Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research

UPDATE: After a few discussions about our initial impressions, I want to make a few clarifications because I think my general overview was too critical of a number of operations that went very well.

First, the RNC and NRCC did their jobs well.  They supplied experienced people and made strategic recommendations that were dead-on.  I know that the campaign had asked for the NRCC to pull its ads down attacking Murphy, saying that the ads were hurting Tedisco.  But, I definitely side with the Committee on this point.  Their message was clear and timely.  Furthermore, these guys don’t often make messaging mistakes.  They conduct message testing research and then produce an ad that has proven effectiveness.

Second, both the NRCC and RNC flew in teams of people for the 72-hour GOTV push.  They again showed their committment to winning this race.  The points I made earlier (below) were accounts about actual operations within the campaign and had nothing to do with the assistance the campaign received from the RNC and NRCC which were well executed.

The bottom-line here is that in every close race it is important to take a critical analysis of what we can do better.  This analysis is not to place blame (which is a useless endeavor), but rather to prepare ourselves for future battle.

Original Post:

As the door of opportunity appears to be closing on our chances to pick up a Congressional seat in the NY20 special election, there are several important lessons we can take away (even if we are able to pull out a win in the 11th hour):

• Having the advantage in registration does NOT guarantee victory. Republicans were giddy with hope going into the special election.  They had a solid candidate in a district that McCain came only three-points from taking and a significant advantage over Democrats in voter registration.  Early polling also indicated that we were on top by double digits.  All this good news may have been the reason for our failure as the campaign and strategy we executed was less than competitive, proving that having more voters in the district does little to help when we roll-out a less-than-stellar campaign.
• Targeting works. By some accounts, our eyes were blinded by our natural advantages (see above) so much that we skipped the all important step of targeting the electorate.  This turned out to be disastrous.  The Democrats ran deep segmentations of the electorate, testing messages, themes and strategies that worked to pull in a huge number of Independent voters in addition to their base.  This is a complete role-reversal for Republicans who rolled out sophisticated microtargeting starting in 2000 in Presidential and major races all over the country.  We have the technology, but we failed to use it here and it hurt us.  Even if we didn’t use actual microtargeting, our approach to segmenting the likely voters was less than effective.
• Experienced Campaign Staff and Consultants are a Must. Everyone hates campaign consultants – I get that.  But, these guys and gals have decades of experience and a tool-belt full of proven strategy and tactics that make a difference in the races they work.  I have friends that worked on this race, and I know that this campaign was a weird marriage of only a handful of very experienced staffers and consultants and a ton of people that have little or no experience running a race like this.  There was no excuse for allowing novices to hold leadership roles in the campaign.  There are more suitable races to learn on.
• Finally, GOTV (Get Out The Vote) is King. The bottom-line here is that despite our tried and true 72-hour program, we were out-gunned in GOTV.  Scores of volunteers from all over the country showed up in NY-20 to knock doors and make calls, but without the targeting I mentioned above much of their time was spent with voters that were less than likely to vote.  Our failure at the GOTV level is the culmination of the points I list above.  We were too cocky, untargeted, inexperienced, and flat out-worked.