Eight states held primaries last Tuesday, including California. Primaries are especially competitive in California because of term limits and a unique open primary system where all parties are on one ballot and two winners advance to the general election. That means California can have Democrat vs. Democrat or Republican vs. Republican general elections, making primaries really interesting.
People following closely couldn’t take their eyes off the State Senate race in CA's 26th district, where five strong candidates emerged, but only two could win. The top three finishers were NationBuilder customers Ben Allen, Sandra Fluke, and Seth Stodder, followed closely by Betsy Butler, who redirected parts of her own site to NationBuilder action pages.
All candidates were within a mere 6.3 percentage points of each other, and no one beat the next best finisher by more than 2.2%.
Given the strength of showing for the candidates using advanced digital organizing tactics, it is worth dissecting what might have made this very narrow difference in such a social media heavy district. First, we'll look at external-facing digital organizing tactics, and then we'll take a peek behind the scenes at the data.
Social Sign-in
Ben Allen’s site allows visitors to easily log in through Facebook and Twitter in addition to providing an email address. This helps an organization capture the social media contact info of many more potential supporters, donors, and volunteers.
Vote Pledge
Allen's campaign also features the NationBuilder vote pledge form, which lets a site visitor indicate their level of support online. NationBuilder can then sync that information to the candidate's voter file, meaning door knocking and phone banking efforts become better targeted and more efficient.
Optimized Donate Pages
Fluke’s donation page borrows best practices in design and functionality from the Obama campaign—and it works. Instead of forcing a visitor to leave the page and use another platform to donate, Fluke’s page (designed by IronNationBuilder Challenge winners, Veracity Media) features a video, a donation form, and a “process my donation” button, making it super easy for supporters to complete the process quickly.
The Action Center
Stodder's site, designed by NationBuilder architects Magic + Logic, does an incredible job of pushing visitors to take action. Instead of the standard "Volunteer" or "Bio" links, Stodder's site prominently ask visitors to "do something," "say something," "give something," and "learn something." It is visibly and emotionally compelling.
The Data
Equally compelling is what happens after people do/say/give/learn something. Supporter information is captured and funneled into the candidate’s control panel, where NationBuilder Match syncs every email to corresponding Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Klout accounts. The campaign can quickly sort to find voters with the most online followers in a given precinct, or the people who reliably engage online that should be asked to volunteer offline, too.
This data can also be combined with their voter file, creating a super-enhanced voter targeting program. The result is much faster volunteer community growth and easy identification of leaders and socially influential supporters.
In such a tight race, savvy digital organizing and community building tactics are not the only reason these candidates were successful—but they certainly didn't hurt. If you want to learn more about how your campaign, nonprofit, or business can benefit from these best practices and more, just email me.
