The ultimate goal of almost every political campaign is for their candidate to be elected into office. To be effective, campaign teams need to determine what must be done to achieve that victory. Too often campaigns forget to calculate how many votes will be needed to guarantee victory and determining where these votes will come from. They then spend their precious resources of time, money and people trying to talk to the whole population instead of the much fewer voters they will actually need to win. The campaign will reduce the number of voters with whom they need to communicate to a much more manageable size. As part of the campaign team’s research, they should determine the total population of their constituency, the total number of voters, the expected votes cast, the number of votes needed to win and the number of households in which these voters live.

Some of the answers that are needed require the campaign team to look into the future and make some educated guesses. However, these guesses should be based on reliable information from research into the constituency and past elections.

What Is The Total Number of Voters?

Total number of voters is all the voters in the district who are eligible to vote and can possibly vote in this election.

What is the Expected Turnout?

Expected turnout is the expected votes cast in this election. Not every voter will vote. It can be possible to determine how many voters will vote by looking at past similar elections. If there was 65% turn out in the last general election and there are no added factors (e.g. significant migration) to change the situation, the campaign team might assume that about 65% would vote in the next general election. If on the other hand, there are to be changes (e.g. increased voter education, migration into the township or state or better roads), these should be taken into account when estimating the percentage of voters who will turn out for the election (NDI 2009: 14).

How Many Votes are Needed to Win?

This is the total number of votes needed to guarantee victory in an election. Campaign teams should be conservative and err on the side of too many votes rather than too few.

There are several factors that contribute to varying voter turnout as well: open seat elections and high-profile competitive races have higher voter turnout, whereas underwhelming candidates and non-competitive races create lower voter turnout. The key to projecting turnout using past elections is to compare similar past elections.

Sometimes it can be difficult to find a past election similar to the current one. In these instances campaign teams have to think creatively and compare multiple elections to inform their turnout prediction.

How Many Households Do These Voters Live In?

Once the campaign team has determined a win number-- this number can be further reduced by breaking it down by household. For example, if there were two voters per household on average. Some families may have three or four voters living in the same house. Campaign teams might assume that a husband and wife are likely to vote the same way, they can sometimes assume that if they talk to one member of the family, than they can expect to get the second vote. The next step after this is to determine how many households will the campaign staff need to communicate with to receive the number of votes needed to win. For Example:

If a constituency has a population of 70,000 people. Of this population, there are 20,000 children below voting age and other non-registered voters, leaving a total number of 50,000 voters. In the last general election in the constituency, there was 75% turnout of voters, or 37,500 votes cast. It can be assumed that it will be the same in the next election. The campaign’s target is 50% plus one vote or 18,751 votes.

However, if there is a third (or even more) candidates, the campaign team will need some number lower than this. If they determine an average of two voters per household, this would come to about 9,380 households. They could then round up the figure to 19,000 voters and 10,000 households.

However, the campaign team cannot assume that every voter they talk with will be persuaded to vote for them. So they should plan to communicate with a larger number of voters in order to receive the votes from 19,000 voters or 10,000 households. If they persuade seven out of every 10 voters with whom they communicate to vote for them, they will need to talk to 54,000 voters or 13,000 households in order to be assured of support from 17,000 voters or 8,500 households (28,000 x 0.7 = 19,600 and 15,000 x 0.7 = 10,500).

Once the campaign team has done these calculations, it is easier for them to talk with and try to persuade 15,000 families than it is to talk to and try and persuade 37,500. The aim of this process is to narrow the group of people the campaign staff needs to persuade down to a much smaller size (NDI 2009: 15).