
SPEAKER_02: Whereas if his opponent is sending alongside Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and AOC
19:46
SPEAKER_02: and so the shape of that email looks a lot more like the political email
19:51
SPEAKER_02: than campaign email next to the other stuff.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: And so that It really does appear to impact deliverability.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: And downrange of deliverability is fundraising,
20:04
SPEAKER_02: is what are the types of emails that we can send, right?
20:08
SPEAKER_02: So if you're not guaranteed that your supporters,
20:11
SPEAKER_02: people who have signed up for your message are going to see your email,
20:14
SPEAKER_02: then you have to do more wild and crazy stuff to get their attention because
20:18
SPEAKER_02: the economics are such that I only need to get one person To see it,
20:22
SPEAKER_02: to make it worth my while.
20:23
SPEAKER_02: And so it is really fascinating.
20:26
SPEAKER_02: And people don't think about this because the IP addresses are basically like
20:30
SPEAKER_02: the phone book of the internet.
20:32
SPEAKER_02: And it's this infrastructure layer that's hiding in the background.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean,
20:38
SPEAKER_01: for instance,
20:38
SPEAKER_01: I've brought up a chart here for people who are watching the video feed of this.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: And I should note that you've got NGP Van, or NGP Web,
20:50
SPEAKER_01: but Action Kit is actually owned by them, right?
20:52
SPEAKER_01: Or was acquired by them.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: So almost all of the examples you were looking at are coming from NGP on the Democratic side.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: And then on the other side, it's just, it's really a laundry list.
21:05
SPEAKER_02: All over the place, yeah.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: And I do think it is fascinating,
21:07
SPEAKER_01: the idea that, you know, I worked at a job previously where we use Constant Contact.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just like,
21:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm just laughing because I know every, I mean,
21:17
SPEAKER_01: to your point, every,
21:19
SPEAKER_01: all kinds of different companies could be using some of these things
21:21
SPEAKER_01: and it would not be- Do you have a credit
21:22
SPEAKER_02: card and a pulse?
21:23
SPEAKER_02: You can- Yeah.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, I want to start sending out something or other.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: Let me sign up for the,
21:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:30
SPEAKER_01: it's not,
21:31
SPEAKER_01: it's not like a campaign specific entity and,
21:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:35
SPEAKER_01: sort of thinking about,
21:36
SPEAKER_01: and maybe this is actually an interesting point to segue because I think a lot
21:39
SPEAKER_01: of what I think of and what other people might think of is, okay,
21:43
SPEAKER_01: So you're hoping as a campaign that your email asking for someone to donate before
21:49
SPEAKER_01: the campaign finance deadline or whatever comes in.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: When you say it has to try crazier things,
21:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm curious if you have any examples of that in terms of like,
22:01
SPEAKER_01: do you mean in terms of the sort of the pitches they make or things that they do
22:07
SPEAKER_01: in order to attract attention?
22:09
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
22:09
SPEAKER_02: this is where people would be familiar with things like matching and deadlines
22:15
SPEAKER_02: that aren't real and volume even, right?
22:18
SPEAKER_02: Because some of it becomes, hey,
22:20
SPEAKER_02: I wanna make sure that if someone does open that folder,
22:24
SPEAKER_02: I'm at the top of the pile rather than someone else.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: And so
22:31
SPEAKER_02: things would change if we knew that people were going to Receive the email
22:37
SPEAKER_02: that they signed up to receive.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: Now, I'm going to set aside for just a moment the problem of campaign sending emails
22:44
SPEAKER_02: to people who did not opt into them or allowing people to send on their behalf
22:50
SPEAKER_02: to people who did not opt in.
22:52
SPEAKER_02: But but really,
22:53
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think there is a challenge where, you know, Again, you see this play out.
22:58
SPEAKER_02: Go look at the Facebook ad library, pick a Republican and a Democrat.
23:02
SPEAKER_02: Chances are the Democrat is spending on list building ads on Facebook.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: Chances are that the Republican is not.
23:08
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's because the economics,
23:10
SPEAKER_02: the return on investment of getting new email addresses from Facebook,
23:15
SPEAKER_02: That you can then fundraise from works for Democrats
23:18
SPEAKER_02: because their emails are getting delivered and placed in inboxes.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: For Republicans,
23:23
SPEAKER_02: you're paying to get these email addresses,
23:25
SPEAKER_02: but very few of them are actually getting delivered.
23:28
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of that goes back to this infrastructure fragmentation that we see.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: It's fascinating to think about because to your point,
23:39
SPEAKER_01: like mentioning the Facebook ads thing there,
23:41
SPEAKER_01: that it can,
23:43
SPEAKER_01: it has, there's like a lot of upstream and downstream, I guess, for all of this.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess,
23:49
SPEAKER_01: you know, if,
23:51
SPEAKER_01: as an example,
23:52
SPEAKER_01: like just,
23:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
23:54
SPEAKER_01: thinking about it,
23:55
SPEAKER_01: when red seems to be something that there has been at least some shift
23:57
SPEAKER_01: toward common use, more common usage, not obviously not entirely.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: And I guess I was curious if you feel like this was sort of an initial effort
24:10
SPEAKER_01: to be like, hey, folks, we have this problem.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: We should probably do something about it.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: Or is there even something going on right now to sort of push toward a more common usage point?
24:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think I...
24:23
SPEAKER_02: Would describe myself as Paul Revere in this regard of pointing out that there is a problem.
24:29
SPEAKER_02: There's a very clear solution.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's not a technically challenging thing.
24:36
SPEAKER_02: It's a small-p political and willpower question.
24:42
SPEAKER_02: I sort of leave that to my colleagues in the industry that are
24:47
SPEAKER_02: at these large campaigns and committees to say,
24:49
SPEAKER_02: is this something that we want to tackle?
24:52
SPEAKER_02: And so on one hand,
24:55
SPEAKER_02: my job at the Center for Campaign Innovation is to bring awareness to the problem,
24:59
SPEAKER_02: change the culture.
25:01
SPEAKER_02: But there are only so many hours in the day that I can deal with challenges to then solve it.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: But I know that people are thinking about this and We've now brought awareness to it.
25:13
SPEAKER_02: And I think that if it's something that we were able to solve,
25:17
SPEAKER_02: you're looking at tens of millions of dollars more raised for campaigns,
25:22
SPEAKER_02: which is important.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Just to sort of shift over to some examples of,
25:34
SPEAKER_01: or at least an example I thought was really interesting of some of
25:38
SPEAKER_01: the field experiment kinds of things that you've been doing.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: As somebody who has spent a lot of time reading political science papers in my life,
25:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm aware that there are field experiments and the idea of finding ways
25:51
SPEAKER_01: to encourage people Who may not have otherwise voted to vote
25:55
SPEAKER_01: and finding like what will engage a voter,
25:58
SPEAKER_01: what will get them to turn out is such a key question for campaigns.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
26:05
SPEAKER_01: you did an interesting experiment and I thought this was just to set this up
26:08
SPEAKER_01: for folks.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: So think about New Jersey in 2024.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: President Trump loses it,
26:14
SPEAKER_01: but he loses it only by about six percentage points,
26:16
SPEAKER_01: much closer than the state has previously been.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
26:19
SPEAKER_01: there is some potential Gains for the GOP that maybe if they can sort
26:25
SPEAKER_01: of keep turning out some of those voters,
26:27
SPEAKER_01: some of whom may not show up in other more regular,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: other elections,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: can we get them to turn out because it might help the Republican cause in
26:33
SPEAKER_01: a place like New Jersey?
26:35
SPEAKER_01: And so you did,
26:36
SPEAKER_01: you essentially ran a field experiment during the 2025 elections in New Jersey,
26:42
SPEAKER_01: I think with that sort of as the backdrop.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: And I thought it'd be cool if you'd go into a little bit of some
26:47
SPEAKER_01: of what you did trying to encourage Basically find what could get people to turn out
26:55
SPEAKER_01: or at least turn out to a higher degree than otherwise.
26:59
SPEAKER_02: So there was a refrain going into 2025 and the midterms,
27:04
SPEAKER_02: which was, hey,
27:05
SPEAKER_02: Republicans are going to win as long as we turn out all the people who voted
27:10
SPEAKER_02: for Donald Trump.
27:11
SPEAKER_02: Right.
27:11
SPEAKER_02: That was sort of the logic.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: And so I wanted to You know,
27:16
SPEAKER_02: sort of say, okay, well, what can we do to make sure that those people turn out?
27:20
SPEAKER_02: So we were able to look at, okay, here,
27:23
SPEAKER_02: and by the way,
27:24
SPEAKER_02: I love the off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey
27:26
SPEAKER_02: because they're great laboratories for some of these things.
27:31
SPEAKER_02: We primarily are focused on things like turnout.
27:35
SPEAKER_02: And so I wanted to look at, okay,
27:39
SPEAKER_02: well, here are some of the messages that you see from the right to boost turnout.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: And I'll say that we do a post-election survey after every election.
27:53
SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that has been cropping up in there is that the...
27:58
SPEAKER_02: What we would call,
28:00
SPEAKER_02: I've stopped calling them low propensity voters, but that's kind of the shorthand.
28:04
SPEAKER_02: What we're really talking about is infrequent voters.
28:07
SPEAKER_02: So these are not people who are, you know, don't care about politics.
28:11
SPEAKER_02: It's just that they've got other stuff going on.
28:13
SPEAKER_02: They may vote when they can, may not.
28:16
SPEAKER_02: And so the idea was, look, hey,
28:17
SPEAKER_02: we just need to throw red meat at these low propensity voters and they're going
28:21
SPEAKER_02: to show up, right?
28:22
SPEAKER_02: That there was some sort of ideological bent that you could tap into.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: My hypothesis was,
28:29
SPEAKER_02: no, I think it's more about convenience and about the accessibility of voting.
28:36
SPEAKER_02: And we've seen some experiments.
28:37
SPEAKER_02: People are probably familiar with the social pressure.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: You know, your neighbors are going to know if you voted, that sort of thing.
28:43
SPEAKER_02: And so what we wanted to do is we tested three messages.
28:45
SPEAKER_02: One was just, hey, it's your civic duty to vote.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: And we use mail to deliver this because it's kind of the cleanest way to make sure
28:52
SPEAKER_02: that it goes to a specific
28:55
SPEAKER_01: That email might not get through, right?
28:57
SPEAKER_02: Well, email might not get through.
28:59
SPEAKER_02: And in this way,
28:59
SPEAKER_02: I know that this household received the mail and I can see who in the household did
29:03
SPEAKER_02: or did not vote.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, I don't know how they voted, but one can hope.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: And then the second message we tested was, Hey,
29:12
SPEAKER_02: your ballot is secure,
29:14
SPEAKER_02: sort of the election integrity message going through, you can trust this.
29:19
SPEAKER_02: And then the third message, yeah, you see the vote with confidence here.
29:24
SPEAKER_02: Your vote is protected,
29:25
SPEAKER_02: sort of talking about some of the things,
29:26
SPEAKER_02: because we would see this in surveys where people say, hey,
29:29
SPEAKER_02: I just don't even bother voting because my vote doesn't count and it's all rigged
29:33
SPEAKER_02: or whatever.
29:34
SPEAKER_02: And then our third message was a streak.
29:37
SPEAKER_02: Fans of Wordle will recognize the concept here,
29:39
SPEAKER_02: which is, You know, you voted in 2024, don't break your streak.
29:45
SPEAKER_02: And so it's talking about making a plan to vote,
29:48
SPEAKER_02: to be a voter,
29:49
SPEAKER_02: which is another finding from sort of academic literature,
29:52
SPEAKER_02: and really just emphasizing the behavior,
29:55
SPEAKER_02: not the ideology,
29:56
SPEAKER_02: because if the ideology was important enough, they would already be voting, right?
30:01
SPEAKER_02: So there's something else going on.
30:02
SPEAKER_02: So this was really a question of, okay,
30:05
SPEAKER_02: what is the thing that we can do to motivate these Infrequent voters
30:09
SPEAKER_02: and turns out messaging on streak on behavior boosted turnout by a little bit,
30:18
SPEAKER_02: which is all we need sometimes.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: Well, that was actually into your point.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: You know,
30:23
SPEAKER_01: I just want to say I think it's fascinating because obviously this was an example
30:26
SPEAKER_01: of using a not digital tool.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: To sort of.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: But it speaks to the importance because campaigns still spend a lot of money on direct mail.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: And so this is a part of the toolkit.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a little more analog, but it's still a part of the toolkit that campaigns use.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: And to your point, part of your mission is to, okay, we've got limited resources.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: How do we best use them?
30:50
SPEAKER_01: So if we're going to mail people,
30:52
SPEAKER_01: how do we send mail to some voters that we're hoping will turn out?
30:57
SPEAKER_01: How do we increase even marginally their turnout?
31:00
SPEAKER_01: Because that can add up if you apply it across the whole district or state even.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: And this messaging is something that could be applied in a digital context as well.
31:10
SPEAKER_02: So one of the challenges that I'm not a political scientist,
31:13
SPEAKER_02: I've never taken a single political science class, as luck would have it.
31:18
SPEAKER_02: But it is...
31:20
SPEAKER_02: That is one of those things where I wanna look at what could we do?
31:27
SPEAKER_02: And so we have to think about how our experiments can come together in a way
31:31
SPEAKER_02: that are credible to the people that we're trying to convince.
31:35
SPEAKER_02: And how can we actually measure them and isolate the effects?
31:38
SPEAKER_02: That gets a little bit difficult to do with digital.
31:44
SPEAKER_02: For a myriad of reasons, but with mail, it's pretty straightforward.
31:48
SPEAKER_02: So if we're trying to test a creative or a mobilization message,
31:52
SPEAKER_02: mail is a good channel to do that.
31:54
SPEAKER_02: And we have to think, okay, well, this can extend to other channels as well.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess actually as an example of that,
32:01
SPEAKER_01: I think you had another experiment you did where,
32:06
SPEAKER_01: did you text folks or you try that?
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Because obviously there at least you,
32:11
SPEAKER_01: in theory, You know, can attach, you know, connect to the person.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: You know,
32:16
SPEAKER_01: it's not quite the same as sending the mail piece to the household,
32:18
SPEAKER_01: but it's still a phone number that is connected to somebody.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: And so you could at least, I think, realistically compare like a voter file.
32:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my wish list is I get one of those things from Clockwork Orange
32:33
SPEAKER_02: where I can just keep people's eyeballs open and get really accurate data like that.
32:37
SPEAKER_02: But barring that, we have to use some of these other methods that kind of approximate it.
32:43
SPEAKER_02: And so the test that you're referring to,
32:45
SPEAKER_02: Geoffrey, is the, again,
32:47
SPEAKER_02: in Virginia,
32:48
SPEAKER_02: the off-year elections,
32:49
SPEAKER_02: we looked at a congressional district and tried to,
32:54
SPEAKER_02: once again,
32:55
SPEAKER_02: how can we motivate these infrequent voters to turn out in
33:00
SPEAKER_02: the gubernatorial election?
33:02
SPEAKER_02: And we looked at, okay, here is a tactic that campaigns employ.
33:07
SPEAKER_02: Intuitively, it should make sense.
33:09
SPEAKER_02: And so what we did is we divided the voters up into four groups.
33:15
SPEAKER_02: Everyone was going to get a door knock attempt.
33:17
SPEAKER_02: Now, these weren't all successful.
33:18
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people are not home.
33:21
SPEAKER_02: But one group,
33:23
SPEAKER_02: Group A,
33:23
SPEAKER_02: got a text within 24 hours of someone coming to their door saying,
33:27
SPEAKER_02: hey, we're going to be in your neighborhood.
33:31
SPEAKER_02: And then another group got the text within 48 hours of someone coming by.
33:37
SPEAKER_02: And then one had the fortunate experience of getting a text before and after.
33:41
SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, one group just got the doorknock.
33:44
SPEAKER_02: And so So I really thought that texting before was gonna help with our completes
33:51
SPEAKER_02: and it was gonna make people wanna open the door.
33:53
SPEAKER_02: Well, once you take the mystery of why is someone knocking at my door away and it's
33:57
SPEAKER_02: to talk about politics, no one comes to the door.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: So we actually saw like there was kind of a backfire on texting before
34:04
SPEAKER_02: because you ruined that element of surprise.
34:07
SPEAKER_02: But where things did seem to shift is the follow-up.
34:14
SPEAKER_02: So basically, you say, hey, if you talk to them, thanks for chatting with me.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: Here's the Plan or the link to build your plan to go vote.
34:25
SPEAKER_02: Again, tying back to that behavior.
34:27
SPEAKER_02: And if you miss them, you say, hey, we were in your neighborhood yesterday.
34:30
SPEAKER_02: Sorry we missed you.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: Here's where you can learn more.
34:34
SPEAKER_02: And so that boosted our turnout, again, by a little bit.
34:40
SPEAKER_02: And for a very cheap text,
34:44
SPEAKER_02: if you're already spending the money to do canvassing,
34:47
SPEAKER_02: it's a no brainer if you can make it a few percentage points more effective.
34:52
SPEAKER_02: To add the text.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: And now that is something that is in campaigns playbooks and is being built into products.
35:00
SPEAKER_02: And so that's really exciting to see.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: And sort of the same idea,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: if I'm not mistaken on this one,
35:06
SPEAKER_01: you also noticed some,
35:08
SPEAKER_01: maybe some interesting gender differences in terms of what works best.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: And it sort of reminded me that This was obviously a more,
35:17
SPEAKER_01: texting is more of a digital tool,
35:19
SPEAKER_01: of course,
35:21
SPEAKER_01: but thinking about the idea of sort of customizing a campaign to the voter and how
35:26
SPEAKER_01: that,
35:26
SPEAKER_01: I know that that's become more and more of a thing of like,
35:28
SPEAKER_01: how can we appeal to certain voters and maybe slicing and dicing the electorate
35:33
SPEAKER_01: a little bit and figure out what works best to engage with certain And in this case,
35:38
SPEAKER_01: it seemed like there was an interesting gender difference,
35:40
SPEAKER_01: which might mean that you might be more likely to use it with maybe women voters
35:43
SPEAKER_01: than men voters.
35:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
35:45
SPEAKER_02: it turns out the infrequent voters who are women were more likely to go out and vote
35:51
SPEAKER_02: when they receive the text message.
35:53
SPEAKER_02: And so...
35:56
SPEAKER_02: Yes, that is an interesting finding.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: But again,
35:58
SPEAKER_02: like the cost of sending text messages to every voter is and there wasn't
36:02
SPEAKER_02: a backfire effect.
36:03
SPEAKER_02: But what this teaches campaigns, I hope,
36:06
SPEAKER_02: is that if you just look at the top line number and say, oh, well, this didn't work.
36:10
SPEAKER_02: Well, once you go and look one layer below,
36:15
SPEAKER_02: you know, the effects can actually be pretty significant.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: And I just think that that kind of finding and just in general,
36:24
SPEAKER_01: obviously to your point, you mentioned that sort of thing about cost here.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: It was essentially looking at the groups of voters.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: It was not very expensive per additional vote.
36:36
SPEAKER_01: And your goal here, of course, was to find additional votes sort of above baseline, if you will.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: Right.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
36:43
SPEAKER_02: Because we had that control.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: Right.
36:46
SPEAKER_02: And I think one thing that's because you have a very numerate audience here
36:53
SPEAKER_02: that will pick up on things like
36:57
SPEAKER_02: confidence intervals and margins of error,
37:02
SPEAKER_02: I will share kind of one of my big frustrations about doing this kind of work,
37:05
SPEAKER_02: which is our ability to measure things.
37:07
SPEAKER_02: Right.
37:08
SPEAKER_02: So what we are trying to find are things that make a half a percent,
37:15
SPEAKER_02: a percentage point difference,
37:17
SPEAKER_02: because again,
37:19
SPEAKER_02: we can talk about sort of the state of elections,
37:23
SPEAKER_02: but most elections are already won or lost before a single vote has been cast just
37:27
SPEAKER_02: because of the demographics.
37:29
SPEAKER_02: But for those competitive races where half a point a point can make a difference
37:34
SPEAKER_02: and we want to find those,
37:36
SPEAKER_02: it becomes very difficult to prove that out in a statistically rigorous way.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: And the example I give to people is imagine if you're going to get measured for
37:48
SPEAKER_02: a new suit, but the tailor only has the first down chains from a football game.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: And that's how he has to measure you.
37:55
SPEAKER_02: And that's really the frustration we have because there are some times
37:58
SPEAKER_02: when I'll be looking at, hey,
38:00
SPEAKER_02: how many people do I need to sample in this congressional district to be able
38:04
SPEAKER_02: to detect the effect of this small thing?
38:06
SPEAKER_02: And it says, oh, well, you need to be able to survey 2 million people.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, there are no congressional districts with 2 million people.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: Two million people.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:13
SPEAKER_02: And so it is frustrating.
38:17
SPEAKER_02: So I know some people like to kind of quibble with, oh, this isn't statistically significant.
38:21
SPEAKER_02: And we try and reach a level of credibility to the campaign decision makers
38:29
SPEAKER_02: that probably isn't ever going to get me published in a peer-reviewed journal.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:34
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, to your point, it's just...
38:37
SPEAKER_01: In a lot of competitive races, it is a bit of a trench warfare kind of analogy, right?
38:42
SPEAKER_01: And, and so you're just trying to find what little thing might move the needle just
38:47
SPEAKER_01: a little bit,
38:48
SPEAKER_01: but you know,
38:49
SPEAKER_01: they're going to be,
38:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm just thinking about like the upcoming midterms,
38:52
SPEAKER_01: you know,
38:52
SPEAKER_01: they're going to be somehow like a fair number of House races get decided
38:55
SPEAKER_01: by like five tenths of a point,
38:58
SPEAKER_01: two tenths of a point,
39:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:00
SPEAKER_01: incredibly close where,
39:02
SPEAKER_01: you know, maybe not one of these things, but a few of these things together.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: Doing something a little more efficiently across a number of different,
39:11
SPEAKER_01: I guess,
39:11
SPEAKER_01: campaign outreach methods could make a difference in a really, really close race.
39:16
SPEAKER_01: And obviously,
39:17
SPEAKER_01: in a situation politically where the country is very divided
39:21
SPEAKER_01: and things are very competitive in most national electoral circumstances,
39:27
SPEAKER_01: you can see the potential added benefit of being on top of these things or
39:31
SPEAKER_01: the potential downside if you're not.
39:34
SPEAKER_02: And here's what keeps me up at night, though.
39:37
SPEAKER_02: It's that misallocation of resources.
39:42
SPEAKER_02: So there are races where we're going to spend too much money and not win them
39:50
SPEAKER_02: or spend too much money and win them.
39:53
SPEAKER_02: But that money could have been redeployed to other places to say, hey,
39:57
SPEAKER_02: maybe we could have saved this person if we,
40:00
SPEAKER_02: instead of spending $2 million over here,
40:01
SPEAKER_02: we only spent $1.8 million and we did $200,000 over here.
40:05
SPEAKER_02: That's the stuff that really keeps me up at night because we were deploying this.
40:11
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's this mindset that more is better.
40:14
SPEAKER_02: And we have shown that there is a limit to how much stuff you can fit in a bag.
40:21
SPEAKER_02: And
40:25
SPEAKER_02: More isn't necessarily always better.
40:27
SPEAKER_02: And so that's the thing that I'm really trying to figure out is, okay,
40:30
SPEAKER_02: what is the exact optimal right amount to spend on this race and the right mix
40:36
SPEAKER_02: of channels?
40:37
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know that we'll ever get there, but that's kind of the vision.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, hey, Eric,
40:44
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to take too much more of your time,
40:47
SPEAKER_01: but I guess I was curious if there were any sort of I don't know,
40:50
SPEAKER_01: closing thoughts you had about sort of the work you're doing and what, I mean,
40:54
SPEAKER_01: it seems,
40:54
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:55
SPEAKER_01: to some extent you just did that,
40:58
SPEAKER_01: but I think for you looking ahead,
41:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:01
SPEAKER_01: obviously the next presidential cycle's coming up and there are all these elections
41:05
SPEAKER_01: across the board,
41:06
SPEAKER_01: big and small, that where many of the things you're looking at could have an impact.
41:12
SPEAKER_01: And so I guess just sort of, is there anything you're looking ahead to in your space?
41:19
SPEAKER_02: Well, so what I think is an important theme that people overlook is sort of
41:26
SPEAKER_02: the historical arc of where campaigns are.
41:29
SPEAKER_02: And we're coming off of the broadcast era of campaigns.
41:33
SPEAKER_02: And really,
41:33
SPEAKER_02: I think we can credit folks like FDR, JFK,
41:37
SPEAKER_02: Eisenhower with bringing in broadcasts where we moved away from this, hey,
41:42
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to go work the convention or I'm going to go,
41:45
SPEAKER_02: you know, be really grassroots.
41:47
SPEAKER_02: And we're now getting back to more grassroots relationship driven campaigning.
41:51
SPEAKER_02: But the technology is different.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: And so that's where I'm spending a lot of my time, particularly with AI.
41:56
SPEAKER_02: I'm a big believer in using AI to campaigns,
42:00
SPEAKER_02: To campaign because it can allow you to be more human, right?
42:03
SPEAKER_02: So you can create more of that tailored content to the person in the way
42:08
SPEAKER_02: that they're going to receive it.
42:10
SPEAKER_02: It might give you better insights about what voters think about.
42:14
SPEAKER_02: It is not, it should not be a way to get yourself away from voters.
42:18
SPEAKER_02: And so we've done experiments with things like relational organizing,
42:22
SPEAKER_02: the idea where, hey,
42:23
SPEAKER_02: we're gonna use text messaging To turn out voters, again,
42:27
SPEAKER_02: kind of a newer thing, but we're going to have their friends send the text messages.
42:31
SPEAKER_02: And so it's going back to this personal campaigning that we've known about for 2000 years.
42:37
SPEAKER_02: But because of that brief blip in the 20th century where we could reach everyone all
42:41
SPEAKER_02: at once with TV, we got away from.
42:44
SPEAKER_02: And so it's kind of counterintuitive when we think about the technology
42:49
SPEAKER_02: and digital media that I think we've got to make campaigns more personal
42:55
SPEAKER_02: and engaging.
42:57
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's great.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: I also wanted to give you a chance.
43:00
SPEAKER_01: People should check out also Campaign Trend, which is your newsletter and also podcast.
43:04
SPEAKER_01: You also have a podcast where you talk about a lot of this stuff.
43:09
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know if campaigntrend.com.
43:12
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know if there's anything else.
43:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, campaigntrend.com.
43:13
SPEAKER_02: If people want to check that out, we've got lots of articles.
43:16
SPEAKER_02: I think one thing that your audience might find helpful is every Friday we send out
43:20
SPEAKER_02: the rundown,
43:21
SPEAKER_02: just sort of the latest news from The world of tech and politics and kind
43:27
SPEAKER_02: of what people need to know and what are the trends shaping
43:31
SPEAKER_02: the political professional world.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: Well, Eric, this has been really great.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you taking the time to come on with me again.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: This is this has been Eric Wilson, the executive director of the Center for Campaign Innovation.
43:46
SPEAKER_01: He also runs the Campaign Trend newsletter.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: And podcast.
43:50
SPEAKER_01: Eric, thank you so much for joining me.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm Geoffrey Skelley, the Decision Desk HQ chief elections analyst and podcast host.
43:59
SPEAKER_01: So again, Eric, really appreciate you.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: It was a great convo.
44:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: Love this stuff.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: So thanks again.