April VoteSource Newsletter

Welcome to the April edition of the VoteSource Newsletter.

Missed our last edition? Catch up by clicking here.

Or click here to browse all previous editions.

An important reminder that during this election period we are available from 9am – 7pm Monday to Friday and 9am – 2pm Saturday.

We can be reached, as always, on: 020 7984 8000 or via email on votesourcesupport@conservatives.com Please remember that, out of the above extended hours, your query might have to wait till the next working day. To keep your campaign running smoothly, we strongly recommend you plan ahead so we can assist if you need any support.

GTV Control Room activation – are you setup for poll day on the 04/05/23?

Looking ahead to poll day in May, have you set up your control room and committee rooms so you can start recording postal voters who have returned their ballot?

Per the News Article in VoteSource, dated 11/04/23, users with access to control rooms can set up and prepare their control rooms for the May elections.

It is always worthwhile preparing your Get Out the Vote (GTV) operations well ahead of poll day to ensure you are ready. Therefore, we would like to remind our readers of the following.

Control Room Activation

Your control room will need to have been activated by 2pm Saturday 29th April. The deadline allows for our team to ensure everything runs smoothly for poll day. Activating a control room entails running at least one target audience selection for the parliamentary constituency your control room covers.

Control rooms cannot be set up for areas larger than a constituency – it is important that you factor this into your poll day planning.

Guidance on how to activate your control room can be found in the Help Centre on VoteSource:

VS10 – GTV – How to create a control room for GTV

Committee Rooms

Whilst your control room will need to have been setup before 2pm 29th April, you will also need to create committee rooms if you wish to enter data prior to and indeed on polling day.

Control rooms are for managing what activities and targets you have for poll day, committee rooms are for generating knocking up sheets and recording data.

Instructions on how to create a committee room can also be found in the Help Centre on VoteSource:

VS10 – GTV – Control Room – Setting up a committee room

Three stages of the GTV life cycle

Ultimately how GTV is used is very much up to what suits your needs and plans best. We do not create control rooms or set up target audiences and activities for you because we do not know what is going to be best for your campaign.

Only your local knowledge will be able to know what is best for your campaign needs.

What we can do is offer some guidance on what we think might be useful for you to set up in your control room. The following user guides cover:

Get Out The Postal Vote (GOTPV) – setting up your control room so your knocking up sheets and data entry are set for postal vote data

VS10 – Userguide GTV – Three Stages of the GTV Cycle – Stage 1 GOTPV

Get Out The Vote (GOTV) – setting up your control room so your knocking up sheets and data entry are set for postal vote data and to speak to non-postal voters

VS10 – Userguide GTV – Three Stages of the GTV Cycle – Stage 2 GOTV

Polling Day – setting up your control room so your knocking up sheets and data entry are set for poll day

VS10 – Userguide GTV – Three Stages of the GTV Cycle – Stage 3 Polling Day

As ever, our team are available to help with the set up of any part of your GTV operations as listed above and to offer assistance and guidance.

If you require help or are unsure of something please contact us on 020 7984 8000 or votesourcesupport@conservatives.com

Creating target audiences to identify Postal Voters

As we draw closer to the local elections in May, many of you will be busy contacting postal voters in your area to ensure they have returned their vote ahead of the day.

To assist with this we have put together user guides to assist with this goal. Please be aware that these guides are for target audiences outside of the control rooms.

Our first guide will assist you in checking if you have the latest postal voter register in the system.

Registers – Postal Voter Publication

It is important to know that local authorities are only obligated to provide a postal vote register in the run up to an election.

Therefore, we recommend you check the column From Publishing Authority states True as this means we have received the file from the local authority. If it states False this means we have generated a postal vote register based on the last file received from the local authority.

All local authorities who have a local election in May were requested the day postal voter registration closed to provide an updated Postal Register file. This will not mean they have all yet complied.

So, please check your postal register section before running your audiences.

Our second guide covers how to run a target audience to identify all postal voters in an area. Once you have created the target audience you will be able to create canvass cards, data entry, mail merge files or even set up connect calling.

VS10 – Target Audience – Creating a Postal Voter target audience through the Postal Voter tile

This guide will allow you set up an audience for anyone with a postal vote, but will include all voting intention types.

Our third guide covers how to run an advanced target audience to identify postal voters with the voting intentions of C or P. You will be able to set up the same activities with this target audience as listed above.

VS10 – Campaigning – Target Audience – Creating a Target Audience who has a postal vote and C & P’s

If you have any questions on any of the above or would like further assistance please contact us on 020 7984 8000 or votesourcesupport@conservatives.com

Mobile Canvassing/Knock Up

Want to save time on poll day by not having to enter paper canvass card returns? We recommend using the Mobile App to cut out this part of campaigning entirely!

The advantages of mobile campaigning are numerous, not least saving time on data entry but also saving on paper, clipboards and pens. A volunteer can simply user their mobile device or tablet to conduct campaigning on the doorstep. Making the experience easier for them and convenient.

If you are connected to the internet whilst carrying out mobile canvassing, your data is recorded into VoteSource straight away. If you are canvassing offline, once you reconnect to the internet the data will be uploaded and if it doesn’t happen straight away you can press the synchronise button to push the data online.

This is a very important point in terms of campaigning but doubly so on polling day. If many of your volunteers are working offline, they will need to either go online at certain points throughout the day as they knock on doors or check in with the committee room Wi-Fi to upload their data.

Mobile campaigning can be enabled from any target audience you have created but it can also be used for your GTV operations.

When using a target audience, separate from GTV, mobile campaigning can be quickly setup from enabled activities section of the audience. Guidance can be found on how to enable mobile canvassing within VoteSource:

VS10 – Campaigning – Mobile Devices – Enabling Mobile Canvasing

It is worth mentioning that if you are using a target audience not part of your control room, it will not mark people as voted or complete in the control room.

If you wish to use mobile campaigning from your control room, you will require permission to the control room and to have already set it up. Please see our article on Control Rooms in this Newsletter edition for help on setting up a control room.

When your control room is setup to enable mobile canvassing simply click on the blue Activities tile, scroll down and toggle Knock up by Mobile to on.

You will then be able select your survey and last known voting type as normal. You will also need to check that you are happy with the data protection selected for your activity.

When selecting the survey type, there are several generic scripts that have been set up and are ready to use. Amongst them you will find the following:

• GOTPV (Country your control room is in) Data Entry Local
• GOTV (Country your control room is in) Data Entry Local
• Polling Day Knock Up (Country your control room is in) Data Entry Local

It is important to remember that when you change the survey script in your control room, your volunteers will need to refresh the polling districts they have downloaded to their devices. This is because the app will need to download the new script to their device. To do this your volunteers simply need to log in to the app, go to the relevant task and click the blue refresh icon next to the relevant polling districts.

These scripts can be used by anyone and have the correct logic set up against them. You can create your own GTV script vis the script editor but it is crucial that you assign the correct actions to the relevant answers.

For example, if you create a question of “Has Returned a Postal Vote” the logic will need to have End gtv Knock Up and Add gtv has voted. This will mark the individual as voted and complete so that they do not appear in subsequent knocking up sheets, connect calling or mobile canvassing.

This is a frequent query on polling day where a script has been set up locally with the incorrect actions, meaning data is not being recorded.

We would therefore recommend checking any survey scripts you have created for GTV to ensure they have the correct logic or contact VoteSource Support so that we can check the survey with you.

If you require any help or assistance on any of the above please do contact us on 020 7984 8000 or votesourcesupport@conservatives.com

Insights

The CCHQ Insights team have uploaded specially selected GOTV Target Audiences to VoteSource. These audiences are made up of people who support the Conservatives but who don’t always vote in local elections.

Evidence from canvassing and GOTV activities in recent elections shows that we win more votes — and more campaigns — if we focus on these supporters.

On VoteSource, these audiences are called: 

LE23 GOTV 1 – these are the voters whose likelihood to vote we can influence most through personal doorstep conversations

LE23 GOTV 2 – these are the second-best targets, and our efforts with these voters are proven to make a massive difference to the number of people who turn out

LE23 GOTV 3 – these are the third-best set of targets. Speaking to these people will still get you far more extra votes than randomly selecting pledges to speak to

So depending on the number of people you have to help, and the amount of time you can devote, you should you prioritise your GOTV conversations on these three groups. For ease of use, each audience is equal in size in each ward – you should look to exhaust GOTV 1 before moving on to 2 and then 3.   You can click on the following tiles:

• LE23 GOTV 1
• LE23 GOTV 1 and 2
• LE23 GOTV 1, 2 and 3

There is also a GOTV Persuasion audience available that you can speak to if you exhaust the GOTV targets. This will be quite small and will contain a subset of voters who are the most certain to vote only. Tiles will also be made containing the GOTV Persuasion audience.