Campaigner uses mix of shoe leather and technology - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

With her braid trailing behind her, Ashley Sisca Klingensmith moves as fast as her Ford and her Nike sneakers will take her.

She raps on a door in Hempfield Township and waits only a few moments before she hangs a campaign leaflet on the knob. “I’m just going to hit ‘not home’ and try back another time,” she says as she punches a button on her iPad and heads back to the car she left running on the street.

She picks up Rhonda Holland, whom she had dropped off down the street to knock on some other doors, and the two head to another neighborhood. They are guided by an iPad app that calculates the quickest routes between stops and ensures they only knock on doors of people who match certain profiles. Today, they are after likely voters who haven’t made up their minds about Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race, and who are persuadable.

This is where old-fashioned shoe-leather campaigning meets modern technology.

Mrs. Klingensmith and Ms. Holland work for Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-backed conservative political advocacy group that put down roots in Pennsylvania four years ago. Now that Republican incumbent Pat Toomey and Democratic challenger Katie McGinty are embroiled in one of the hottest Senate races in the country, AFP is capitalizing on the technological infrastructure it built.

President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign was one of the first to use digital analytics to identify persuadable voters, but analysts working with Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns refined the techniques and made such technology ubiquitous.

Ms. McGinty and other Democratic candidates are now benefiting from the infrastructure the Obama campaign created. Every candidate from Hillary Clinton through down-ticket local politicians are now using the database and collecting more information for it through their own interactions with voters. 

In Pennsylvania, Democratic operatives share that information across campaigns as part of a highly coordinated effort.

When canvassers knock on a door to ask for a vote for Ms. McGinty, they already know what kind of conversation will be most effective with them, an aide said. 

Ms. Clinton’s campaign uses the data in many ways, not just to target voter-to-voter efforts, aides said. Strategists analyze the aggregate to shape its mass messaging, too. It informs nearly every messaging decision the campaign makes. Her campaign also uses technology to collect data on campaign volunteers so it ensures it can deploy labor-intensive strategies in places that have the manpower to support them.

“With the stakes higher than ever, we’re utilizing the newest data-driven campaign technology to organize communities in every corner of the state,” said Corey Dukes, director of the Clinton campaign in Pennsylvania.

Persuading the persuadable

AFP staff members and volunteers have spent the last four years in Pennsylvania contributing to a database of information about every interaction with voters. They’ve done the same in 35 other states — all but the reddest of the red and the bluest of the blue, where they can’t make much of a difference.

Now they’re using that data to target efforts of staff members and volunteers who are relentlessly making phone calls and home visits. With each contact, they add to the database so every canvasser’s iPad shows information in real time, and volunteers are steered toward voters they have the best chance of persuading.

“We use the technology year in and year out — not just during election season — to push people on economic issues, to see where people stand, and to find people who are persuadable on the issues we care about,” said AFP spokesman Adam Nicholson. “People are more likely to change their minds by having actual conversations” than by watching TV ads.

The structure was created by i360, a Washington, D.C.-based tech company that provides analysis along with access to data it already has collected on voter registration, voting history, consumer attributes, demographic information and responses to other clients’ surveys. Together, the data allows analysts to predict the likelihood that a voter can be persuaded on particular issues and races.

Technology alone doesn’t win races, said Michael Palmer, founder of i360. He said you need good, well-trained staff and volunteers making connections with voters.

“The most effective campaign tool is still door-to-door, one-to-one voter interaction. What we are able to do is make that better and more efficient,” Mr. Palmer said. “With two months left [before Election Day], campaigns are trying to figure out the best use of their staff and volunteers. We want to make sure they’re not wasting even one door-knock on voters they aren’t going to be able to persuade.”

That’s how Mrs. Klingensmith trusts that every voter her iPad guides her to is someone she can persuade with the right approach.

“I trust the data so when I go up to a door it’s very intentional,” she said. “It’s a persuadable voter every time.”

As Election Day gets closer, campaigns will be more interested in targeting firm supporters than undecided voters.

“Candidates are not actually interested in pure turnout. It’s not about getting the most people to the polls; it’s about getting the most of their voters to the polls,” said Dickinson College political scientist Sarah Niebler. “If you’re going to spend the time knocking on doors, you want to target that effort to mobilize the votes you already have.”

For decades, candidates have been able to parse data to geographic areas by looking at precinct vote totals for previous elections. The growing sophistication of technology like i360’s now allows them to target individuals rather than wards and precincts, Ms. Niebler said.

No good time to knock

During a recent Westmoreland County canvass, Mrs. Klingensmith and Ms. Holland asked voters about the Senate race and about energy, which is a key issue in the race. After each interaction, they logged voters’ responses to questions about which candidate they support and about whether they are concerned that Ms. McGinty, as state environmental secretary, gave grants to energy companies.

Ms. Klingensmith knows the script by heart and runs through it — and its four leading questions on energy issues — in less than a minute. When she leaves, she reminds voters — the ones who support Mr. Toomey, anyway — to vote in November. Just as important, she logs survey responses.

The data she enters will inform future next door-knocking campaigns, ensuring, for example, that the next canvassers working on energy issues don’t waste time with voters unlikely to be persuaded to AFP’s side along with those who already are firmly in AFP’s camp and need no persuading.

“Ten years ago — even five years ago — it was all on paper. You would go door to door and you would ask your questions and you’d mark the answers on paper and take them back to campaign headquarters and you’d hope that somebody back there was actually using that paper in some way,” Mr. Nicholson said. “It took a lot of resources in the office doing data work instead of being out in the field having conversations with voters.”

It also meant a lot of wasted time using paper “walk lists” that provided little more than addresses and party affiliation, which could never be updated quickly enough to account for things like relocation. Canvassers wasted a lot of time.

In Ms. Klingensmith’s eyes, a wasted minute could be a lost vote.

“We have to be efficient. I can’t afford not to be. There are lots of people to talk to,” she says as she nearly jogged down Francis Murriman’s driveway in Hempfield Township.

“I’m very interested in politics so I have no problem talking” to canvassers, Mr. Murriman, a Greensburg attorney, said after she left. “I like our political system, and I enjoy watching it work.”

Not everyone is so welcoming.

It can be tough for canvassers to be persistent without being off-putting, which can sour a voter’s views toward a candidate.

“If a person comes on too strong it can backfire,” said Scott Dunn, a Radford University professor who studies political communication. “And there are going to be some people out there who are always going to be annoyed when somebody comes to their door no matter what.”

There’s no good time to knock.

“If you hit people at dinner time, they’re not going to be happy, if you go early they’re going to get mad, and if you go on the weekend, they’re not home. There’s no ideal time,” Ms. Holland said.

A “take rate” of 15 is good, Mrs. Klingensmith said, referring to the percentage of door knocks that result in a successful contact with the particular voter they are looking to speak with.

Once a voter answers the door, the likelihood of a canvasser making an impression is high. That’s what campaigns are counting on.

“Once they’ve opened the door, it’s a very personal interaction that they’re not going to forget about” Mr. Dunn said. “If the canvasser does a good job, you might actually think more closely about who you’re planning to vote for, and whether or not you’re going to vote.”

While mass media advertisements give campaigns better control of their message, those commercials are easily ignored and even more easily forgotten about, he said.

Searching for undecideds

Mrs. Klingensmith caught up with retirees Lucy and Charles Hastings just as they pulled into their garage on a recent afternoon.

She made it up the driveway before they could close the garage door. She introduced herself and asked Mrs. Hastings whom she supports in the Senate race.

“She doesn’t answer to that,” her husband said gruffly, still getting out of his car.

Mrs. Hastings answered nonetheless. Toomey, she said. “We’re Republicans.”

“Well, we’re definitely asking for your vote against Katie McGinty, and it sounds like you’re already there,” Mrs. Klingensmith said.

That means a shorter visit. AFP is more interested in persuadable voters than those already on their side or those firmly in the McGinty camp. She doesn’t need to argue her case here.

The Hastings said they are wary of campaign operatives like Mrs. Klingensmith, but in the end, they paused to answer her question.

A few minutes a different house, Mrs. Klingensmith finds just the kind of voter she’s looking for: an undecided one. Here, she spends a bit more time. Still, she speaks quickly to make her points about Ms. McGinty. (AFP stresses that it is not campaigning for Mr. Toomey, but rather against Ms. McGinty.) By the time she’s through, the woman says she’s starting to lean toward Mr. Toomey.

When she returns to the car, Ms. Holland, who was at another house, is already waiting. She has good news to report, too.

“He was undecided,” she says.

“That’s great,” Mrs. Klingensmith replies.

That means the technology is doing what it’s supposed to: lead canvassers to persuadable voters.

“Often, you talk to people and they have the same opinion as you but they don’t realize it. Doing this puts us in front of people to have these conversations,” said AFP state director Beth Anne Mumford.

Washington Bureau Chief Tracie Mauriello: 73-996-9292, tmauriello@post-gazette.com or @pgPoliTweets.

http://ift.tt/2cOlakE