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Candidates' Cabinet
A good benchmark survey should provide your campaign with an initial understanding of the political landscape including the key issues in the district and how to talk about them, current name identification for you and your opponent and an initial ballot to assess the current state of the race. -- Ryan Steusloff
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Apr
5th
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Types and Timing of Campaign Polling
By Ryan Steusloff
Frequently campaigns view polling as a luxury reserved for only the biggest congressional or statewide races. They view polling as only valuable in telling them who is up and who is down in the ballot. But polling is more than just giving the score of the race; it informs every decision your campaign will make from messaging to voter contact and from GOTV to media buys. In fact, survey research is the one expenditure that will make all the others more valuable by ensuring that your campaign resources are spent in the most efficient and effective manner.
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Mar
13th
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5 Helpful Tips for Creating a Successful Political Web Video
By Jason Miller
As someone who makes Republican candidate ads for a living, one of the questions I'm frequently asked is, "how do we create a viral video for the web?"
Unless your last name is Kardashian or you have a piano-playing cat, it's exceptionally difficult to make a political web ad truly go "viral." But, that doesn't mean that with proper planning and execution, your campaign shouldn't be able to create effective web videos that helps drive your message and separate you from other candidates in the race.
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Mar
7th
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Defining A New Communications Paradigm - The Infinite Loop of Connectivity
By Mark Standriff
Most of what constitutes political strategy these days is, even by post-Twitter standards, conventional. We rely on the same consultants, the same GOTV mechanisms, and the same advertising campaigns to get our platform across and we delude ourselves into thinking we’ve crossed some hip, high-tech threshold because we’ve added Pinterest into our PR thinking and replaced direct mail with email. But that’s not what will ultimately win over the hearts and minds of voters.
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Feb
21th
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Making the Most of Your Time and Dollars
By Stephen Puetz
Running for office will be an exciting but daunting endeavor. This article provides some basic principles that will help make you a smarter, more effective candidate and increase your chances of winning.
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Feb
13th
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10 Pointers for Raising Money Online
By Becki Donatelli
and Megg Whelan
Write a Plan and Stick to It!
Successful online fundraising takes careful thought and a realistic strategy. Those who raise the most money online have an aggressive plan that is carefully followed.
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Feb
6th
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Conducting a Precinct Vote Goal and Targeting Analysis
By BJ Martino
Are your campaign's messages hitting the right audiences? Are you delivering more of your persuasive messages to undecided voters and those who split their ticket? Are you delivering the right motivating message to your solid supporters, to get them to the polls? Are you not throwing away precious resources on voters who wouldn't vote for your candidate if he or she were the last politician on Earth?
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Jan
11th
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Three Tips for Political Communication
By Clark S. Judge
When it comes to making your case to the voters, here are three tips for every candidate to keep in mind.
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Jan
5th
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Reading a Poll for a Winning Campaign Message
By BJ Martino
While not comprehensive, the following guide should help point you in the right direction for reading and making sense of poll results in your campaign.
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Dec
19th
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Tips for Conducting an Interview
By Allison Kaminsky Putala
Today's 24 hour ubiquitous media coverage brings unprecedented focus on politicians, celebrities and business leaders, who are all the focus of the media. Media relations is not just restricted to crisis management, but rather an element of strategy, which is why knowing how to effectively conduct an interview is imperative.
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Dec
5th
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Starting Your Online Campaign
Six Things That You Can't Live Without
By Christian Curto
It's impossible to have a campaign without an online component, and I'll show which online parts you just can't live without. The internet is a trusted source for political information, communication, and activation and to win, you'll have remain competitive there. Your winning campaign starts with creating a plan, having an up-to-date website, a donation system, search advertising, social media, and an email delivery system.
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Nov
21th
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Thirteen Methodological Checkpoints for Good Survey Research
By BJ Martino
Whether planning to poll yourself, or questioning a media poll or opponent's poll that has been made public, ask these questions about the field procedures, sample design, and questionnaire design. Make your poll is the best it can be, and keep your opponent honest.
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Nov
15th
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Starting On The Ground, Not from the Sky
By Jeff Corless
Have you ever seen a building built starting from the sky? Probably not because the idea flies in the face of reality and physics – its impossible, unrealistic.
Building something sound starts from the ground up. A solid campaign must start by galvanizing support from real people on the ground in communities across the state or district in which a candidate is running for office.
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Nov
7th
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Planning Your Winning Campaign
How To Put Together a Campaign Plan
By Brian Noyes
Tactics can, and should, change as situations arise that affect a campaign. The evolution of a campaign will take shape based on the positive and negative responses you get along the way, and your success is tied directly to your ability to read those responses and make mid-course adjustments. Take the time to plan ahead and assure you have the resources available to make those modifications when you need to.
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Oct
24th
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Campaign Debt
It's not inevitable
By Tricia Pearson Korcheck
More and more, it seems like campaigns of every size are accepting debt as part of the elective process. It does not have to be that way. As fiscally conservative candidates, we should be able to practice what we preach and keep our campaign expenditures in check. If we spend more than we raise, we are no better than the Federal Government!
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Oct
13th
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Timeless Basics of GOTV for State and Local Candidates
By Patrick Davis, Patrick Davis Consulting
President Abraham Lincoln is remembered for many things but an often overlooked accomplishment was his political organizing skills. He clearly described timeless and basic get-out-the-vote activities in this quote from the Illinois State Register on February 21, 1840, "Organize the whole state so that every Whig can be brought to the poll… Divide the country into small districts and appoint a sub-committee, make a perfect list of all the voters and ascertain with certainty for whom, they will vote, keep a constant watch on the doubtful voters and… have them talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence, and on Election Day see that every Whig is brought to the polls."
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