so I’d like to get this presentation
started by asking a quick question who
here would still like to be the
President of the United States I’m
seeing a lot of hands and that’s good
because getting elected to public office
is the easiest thing in the world
absolutely anybody can do it these days
getting elected and winning of any kind
of electoral campaign be it for a
presidency Parliament or even just
student council is a mix between a
science and an art there’s an incredible
amount of research that has gone into
what exactly makes a campaign successful
and there are many different elements to
it
there’s the narrative you’re able to
construct around your candidate there’s
your positions on the issues your
advertising then there’s an incredible
amount of things that come together to
form a successful political campaign but
there’s one thing that a lot of people
don’t think about that when it’s done
right can have an absolutely phenomenal
effect on the success or failure of a
presidential or any kind of political
campaign and that is filled organizing
filled organizing if it’s done right has
the potential to completely disrupt a
political campaign and an electoral race
for a candidate it has an incredibly
powerful impact on increasing your
candidates vote share and the first
European political party who’s able to
take the lessons of American style field
organizing and apply them to elections
here in Europe is going to have an
incredibly powerful new tool at their
disposal but before I get into a little
bit about what field organizing actually
is Who am I
my name is Thomas Gilroy I have four
years of experience working in field
campaigns for major electoral races in
the United States my first race was
working for Christine Quinn’s admittedly
unsuccessful run for mayor in New York
City and my most recent race was I was
lucky enough to work in five states for
Bernie Sanders a presidential primary
campaign including working as part of
the teams behind his upset wins in New
Hampshire and Michigan I’ve seen
firsthand what kind of powerful effects
a well-run field program can have and
today I’d like to share a little bit of
those secrets and a little bit of my
experience with you so right off the bat
what
exactly is field organizing field
organizing is a way of motivating what’s
called direct voter contact as in having
one-on-one interactions with actual
voters most usually either over the
phone or through direct door-to-door
canvassing or going out and knocking
doors canvassing and field organizing is
very very very very unique science to it
there’s a mix between actual hard data
and the utilization of numbers and
information you get on the field and a
certain jeunesse a qua of actual
in-person interaction that is incredibly
important to defining a successful
interaction with a voter in the field
but when you’re looking at the overall
design of how a field program works
there are three main stages identify
persuade and get out the votes now in
the first stage identifying is when
you’re actually going out there in
defining your voter universe so let’s
say that I’m running in a presidential
primary campaign or the people in let’s
say New York State the only people who
can vote in this primary are registered
members of the Democratic Party so it
only makes sense for me to want to talk
to registered members of the Democratic
Party well back in the day if you wanted
to go out and knock on doors and have a
good conversation with voters or have
your volunteers or your canvasses do
that you literally would have to go to
every single door or at the very least
the door of every single registered
Democrat which obviously is going to be
incredibly labor-intensive and a waste
of resources but in 2008 Barack Obama’s
presidential campaign completely upended
the game when it comes to field
organizing in a way that many people
attribute to his tribute his victory in
the primary and the general election –
through the introduction and the mass
use of a tool called van or the voter
activation network the voter activation
network is to put it very simply a
proprietary piece of information and a
proprietary information storing system
that allows the Democratic Party to
build voter profiles and both
information about millions of voters
across the country and using that
information we can create and define a
fantastically detailed voter information
profile so let’s say we’re doing that
same kind of primary election we don’t
want to talk to every single Democrat we
only want to talk to the Democrats who
have a history of
coming out in voting in elections we
only want to talk to Democrats who have
proven that their they have had good
interactions with campers in the past
and we only want to interact with
Democrats who are very involved in the
political system being able to use this
data to narrow down your information and
your target universe is incredibly
incredibly important and once you have
that narrowed down you actually send
voters out send Canvassers out to
identify the voters you want to talk to
at this phase you’re really doing more
of a survey than anything else literally
going out finding out if people have
been thinking about the election what
candidates they’re supporting if they’re
in supporting one at all how they feel
about it and very importantly what
issues are incredibly important to them
using all of this information you’re
able to build a better idea of your
voting universe and having a good solid
base of information gathered during the
identifying stage is the absolute
foundation of a successful field
campaign namely during the second phase
persuasion during the persuasion phase
you are going out and literally
persuading people having identified a
huge or hopefully a huge number of
voters who are on the fence maybe you
haven’t made up their mind during the
persuasion stage is during when you
contact these people for the second time
with your objective being largely to
persuade them to come out and vote for
your candidate this is usually what most
people think of when they think of
door-to-door canvassing so I’m not going
to explain it in too much detail but the
persuasion face is incredibly important
for the simple reason that this is when
you actually get people on your side so
a well-run persuasion campaign being
staffed by well-trained volunteers and
field staff is incredibly incredibly
important to make sure that the message
of your candidate is being brought to
voters in a way that’s clear concise and
most importantly relevant to their lives
and finally we have the single most
important phase of all three of these
GOTV or get out the vote these are four
letters that strike fear into the hearts
of anyone who’s ever worked in a
political campaign because in four days
before the election it is all hands on
deck time making sure you reach out as
much as possible to people you have
already contacted you see even if you
have a good conversation with somebody
at a door it means that they’re much
more likely to actually turn on and vote
but you need to kind of go back and
double-check with them and Riaan
force the importance of them going out
and voting at the same time there’s
people within your party’s base who you
know are reliable voters so you didn’t
necessarily need to persuade them but
you need to go to them to make sure that
they’re coming out and voting in the
election GOTV is very different in the
approach you have to take towards people
at the door namely that at this phase
you’re just making sure they get that
last little push or maybe doing a few
tune ups on their support rather than
trying to get them on board with your
team during DUI TV for example there’s a
lot of psychology involved for example
if I’m at the door during GOTV
my approach to someone would be to have
a friendly conversation or them ask them
when they’re planning on going out and
voting and trying to find out a little
bit more about that so I can build a
vote plan with them to the effect of
quite literally at the end of our
conversation being able to say all right
mr. Smith so you’re going to go to your
local polling place you of course have
to tell them where it is at 9 o’clock in
the morning to go out and vote for
candidate X in the upcoming primary
election literally just saying this
direct order to them are not really an
order but laying out the details for
them can have an incredibly important
incredible impactful response on whether
or not they actually turn out and vote
GOTV is essential to make sure quite
literally that you get out the vote and
get souls to the polls without a
well-run GOTV program you’re going to
see the in labor you invested in the
persuasion and identifying stage go
completely to waste so how effective can
field campaigns really be Yale
University in 2015 did a fairly in-depth
study to do exactly this and what they
found out was shocking what they found
is that when it comes to political
persuasion the medium is the message to
quote Marshall McLuhan impersonal means
of contact robocalls mailers things like
that mass emails have a negligible
impact on whether or not people come out
and vote at all so the money campaigns
are spending on that is essentially
useless television and radio advertising
can have an impact but it usually only
has an impact of between 3 and 5 percent
and that impact fades over time and in
situations where where the voting
population is saturated with ads and
without political advertisement
meaning every single election ever that
impact falls to between 2% and point 5
percent so the incredible amounts of
money that are being poured into
television and radio advertising aren’t
being used well but a well-run field
campaign can in the right situations
lead to a more than 40 percent increase
and somebody’s likelihood to actually go
out and vote for your candidate it’s
different studies have found different
amounts but in a well-run campaign you
can wear with a well-run field campaign
you can expect your total vote share to
go up by between 5 and 10 percent
depending on what study are asking for
so the it is obvious that field
organizing literally just having this
direct person-to-person conversation
about the issues of the election can
have an incredibly impactful result on
whether on your success in the election
so the big question is why don’t more
campaigns do it and the reason why even
though it is vastly more cost effective
is that it is a lot of work to put
together a well-constructed field
campaign not only is it labor and time
intensive but you need a lot of
specialized organizers who know what
they’re doing can effectively train
volunteers and and paid Canvassers and
who can build the infrastructure and
data collection network you need to have
a well-run field program there have been
attempts to bring it over to Europe
before namely during the brexit campaign
but without the kind of intense
infrastructure that needs to be
developed over time it can be a little
difficult to do so but if you are able
to construct that it can be insanely
effective a well-run field campaign can
turn the tides in an election but at the
same time a poorly run filled campaign
can absolutely undermine your campaign
success and to illustrate this I’d like
to take a minute to talk a little bit
about the 2016 presidential election now
by show of hands who here legitimately
thought that Hillary Clinton was going
to win the election I know I certainly
did and the problem with that is that a
lot of Clinton’s team thought the exact
same thing now as a caveat I was not on
the Clinton team I am NOT speaking from
first-hand experience but as the months
have gone on a clearer picture has
started to emerge of what happened
inside of the Clinton camp
leading to the surprise defeat
specifically within Michigan and
Wisconsin now there are a lot there’s a
much larger conversation to be had about
other potential failures but within the
two specific states of Michigan and
Wisconsin weakness in Hillary Clinton’s
field program proved to be a fatal flaw
that very well may have cost her the
election in those states now based on
the research and based on the
information that’s been coming out that
looked like there were two failures that
happened in Hillary Clinton’s field
program a structural and strategic
failure and then a failure of data in
addressing the structural and strategic
failure this is a very rough matrix that
illustrates the kind of populations you
reach out to during geode during your
field campaign of course up here you
have partisanship and over here you have
how often people actually come out and
vote now during your campaign over here
D swing voters who always vote or your
absolute number-one priority reason
being these people are going to vote no
matter what so every single one of these
people who doesn’t vote for you is going
to certainly be a vote for your opponent
so these voters are absolutely the gold
standard of people you need to be
reaching out to beyond that our swing
voters who sometimes vote for the same
exact reason they have a high chance of
voting and could go either way but they
need just a little extra push so these
folks you’d want to make sure you reach
out to again during GOTV
and then over here and C and E you have
the traditional Democratic base or I’ve
been using Democratic but you have the
base as in these are the folks who over
here always vote Democratic and always
vote so you really don’t need to worry
that much about reaching out to these
people because they’re safe votes but
over here democratic people who always
vote Democratic but only sometimes vote
these are exactly the kind of people you
need to be reaching out to during GOTV
for the simple reason that if you make
sure these people get to the polls then
that’s an extra vote in your pocket this
is the conventional logic that a lot of
campaigns use in order to build their
field programs the only problem is the
Clinton campaign thought that because of
the unique situations of the 2016
election and how much of a let’s say
unique candidate Donald Trump was they
had an opportunity to change this game
what they assumed in states that they
thought were safe like Michigan and
Wisconsin was that a lot of the voters
in
this area over here actually we’re in
see the reason being that they thought
that Donald Trump’s brash personality
and the highly visible nature of this
election cycle meant that a lot of
voters would turn out no matter what and
that they could not and so as a result
of that they didn’t need to dedicate
time and resources to getting out the
votes of the Democratic base here at the
same time in states like Pennsylvania
they had a brutha bright idea that
because of the as I said brash
personality of Donald Trump a lot of
centrist Republican voters who always go
out and vote but always vote for
Republicans could be persuaded to
abandon the Republicans and vote for
Secretary Clinton over Donald Trump so
they thought that they could poach
boaters from here in the always vote
Republican column there’s one small
problem with that though is that people
who always vote Republican always vote
Republican there’s a great quote from
Senator Chuck Schumer who’s now the head
there are the most powerful Democrat in
the United States Senate that for every
one voter we lose in the Rust Belt we’re
gonna gain two in the wealthy
Philadelphia suburbs the only problem
with that is that these voters who they
reached out to who are Republicans still
went out and voted for Trump when you
look at actual vote totals particularly
in swing states Donald Trump didn’t have
some huge ups well in response and
voters he actually had about as many
voters as other Republican candidates
have in the past the Republican base
turned out for Donald Trump but because
they weren’t reached out to enough the
Democratic base failed to turn out for
hair Larry Clinton that’s why from a
strategic level this really is not so
much an election that Donald Trump won
through some grand political strategy
but it’s one that the Clinton team lost
by making assumptions about the
Democratic base beyond that though
there’s another level of failure a data
failure on the part of the Clinton
campaign earlier on I talked about how
important it was to build your
identification Network and to create a
robust network of voter profiles but the
Clinton campaign thought in the same way
that through the introduction of van the
Obama campaign revolutionized how it
campaigns are run the Clinton campaign
thought they could take it a step
further in a lot of states particularly
in states they thought were safe now
they did have a more robust more
traditional field organization in states
they thought were going to become
but in safe States they thought that
they’d found a way to game the system
instead of doing traditional 3-step
identification what they did instead was
they bought huge amounts of advertising
metadata and used that to construct an
ideal voter profile their thought was
using the same kind of thought
information that allows advertisers to
target you based on your Facebook Likes
and things like that to deliver targeted
advertisements they thought they could
construct a voter profile and voter data
information base from the exact same
bits of information so let’s say for
example they find out people who earn
more than $80,000 a year watch certain
TV shows and have a college education
are more likely to vote for Secretary
Clinton than Donald Trump they would
assume that these people are in their
column and in doing so they could save
themselves an incredible amount of time
and labor and it is a really really good
idea except for one problem their data
was wrong
their reports have been from their
reports coming out from states like
Michigan Michigan specifically as in
this case where some Canvassers were
going out and 40% of the people they
were reaching out to who were supposed
to be in the democratic base were
actually strong trump voters not only
with the campaign dedicating resources
to their this data based approach and
not turning out their own voters but
they were actually increasing their
opponents vote share about getting out
those candidates and at this but at the
same time when field organizers started
reporting back to campaign headquarters
in Brooklyn that they were seeing vast
discrepancies between conditions on the
ground and the data they were told the
data they were given the campaign’s
response was that they were wrong and to
trust the data instead of what they were
seeing on the ground and as a result of
that the a lot of the field operations
were not as well staffed and weren’t as
well resourced as I needed to be there
even some accounts though of volunteers
going trying to go to Michigan to knock
doors for the campaign and being told to
turn around and go home
because the campaign thought that if the
Trump campaign saw more Clinton
volunteers going to Michigan they would
increase their spending in Michigan
which would lead to an arms race so
their reliance on the data that was
wrong ended up costing
big time in the election this is just
proof that when it comes to field
organizing you can’t beat actual hard
work and field organizing you can’t try
to gain the system and at least for now
there’s only so far you can push it real
well done organizing is the only subtly
the only thing that can actually make a
field campaign work and I’d like to talk
just very briefly about what happens
when a field campaign is run well now as
I said I did work for Bernie Sanders and
I am a little bit personally biased but
this is what happens when you have a
field campaign run well in early 2016 in
late 2015
nobody knew who Bernie Sanders was but
because of he’s almost because of the
virtual tie in the Iowa caucuses and his
outstanding win in New Hampshire Bernie
Sanders splashed onto the national
consciousness the reason he was able to
do as well as he did in Iowa New
Hampshire is that in both campaigns he
had professional well trained and well
trained and intelligent field programs
out there the impact that those field
programs had on turning out voters in
those two specific states is hard to
overstate and in other states for
example in Michigan where I worked as
well as in New Hampshire and the the
same exact thing happened
everybody said Bernie was going to lose
but because the campaign took a strong
field first organizing approach he was
able to win what was at least until that
November one of the biggest political
upsets in recent political history and
also I just loved this photo because if
it wasn’t cropped so much I would be
right there when it’s done right field
can have an ink can have an incredible
amount of impact on a campaign and
completely change the game in an
electoral race the first European
political party who’s able to take the
lessons of American style field
organizing and apply them to their races
is going to have an incredibly powerful
tool at the disposal so the big question
is which party will be it and will you
take the steps to make sure that your
political party motivates be motivates
their their leaders to engage with field
organizing in order to construct more
more sustainable more in Noora
comprehensive and
long-term relationships with voters that
can lead to a huge impact on voter
turnout for the next century of European
politics thank you very much
[Applause]
started by asking a quick question who
here would still like to be the
President of the United States I’m
seeing a lot of hands and that’s good
because getting elected to public office
is the easiest thing in the world
absolutely anybody can do it these days
getting elected and winning of any kind
of electoral campaign be it for a
presidency Parliament or even just
student council is a mix between a
science and an art there’s an incredible
amount of research that has gone into
what exactly makes a campaign successful
and there are many different elements to
it
there’s the narrative you’re able to
construct around your candidate there’s
your positions on the issues your
advertising then there’s an incredible
amount of things that come together to
form a successful political campaign but
there’s one thing that a lot of people
don’t think about that when it’s done
right can have an absolutely phenomenal
effect on the success or failure of a
presidential or any kind of political
campaign and that is filled organizing
filled organizing if it’s done right has
the potential to completely disrupt a
political campaign and an electoral race
for a candidate it has an incredibly
powerful impact on increasing your
candidates vote share and the first
European political party who’s able to
take the lessons of American style field
organizing and apply them to elections
here in Europe is going to have an
incredibly powerful new tool at their
disposal but before I get into a little
bit about what field organizing actually
is Who am I
my name is Thomas Gilroy I have four
years of experience working in field
campaigns for major electoral races in
the United States my first race was
working for Christine Quinn’s admittedly
unsuccessful run for mayor in New York
City and my most recent race was I was
lucky enough to work in five states for
Bernie Sanders a presidential primary
campaign including working as part of
the teams behind his upset wins in New
Hampshire and Michigan I’ve seen
firsthand what kind of powerful effects
a well-run field program can have and
today I’d like to share a little bit of
those secrets and a little bit of my
experience with you so right off the bat
what
exactly is field organizing field
organizing is a way of motivating what’s
called direct voter contact as in having
one-on-one interactions with actual
voters most usually either over the
phone or through direct door-to-door
canvassing or going out and knocking
doors canvassing and field organizing is
very very very very unique science to it
there’s a mix between actual hard data
and the utilization of numbers and
information you get on the field and a
certain jeunesse a qua of actual
in-person interaction that is incredibly
important to defining a successful
interaction with a voter in the field
but when you’re looking at the overall
design of how a field program works
there are three main stages identify
persuade and get out the votes now in
the first stage identifying is when
you’re actually going out there in
defining your voter universe so let’s
say that I’m running in a presidential
primary campaign or the people in let’s
say New York State the only people who
can vote in this primary are registered
members of the Democratic Party so it
only makes sense for me to want to talk
to registered members of the Democratic
Party well back in the day if you wanted
to go out and knock on doors and have a
good conversation with voters or have
your volunteers or your canvasses do
that you literally would have to go to
every single door or at the very least
the door of every single registered
Democrat which obviously is going to be
incredibly labor-intensive and a waste
of resources but in 2008 Barack Obama’s
presidential campaign completely upended
the game when it comes to field
organizing in a way that many people
attribute to his tribute his victory in
the primary and the general election –
through the introduction and the mass
use of a tool called van or the voter
activation network the voter activation
network is to put it very simply a
proprietary piece of information and a
proprietary information storing system
that allows the Democratic Party to
build voter profiles and both
information about millions of voters
across the country and using that
information we can create and define a
fantastically detailed voter information
profile so let’s say we’re doing that
same kind of primary election we don’t
want to talk to every single Democrat we
only want to talk to the Democrats who
have a history of
coming out in voting in elections we
only want to talk to Democrats who have
proven that their they have had good
interactions with campers in the past
and we only want to interact with
Democrats who are very involved in the
political system being able to use this
data to narrow down your information and
your target universe is incredibly
incredibly important and once you have
that narrowed down you actually send
voters out send Canvassers out to
identify the voters you want to talk to
at this phase you’re really doing more
of a survey than anything else literally
going out finding out if people have
been thinking about the election what
candidates they’re supporting if they’re
in supporting one at all how they feel
about it and very importantly what
issues are incredibly important to them
using all of this information you’re
able to build a better idea of your
voting universe and having a good solid
base of information gathered during the
identifying stage is the absolute
foundation of a successful field
campaign namely during the second phase
persuasion during the persuasion phase
you are going out and literally
persuading people having identified a
huge or hopefully a huge number of
voters who are on the fence maybe you
haven’t made up their mind during the
persuasion stage is during when you
contact these people for the second time
with your objective being largely to
persuade them to come out and vote for
your candidate this is usually what most
people think of when they think of
door-to-door canvassing so I’m not going
to explain it in too much detail but the
persuasion face is incredibly important
for the simple reason that this is when
you actually get people on your side so
a well-run persuasion campaign being
staffed by well-trained volunteers and
field staff is incredibly incredibly
important to make sure that the message
of your candidate is being brought to
voters in a way that’s clear concise and
most importantly relevant to their lives
and finally we have the single most
important phase of all three of these
GOTV or get out the vote these are four
letters that strike fear into the hearts
of anyone who’s ever worked in a
political campaign because in four days
before the election it is all hands on
deck time making sure you reach out as
much as possible to people you have
already contacted you see even if you
have a good conversation with somebody
at a door it means that they’re much
more likely to actually turn on and vote
but you need to kind of go back and
double-check with them and Riaan
force the importance of them going out
and voting at the same time there’s
people within your party’s base who you
know are reliable voters so you didn’t
necessarily need to persuade them but
you need to go to them to make sure that
they’re coming out and voting in the
election GOTV is very different in the
approach you have to take towards people
at the door namely that at this phase
you’re just making sure they get that
last little push or maybe doing a few
tune ups on their support rather than
trying to get them on board with your
team during DUI TV for example there’s a
lot of psychology involved for example
if I’m at the door during GOTV
my approach to someone would be to have
a friendly conversation or them ask them
when they’re planning on going out and
voting and trying to find out a little
bit more about that so I can build a
vote plan with them to the effect of
quite literally at the end of our
conversation being able to say all right
mr. Smith so you’re going to go to your
local polling place you of course have
to tell them where it is at 9 o’clock in
the morning to go out and vote for
candidate X in the upcoming primary
election literally just saying this
direct order to them are not really an
order but laying out the details for
them can have an incredibly important
incredible impactful response on whether
or not they actually turn out and vote
GOTV is essential to make sure quite
literally that you get out the vote and
get souls to the polls without a
well-run GOTV program you’re going to
see the in labor you invested in the
persuasion and identifying stage go
completely to waste so how effective can
field campaigns really be Yale
University in 2015 did a fairly in-depth
study to do exactly this and what they
found out was shocking what they found
is that when it comes to political
persuasion the medium is the message to
quote Marshall McLuhan impersonal means
of contact robocalls mailers things like
that mass emails have a negligible
impact on whether or not people come out
and vote at all so the money campaigns
are spending on that is essentially
useless television and radio advertising
can have an impact but it usually only
has an impact of between 3 and 5 percent
and that impact fades over time and in
situations where where the voting
population is saturated with ads and
without political advertisement
meaning every single election ever that
impact falls to between 2% and point 5
percent so the incredible amounts of
money that are being poured into
television and radio advertising aren’t
being used well but a well-run field
campaign can in the right situations
lead to a more than 40 percent increase
and somebody’s likelihood to actually go
out and vote for your candidate it’s
different studies have found different
amounts but in a well-run campaign you
can wear with a well-run field campaign
you can expect your total vote share to
go up by between 5 and 10 percent
depending on what study are asking for
so the it is obvious that field
organizing literally just having this
direct person-to-person conversation
about the issues of the election can
have an incredibly impactful result on
whether on your success in the election
so the big question is why don’t more
campaigns do it and the reason why even
though it is vastly more cost effective
is that it is a lot of work to put
together a well-constructed field
campaign not only is it labor and time
intensive but you need a lot of
specialized organizers who know what
they’re doing can effectively train
volunteers and and paid Canvassers and
who can build the infrastructure and
data collection network you need to have
a well-run field program there have been
attempts to bring it over to Europe
before namely during the brexit campaign
but without the kind of intense
infrastructure that needs to be
developed over time it can be a little
difficult to do so but if you are able
to construct that it can be insanely
effective a well-run field campaign can
turn the tides in an election but at the
same time a poorly run filled campaign
can absolutely undermine your campaign
success and to illustrate this I’d like
to take a minute to talk a little bit
about the 2016 presidential election now
by show of hands who here legitimately
thought that Hillary Clinton was going
to win the election I know I certainly
did and the problem with that is that a
lot of Clinton’s team thought the exact
same thing now as a caveat I was not on
the Clinton team I am NOT speaking from
first-hand experience but as the months
have gone on a clearer picture has
started to emerge of what happened
inside of the Clinton camp
leading to the surprise defeat
specifically within Michigan and
Wisconsin now there are a lot there’s a
much larger conversation to be had about
other potential failures but within the
two specific states of Michigan and
Wisconsin weakness in Hillary Clinton’s
field program proved to be a fatal flaw
that very well may have cost her the
election in those states now based on
the research and based on the
information that’s been coming out that
looked like there were two failures that
happened in Hillary Clinton’s field
program a structural and strategic
failure and then a failure of data in
addressing the structural and strategic
failure this is a very rough matrix that
illustrates the kind of populations you
reach out to during geode during your
field campaign of course up here you
have partisanship and over here you have
how often people actually come out and
vote now during your campaign over here
D swing voters who always vote or your
absolute number-one priority reason
being these people are going to vote no
matter what so every single one of these
people who doesn’t vote for you is going
to certainly be a vote for your opponent
so these voters are absolutely the gold
standard of people you need to be
reaching out to beyond that our swing
voters who sometimes vote for the same
exact reason they have a high chance of
voting and could go either way but they
need just a little extra push so these
folks you’d want to make sure you reach
out to again during GOTV
and then over here and C and E you have
the traditional Democratic base or I’ve
been using Democratic but you have the
base as in these are the folks who over
here always vote Democratic and always
vote so you really don’t need to worry
that much about reaching out to these
people because they’re safe votes but
over here democratic people who always
vote Democratic but only sometimes vote
these are exactly the kind of people you
need to be reaching out to during GOTV
for the simple reason that if you make
sure these people get to the polls then
that’s an extra vote in your pocket this
is the conventional logic that a lot of
campaigns use in order to build their
field programs the only problem is the
Clinton campaign thought that because of
the unique situations of the 2016
election and how much of a let’s say
unique candidate Donald Trump was they
had an opportunity to change this game
what they assumed in states that they
thought were safe like Michigan and
Wisconsin was that a lot of the voters
in
this area over here actually we’re in
see the reason being that they thought
that Donald Trump’s brash personality
and the highly visible nature of this
election cycle meant that a lot of
voters would turn out no matter what and
that they could not and so as a result
of that they didn’t need to dedicate
time and resources to getting out the
votes of the Democratic base here at the
same time in states like Pennsylvania
they had a brutha bright idea that
because of the as I said brash
personality of Donald Trump a lot of
centrist Republican voters who always go
out and vote but always vote for
Republicans could be persuaded to
abandon the Republicans and vote for
Secretary Clinton over Donald Trump so
they thought that they could poach
boaters from here in the always vote
Republican column there’s one small
problem with that though is that people
who always vote Republican always vote
Republican there’s a great quote from
Senator Chuck Schumer who’s now the head
there are the most powerful Democrat in
the United States Senate that for every
one voter we lose in the Rust Belt we’re
gonna gain two in the wealthy
Philadelphia suburbs the only problem
with that is that these voters who they
reached out to who are Republicans still
went out and voted for Trump when you
look at actual vote totals particularly
in swing states Donald Trump didn’t have
some huge ups well in response and
voters he actually had about as many
voters as other Republican candidates
have in the past the Republican base
turned out for Donald Trump but because
they weren’t reached out to enough the
Democratic base failed to turn out for
hair Larry Clinton that’s why from a
strategic level this really is not so
much an election that Donald Trump won
through some grand political strategy
but it’s one that the Clinton team lost
by making assumptions about the
Democratic base beyond that though
there’s another level of failure a data
failure on the part of the Clinton
campaign earlier on I talked about how
important it was to build your
identification Network and to create a
robust network of voter profiles but the
Clinton campaign thought in the same way
that through the introduction of van the
Obama campaign revolutionized how it
campaigns are run the Clinton campaign
thought they could take it a step
further in a lot of states particularly
in states they thought were safe now
they did have a more robust more
traditional field organization in states
they thought were going to become
but in safe States they thought that
they’d found a way to game the system
instead of doing traditional 3-step
identification what they did instead was
they bought huge amounts of advertising
metadata and used that to construct an
ideal voter profile their thought was
using the same kind of thought
information that allows advertisers to
target you based on your Facebook Likes
and things like that to deliver targeted
advertisements they thought they could
construct a voter profile and voter data
information base from the exact same
bits of information so let’s say for
example they find out people who earn
more than $80,000 a year watch certain
TV shows and have a college education
are more likely to vote for Secretary
Clinton than Donald Trump they would
assume that these people are in their
column and in doing so they could save
themselves an incredible amount of time
and labor and it is a really really good
idea except for one problem their data
was wrong
their reports have been from their
reports coming out from states like
Michigan Michigan specifically as in
this case where some Canvassers were
going out and 40% of the people they
were reaching out to who were supposed
to be in the democratic base were
actually strong trump voters not only
with the campaign dedicating resources
to their this data based approach and
not turning out their own voters but
they were actually increasing their
opponents vote share about getting out
those candidates and at this but at the
same time when field organizers started
reporting back to campaign headquarters
in Brooklyn that they were seeing vast
discrepancies between conditions on the
ground and the data they were told the
data they were given the campaign’s
response was that they were wrong and to
trust the data instead of what they were
seeing on the ground and as a result of
that the a lot of the field operations
were not as well staffed and weren’t as
well resourced as I needed to be there
even some accounts though of volunteers
going trying to go to Michigan to knock
doors for the campaign and being told to
turn around and go home
because the campaign thought that if the
Trump campaign saw more Clinton
volunteers going to Michigan they would
increase their spending in Michigan
which would lead to an arms race so
their reliance on the data that was
wrong ended up costing
big time in the election this is just
proof that when it comes to field
organizing you can’t beat actual hard
work and field organizing you can’t try
to gain the system and at least for now
there’s only so far you can push it real
well done organizing is the only subtly
the only thing that can actually make a
field campaign work and I’d like to talk
just very briefly about what happens
when a field campaign is run well now as
I said I did work for Bernie Sanders and
I am a little bit personally biased but
this is what happens when you have a
field campaign run well in early 2016 in
late 2015
nobody knew who Bernie Sanders was but
because of he’s almost because of the
virtual tie in the Iowa caucuses and his
outstanding win in New Hampshire Bernie
Sanders splashed onto the national
consciousness the reason he was able to
do as well as he did in Iowa New
Hampshire is that in both campaigns he
had professional well trained and well
trained and intelligent field programs
out there the impact that those field
programs had on turning out voters in
those two specific states is hard to
overstate and in other states for
example in Michigan where I worked as
well as in New Hampshire and the the
same exact thing happened
everybody said Bernie was going to lose
but because the campaign took a strong
field first organizing approach he was
able to win what was at least until that
November one of the biggest political
upsets in recent political history and
also I just loved this photo because if
it wasn’t cropped so much I would be
right there when it’s done right field
can have an ink can have an incredible
amount of impact on a campaign and
completely change the game in an
electoral race the first European
political party who’s able to take the
lessons of American style field
organizing and apply them to their races
is going to have an incredibly powerful
tool at the disposal so the big question
is which party will be it and will you
take the steps to make sure that your
political party motivates be motivates
their their leaders to engage with field
organizing in order to construct more
more sustainable more in Noora
comprehensive and
long-term relationships with voters that
can lead to a huge impact on voter
turnout for the next century of European
politics thank you very much
[Applause]
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