The Challenge
Misleading tax measures. Repeal of Oregon’s sanctuary state status. A backdoor ban on abortion. And a “toss-up” gubernatorial race. Six statewide campaigns spending over $38 million, all competing for voters’ attention at the moment they would be making their decision.
Our Approach
On October 16, 2018, the day voters began receiving their ballots, every progressive statewide campaign turned off their online search campaigns. Replacing them was a single, coordinated online search campaign that ultimately drove fully 12% of Oregon voters to our voter guide website at the moment they were deciding how to vote. It was the culmination of an unprecedented digital, mail and field effort by Winning Mark and Oregon’s progressive table Our Oregon. It will change the way progressive tables harness online persuasion to deliver victories on Election Day.
The Results
Historic election day victories for Oregon progressives.
Over a decade ago, we revolutionized voter guides. In 2008, the Analyst Institute conducted a study that found that our mail guides not only had “significant impact on vote choice,” but had single-handedly changed the result of two critical races. While the program has evolved over the past decade, including the addition of a sophisticated online guide, our core principle remains the same: to help progressive tables win ballot measure slates through data-driven targeting and messaging. And in 2018, we did just that.
Our coordinated paid media voter guide program included digital, mail, and field components that assisted in a 100% win rate for progressive statewide ballot measures, the re-election of Governor Kate Brown, and Democratic supermajorities in both the House and Senate.
Our digital voter guide program included a bilingual website, a search campaign, and an explainer video. The website served as the central redirect hub for all aspects of the entire program, with our search ads driving nearly 80% of traffic to the site. In addition to providing facts and recommendations for each ballot measure and a comparison of the top two gubernatorial candidates, the website included a ballot drop box locator, instructions on how to vote in Oregon, and a tool that generated a personalized guide to local and regional races.
As a final layer to the digital program and in order to provide a quick summary of each ballot measure, we designed and produced a 105-second long explainer video in both English and Spanish that was promoted to hundreds of thousands of young voters and embedded on website where over 13,000 site visitors chose to view.
As the foundation of the voter guide program, our mail guides were distributed statewide throughout Oregon and were seen by up to 1,825,989 voters across 12 unique universes. We sent two thematically distinct guides to “neutral” voters and progressive voters based on their Vote Choice Index score, with regional versions to include region- and city-specific measures.
And for the final field component of the voter guide program, we created 22 versions of a door hanger that incorporated GOTV messaging, Governor, and ballot measure recommendations: 14 localized versions that included key legislative races; 2 bilingual versions; 5 versions with city-specific ballot drop box locations, targeting the major metropolitan cities in Oregon; and 1 version with a ballot drop box locator link to target smaller cities and rural areas.
From the success of this program, it is clear that not one medium can provide GOTV lift in isolation. The success of this program stems from the help of a coordinated progressive table and the campaigns themselves. With Oregon’s progressive groups working together rather than competing, this program proves that we can come together to fight for the most important causes of the day — and WIN.