Voter Mobilization during COVID-19

This is an award-winning example of using data and targeted digital advertising – during COVID – to do something. Using traditional tactics, this will take hundreds of people thousands of hours to canvas homes, register voters and turn out the vote. Raconteur did it with brutal efficiency and won the highest professional accolades from its peers in the American Association of Political Consultants.

The campaign began with 50,646 unregistered energy workers in Texas.  

We had a two-step plan to mobilize more energy workers to the polls this November in Texas. We combined technology that tracks devices and mobile phones back to physical addresses and built our client an audience that it could both persuade and mobilize into beneficial action. Our client did not have a roster of registered or unregistered energy company workers and contractors. 

First, we used device tracking and device ID mapping to physical addresses and the voter file to find the registered and unregistered oil and gas workers. We did this by making a list of energy sites – everything from gas wells to corporate energy offices across the state. We monitored smartphones these employees carry and tracked only those people with devices who regularly visit the sites. This allowed us to separate occasional visitors and one-time visitors so that we don’t mistake them as employees or stakeholders. We also used this method to prevent us from double counting one person who visits multiple sites regularly. 

After this monitoring, we came up with a dataset of devices matched to individuals in the Texas energy industry. We tracked these devices back to physical home addresses. Once we had their home address, we matched that to the voter file to find registered voters and non-registered Texans who could vote. 

Using this strategy, we developed an audience of 50,646 unregistered energy workers and 194,017 registered energy workers.

Then, we used device and IP targeting to deliver our OTT, banner and video advertising messages. We served the unregistered voters an average of 59 impressions per person. We served the registered voters an average of 20 impressions per person. 

We targeted 194,017 registered voters with digital advertising messages about voting, and 180,469 of these voters cast ballots in the 2020 general election.

The campaign registered 26,912 new voters from the Texas energy industry in the time after the primary runoff and before the general election, and 81.2% of these new voters cast ballots in the 2020 general election.