Every election cycle, first-time municipal candidates dramatically underestimate the cost of a ground game. They budget thousands for lawn signs and social media ads, but leave nothing for the tools required to actually identify and turn out voters.
Budgeting for Turnout
A lawn sign doesn't vote. Identifying a sympathetic voter at the door and ensuring they cast a ballot on election day is what wins municipal races, which often hinge on just a few hundred votes.
Here is what you actually need:
- Voter Data: Obtaining the municipal voters list (free, but requires heavy processing to be usable).
- Literature: High-quality, concise leave-behinds ($500 - $1000).
- Volunteer Nourishment: Pizza and coffee for canvass launches ($300 - $600).
- Data Infrastructure: A system to track who you've talked to and who you need to turn out.
Historically, the data infrastructure cost thousands of dollars, restricting sophisticated ground games to provincial or federal parties.
Canvassed changes this equation. For a flat, low monthly fee, municipal campaigns get access to the same real-time routing, data collection, and GOTV (Get Out The Vote) dashboards used by the big leagues.
Invest in your data. It's the only asset that actually gets ballots in boxes.