A political campaign is a coordinated effort to support or oppose a particular candidate or ballot initiative. Every two years (a “campaign cycle”), thousands of campaigns are organized across the country to elect a new president, 435 members of Congress, 100 senators, and hundreds of local elected officials including mayors, county councilmembers, city supervisors, and state governors. Campaigns can range from small, local operations run by a few paid staffers to large national operations with tens of thousands of volunteer and paid staffers.
A key first step in any campaign is to determine how much support the candidate needs to win by calculating a “vote goal.” This number will guide many decisions throughout the campaign, from what door-to-door targets to target to how many mailers are sent out. Once a campaign knows how many votes it needs to win, it can then determine who its target voters are by dividing them into “persuasion” and “mobilization” universes. Persuasion universes consist of voters who may not vote for the incumbent but need to be convinced to cast a ballot, while mobilization universes are voters that are likely to be supportive of the campaign.
A campaign must also research its opponents, both in terms of their platform positions and the public records of their past actions that could be used against them. Similarly, a campaign should research its own constituents to better understand what their concerns and priorities are so that the campaign can craft more effective messaging.