¶ Sources
Adapted from Arena Campaign Glossary and Crack the Code Political Data Glossary.
For more in-depth training resources, visit the stac Labs Resource Center.
¶ Election and Political Terms
- AVEV - Absentee Vote Early Vote - Refers to the multiple ways someone can vote prior to election day.
- AVR - Automatic Voter Registration - Policy/process where eligible voters are placed on the voter rolls automatically usually when they interact with a state agency such as the DMV
- BOE - Board of Elections - Entity that administers elections, at the state and/or county level
- Down ballot - Contest that appears lower on the electoral ballot usually referring to local races
- EDay - Election Day
- IPEV - In Person Early Vote - The process of voting whereby a voter goes to a polling location before election day and casts their ballot.
- Midterm Election or Midterms - Type of election where the people can elect their representatives in the middle of the term of the executive or of another set of members. Or the Election that occurs in the middle of a presidential election. For example, the last two Presidential elections occurred in 2012 and 2016. The Midterm elections were in 2014 and 2018 because the president was not up for re-election those years. Traditionally, voter turnout is lower during midterms elections.
- Party reg - party registration - Political party a person is registered with on their voter registration form (for states that collect that information)
- PEVL - Permanent Early Voting List - Option some states offer that allows voters to automatically receive a mail ballot each election
- Primary Election (Open or Closed) - An election held to determine which of a party's candidates will receive that party's nomination and be their sole candidate later in the general election. In an open primary, all voters can vote for any candidate they prefer, regardless of the voter’s or candidate's party affiliation. In a closed primary, voters can only vote for a candidate from the party that the voter belongs to.
- SoS - Secretary of State - Entity that administers elections in some states
- VBM - Vote by Mail - The process by which a voter casts their vote by mailing the ballot to the county election official.
- VRA - Voting Rights Act - Passed in 1965 and meant to protect voting rights and end discrimination. Required certain jurisdictions.
¶ Campaign Terms
- Attempts - An effort to contact an individual voter directly. Usually used when discussing a field program referencing doors knocking, phone calls and text messages. Attempts are recorded in VAN as a canvass status.
- Base / base voters - Voters who are thought will always turn out for a specific party
- Canvassing - An effort to contact and speak directly to a list of targeted voters. Usually refers to knocking on their door, but can also be event-based.
- Constituency - A body of voters in a specified area who elect a representative to a legislative body.
- Contacts - Refers to an interaction between a campaign representative and a voter where information was gathered about the voter (usually at the door or on the phone). Often used interchangeably with “conversation” or “touch.” Broadly represented in VAN as the Canvass Status simply called "Canvassed".
- Day of Action - A day on the campaign during which volunteers are organized to take collective action (such as house meetings, canvasses, phone banks, text banks) en masse across the district, state, or Country.
- Direct mail - One element of paid communications, a direct or paid mail program is made up of individual mail pieces sent directly from your campaign to a targeted list of voters
- Direct Voter Contact - Attempts by the campaign to directly reach or engage voters. Tactics include face-to-face conversations (usually at the door), phone conversations, text messaging, and mail. This is in contrast with other voter contact methods such as Direct Mail or Paid Media.
- Distributed Organizing - Organizing model that prioritizes the work being done by chapters or organization subsets and focuses on how building momentum at the local level can help yield larger victories
- Dry Run - A scheduled GOTV practice, usually in the last weeks leading up to the election, where reporting systems, Staging Locations, and volunteer leadership are tested
- Earned Media - Getting news coverage using only PR tactics/buzz/events. Free media or press that is “earned” by the campaign, rather than paid advertising. For example, campaigns may choose to put together events in order to attract press who will cover a particular story or narrative.
- Field - Referring to “boots on the ground,” i.e. canvassers, door knocks, phone calling, texting and other Direct Voter Contact methods. Can also include other volunteer or organizer-led activism and engagement, like letters to the editor or postcard writing.
- Flake Rate - The percent of people who sign up to volunteer for a campaign or event but do not participate.
- GOTV - “Get Out The Vote” - Any program related to getting people to vote in an election. The final weeks or days of the campaign in which the entire focus of the campaign is turning out supporters to vote for the candidate. Commonly used as a verb. Pronounced "G. O. T. V." and not "Go TV".
- GOTV Universe - List of voters your campaign has targeted for engagement during GOTV. It will include your identified supporters, as well as those with relatively high support but relatively low turnout propensity.
- ID - A vote intention from a specific voter given to the campaign, usually in a canvass or a survey context. Can also be used as a verb. Usually recorded as 1 - Strong Support; 2 - Lean Support; 3 - Undecided; 4 - Lean Oppose; 5 - Strong Oppose.
- Intersectionality - First coined in 1989 by American civil rights advocate and leading scholar of critical race theory, Columbia and UCLA law professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, which is the study of overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination. Put more simply, it is about constituent groups that are part of larger advocacy group that feel that they are invisible, not included and erased from the discussions, concerns, and advocacy of the main group that claims to also represent their interest. For example, women of color issues about racism not being defended among mainstream feminist groups; violence against LGBTQ people of color not recognized among mainstream Gay Rights groups; the needs of girls not considered in policy discussions about the school-to-prison pipeline that often focuses on boys, etc.
- Neighborhood Team Leader - In the Team model of organizing this person is a committed volunteer who is empowered to run the campaign’s direct voter contact operations in their neighborhood. This person usually manages other volunteer leaders,such as Canvass Captains, Phone Bank Captains, and Data Captains.
- Paid media - Buying political ads (newspaper, TV, etc) with campaign money
- Path to Victory - Calculation of the campaign’s vote goal (also called the win number), and how many voters must be persuaded, registered, and/or turned out to reach that vote goal. A sophisticated pathway to victory will also include an analysis of who the target voters are for persuasion, registration, and turnout.
- Penetration - Percentage of a voter universe/list that has been contacted by the campaign. For example, one might say that we’ve reached 70% penetration, to indicate that we have had conversations with 70% of the voters the campaign is targeting. Often mistakenly used interchangeably with “saturation” which refers to how many times each voter is contacted.
- Persuasion - Targeting undecided voters and persuading them to vote for you in the election, essentially moving them from undecided to decided
- Persuadable voters - Voters that the campaign will target and attempt to persuade to vote for the candidate. Typically, refers to voters who are somewhat likely to turn out to vote but are currently undecided or do not have a strong partisan identity.
- Predictive dialer - Software that automatically dials through a phone list, connecting only with live callers (skipping answering machines, busy signals, and disconnected numbers), used to accelerate passes through a phone universe. Rates for this service vary, and some training of volunteers is required before use. The average dialer will triple your contact rates.
- Relational Organizing - Utilizes a volunteer’s or organizer’s existing relationships to build power for an organization. Relational organizing tools let a campaign distribute calls to action, capture data, and track metrics on their relational organizing program
- Shift - Amount of time a volunteer should commit to volunteering when they sign up. During GOTV, typically 3-4 hours in length. Notably, this is different than the number of volunteers recruited, as volunteers can (and should!) complete multiple shifts. Because measuring shifts is how capacity is calculated, this term will be used frequently in a variety of ways.
- Snowflake model - Distributed leadership model used to organize communities in labor movements, advocacy efforts, and electoral campaigns. Adopted as “The Neighborhood Team Model” on President Obama’s campaign in 2008, with the help of organizer Marshall Ganz, and has been used widely by Democratic campaigns since. Called the “Snowflake Model” because when you draw it as an organizational chart, it looks like a snowflake. The model’s success depends on empowering and training volunteers to take on leadership roles so that they might be multipliers for the campaign.
(Image credit, Josh Stuart) - Sporadic voters - People who are registered to vote but only occasionally turn out to vote; sometimes used interchangeably with the term “drop-off voters”—people who tend to vote in Presidential elections but not in Midterm or local elections.
- Staging location - A place where people will gather before and after the canvass. Can be a private home, park, school, or any other location that will accommodate your group and allow for a brief training.
- Surrogate - Person who acts on the behalf of a candidate running for some sort of political office. Often appears at public events that the candidate cannot make it to, or may simply appear to bolster the image of the candidate in a certain demographic. An influential or well-known person—often an elected official, celebrity, or local civic leader are examples of a surrogate.
- Swing voter - Unlike base voters, swing voters will not be loyal to a candidate just based off of party lines. They could vote Republican or Democrat. These voters are important during any campaign because they can make or break meeting your voter goal and win the election. Swing voters have twice the impact as Turnout voters on the election outcome because switching support for a candidate both removes a vote from your opponent and adds a vote to your candidate.
- Targeting - Selection of voters whom the campaign will directly engage in order to register, persuade, and/or turn out to vote. Campaigns rarely have the capacity and resources to engage all voters, so they have to select a smaller number of voters whose support they believe they can garner through interventions such as direct voter contact or paid media.
- TCPA - Telephone Consumer Protection Act - Federal statute enacted in 1991 designed to safeguard consumer privacy. This legislation restricts telemarketing communications via voice calls, SMS texts, and fax. Vendors have formed a trade association, the P2P Alliance, that petitioned the FCC in May 2018 to clarify the TCPA's legality.
- Organizing Turf - Geographic area assigned to an organizer or volunteer containing a list of people for them to engage (i.e., the area of their walk packet). To “cut turf” means to determine the boundaries of each individual’s assignment. Sometimes, one refers to an organizer’s turf as the region in which they organize. Other times, someone might refer to a turf and simply mean a canvass packet (also called a walk list).
- Turnout - Voters showing up to cast their ballots. For example, if one says “turnout is high,” they mean that a high number of registered voters have cast their ballots (in person and/or by mail).
- Universe - List of voters the campaign has targeted for engagement. The campaign has a universe for direct voter contact (door, phone, text conversations, mail), and also for paid media (TV, digital ads).
- VAN - Voter Activation Network - Company that powers Votebuilder, an online CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) tool that Democratic Parties and candidates around the country use to organize for the election of candidates at all levels of government. VAN was founded in 2001 and has since grown to be the most widely used organizing tool for field campaigns use by Democrats.
- Vote goal - Number of votes you need to win your election. With this goal in place, you know how many voters you need to convince to turn out to the polls in order to win the election. By consulting the local board of elections you can see the history of voter turnout in your area and the number of registered voters then quantify what your voter goal should be.
- VPB - Virtual phone bank - Online call tool arranged by the campaign so that volunteers can call and speak to their targets from anywhere. Most often this is arranged through VAN, so that a script is provided, and data is entered immediately by the caller.
- Walk list/packet - List of addresses (usually of voters) given to a canvasser to knock doors and deliver a script or have a specific conversation
¶ Legal, Business, and Finance Terms
- Bundler - Person who gathers ("bundles") campaign contributions to a candidate from his or her network of friends and business associates. Often wealthy and well-connected. Play a crucial role in contemporary campaign finance.
- Campaign Finance Disclosure - Report required by the state Board of Elections and/or the Federal Election Commission on how a candidate has spent the money raised for their campaign and where that money came from
- Federal Election Commission - Regulates campaign finance in U.S. federal elections.
- Firewall - The legal barrier that prohibits campaigns of different types, namely candidate campaigns (“hard money”) and IE (“soft money”), from sharing strategy or discussing operations in private conversations that would be considered coordination of activities
- Hard Money - Donation or contribution made directly to a specific political candidate. It's called "Hard" because it is subject to federal and state campaign finance laws, unlike "Soft" money which far less regulated.
- RFP - Request for Proposal - An official request to submit a proposal for a project outlining work to be done on contract
- SOW - Statement of Work - Business term for the details on a project outlining expectations, timelines, deliverables, and cost
¶ Types of Organizations
- Party Committee - National organization designed to fundraise and provide support and infrastructure on behalf of the Democratic party and Democratic candidates
- 501(c)(3) - Non-partisan nonprofit. IRS designation for a nonprofit that does not do political work on behalf of a specific candidate or initiative but focuses on more broad advocacy and civic engagement. It receives special tax-exemptions and thus its activities and governance are more closely regulated.
- 501(c)(4) - Partisan nonprofit. IRS designation for a nonprofit that can do political work on behalf of a specific candidate or initiative, though it can also do more 501(c)(3)-type of work.
- IE - Independent Expenditure - Organization that is advocating for a candidate or initiative but is not coordinating directly with the campaign because of campaign finance laws.
- PAC - Political Action Committee - Organization formed to promote its members' views on selected issues, usually by raising money that is used to fund candidates who support the group's position. PACs monitor candidates' voting records and question them on their beliefs on issues of interest to their membership. Because federal law restricts the amount of money an individual, corporation, or union can give to candidates, PACs have become an important way of funneling large funds into the political process and influencing elections.
- Super PAC - Independent political action committee which may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, and individuals but is not permitted to contribute to or coordinate directly with parties or candidates
¶ Digital, Technical, and Data Terms
- Activist Code - Tag created in a database (such as VAN) to track voters, volunteers, and engagement. For example, one might tag Neighborhood Team Leaders, Canvass Captains, Phone Bank Captains, etc.
- API - Application Programming Interface - Connect tools together and allow us to automate processes between systems. Technically an API is defined as a set of definitions, protocols, and tools for building software.
- CASS - Coding Accuracy Support System - Software developed by the United State Postal service for correcting address information to be formatted to the standard that ensures delivery to that address.
- CPA - Cost Per Acquisition - Way to measure the success of a digital acquisition campaign. These campaigns are run with the sole purpose of adding members to your email list from digital ads placed on like-minded websites or email lists.
- CPC - Cost Per click - When an advertiser pays the publisher for the clicks that the ad they are running receives. These campaigns are great for attracting visitors to your campaign page and tracking the exposure the ads are getting.
- CPP - Cost Per Point - Way to evaluate the cost and efficiency of media buys. Reflects the cost to buy 1 rating point, or 1% of the population in that geography.
- CPM - cost per thousand impressions - Like CPC, it involves placing ads on a publisher’s website; however, it focuses more on the amount of impressions your ad is getting. Instead of paying for the amount of clicks the ad is receiving, you are paying for the exposure the ad is getting through being displayed.
- Digital - Anything related to Internet-based operations, including email, ads, and social media
- EIP - Experiment-Informed Program - Technique in experimentation to test tactics on a smaller scale before applying it to a larger program
- Geocode - Refers to an address' geographic coordinates, latitude and longitude, used to represent points on a map.
- GIS - Geographic Information System - A way to store geographic data. Conceptualized framework that provides the ability to capture and analyze spatial and geographic data.
- GRP - Gross Rating Points - In a TV advertising campaign, this is the measurement used to quantify impressions as a percentage of the target universe
- GUI (GOO-ee) - Graphical User Interface](https://wiki.staclabs.io/en/community/glossary/gui) - Pronounced “gooey.” A point and click website, rather than a command line tool.
- Impressions - An ad view (though not necessarily a view that is active or lasts the entire length of a video or TV ad). When used in reference to a digital ad, an impression is counted when the web page is located and loaded.
- NCEC - National Committee for an Effective Congress - Collect precinct-level election returns
- NCOA - National Change of Address - The process by which the United States Postal Service allows people to update their mailing address, thereby allowing companies to continue to send their mail to someone after they have moved.
- PII - Personally Identifying Information - Data that includes personal information on an individual such as name, address, date of birth, phone number, email, etc. PII is often used for matching across different data sources.
- Phoenix - The DNC's instance of Big Query (Google database service) it uses to maintain all current and historic voter data.
- Release notes or model docs - Documentation that accompanies a predictive model with information on how it was built and recommended usage
- ROC Curve - Receiver operating characteristic, a common tool for understanding how well a model score rank orders predictions
- Shapefile - A file that contains information defining geographical boundaries that can be represented on a map by GIS software.
- Vertica - Distributed Postgres-like database solution made by HP used to host data. Vertica was used by the DNC to maintain voter data prior to Big Query (aka "Phoenix").
- Voter File - Database of all registered voters in the state, that includes their publicly available data (usually name, address, phone number, gender, date of birth, etc) maintained by the state's BOE or SOS.
¶ Polling Terms
- Benchmark poll - Taken before a candidate announces their decision to run for office. Gives candidates a snapshot of where they stand among voters and what their strengths and weaknesses could be in a campaign. Furthermore, provides a baseline for a campaign to identify what target groups will support and vote for the candidate.
- Cluster - In polling, a group of demographically similar people in a sample that are used during fielding to ensure balance from differential response issues
- DPI - Democratic Performance Index - Measure of a Democrat’s performance made by NCEC (the National Committee for an Effective Congress)
- Focus group - Provide insight on how different strategies, messages or targeting plans will work by consulting actual groups of people. Also provide you with the best strategies for communicating and mobilizing undecided voters.
- Horse race question - Head-to-head candidate question “if the election were held today, would you vote for Candidate A or Candidate B?"
- IVR - Interactive Voice Response - Method of conducting surveys using pre-recorded audio and a dialer that is significantly more cost-effective than live calling. Also called “robo calls” or “robo dialing.”
- Model score - Tool used to predict a person’s beliefs, identity or actions by applying a likelihood score
- Margin of error - Range of values above and below the sample statistic in a confidence interval, a typical confidence interval in a poll is 95% meaning that if you have a 4% margin of error at a 95% confidence interval, your results will be within 4% of the real population value 95% of the time. Therefore, for example, even if a candidate is losing on an issue according to a certain poll of likely or registered voters, if the percentage point differences are close, that margin of error could provide comfort to the candidate with the lower percentage that they may still be within a position to overtake the lead.
- Multi-modal - Running a survey with multiple modes such as phone, online, SMS, etc.
- N vs. n - Uppercase N is the total sample size. Lowercase n is the size of a particular group within the sample.
- Push poll - Questionnaire designed to change the opinion of a candidate but disguised as a poll, usually used for political strategy. Not always legal and not scientific.
- Sample - For polling, a representative list of voters to conduct the survey
- Score - Numerical prediction from a model. Usually delivered as probability in the 0-100 range, but sometimes evenly distributed tiers in deciles, vigintiles, or percentiles.
- Survey Instrument - Full language, logic, and response options for a poll
- Tracking Poll - Purposefully short, designed to show a trend or level of support a candidate has over a period of time. Campaigns can choose to do one or more tracking polls over the course of the race.