March VoteSource Newsletter

Welcome to the March edition of the VoteSource Newsletter.

Missed our last edition? Catch up by clicking here.

Or click here to browse all previous editions.

New Member of VoteSource Support and extended elections hours

New Starter

We are very pleased to announce a new starter for VoteSource Support!

George joined us on the 21st of March and will be able to help with all your VoteSource related queries.

This will bring our team roster up to three and improve our ability to respond quickly to all queries raised.

VoteSource Support extended hours for May 4th elections

Please be advised: VoteSource Support will be working the following extended hours during the upcoming election campaigns. These extended hours will be starting from Monday 10th April 2023 and will end on 5th May 2023.

VoteSource Support will be open from 9am – 7pm on weekdays, and every Saturday from 9am to 2pm.

On Polling Day, VoteSource Support will be available from 7am until 10pm to assist everyone who is getting out the vote.

We will return to our regular office hours of 9am – 5pm Monday to Friday from Friday 5th May 2023.

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.

VS Fundamentals

Have you gone through your user list and checked only current association officers and volunteers have access?

These checks should be carried out regularly throughout the year and are very important. All recipients of this newsletter have the ability and therefore the responsibility of ensuring only approved individuals have access to VoteSource data.

To do this, go to Users, then click on Roles, you can then search by user role or the electoral area – or use both. VoteSource will then provide you with a list of existing users, which many long term users of our system will be familiar with.

For further instructions on how to use the Roles feature, please refer to the following user guide:

VS10 – Users – Roles

If you find a user account that is no longer required, or needs to be unfrozen or unlocked, guidance on how to do so can be found in the following user guide:

VS10 – How to Unfreeze, Unlock and Delete VoteSource accounts

Please note: You may find a user that you do not recognise, this does not mean they necessarily have access to your data. Remember to check carefully their Electoral Area Permission. It could be that they are a registered elector in your area but have access to another area legitimately. If in doubt, contact VoteSource Support and we will be happy to investigate.

It is also important that you are regularly checking and approving valid new user requests – remember this is not done automatically by VoteSource Support.

If you are unable to approve a new user we do require an email authorising them before we can approve the account, simply asking the new user to contact us and get their account approved is not enough.

You will need to send an email to votesourcesupport@conservatives.com letting us know the level of access they require and the electoral area they require it for.

Guides on the different user roles and their functions can be found in the Help Centre on VoteSource.

List of Roles a Constituency Organiser can grant

List of Roles a Campaign Manager can grant

Merging of user records

Our Data team have been working over the last month on a mass merging exercise for records on VoteSource across the UK.

You may have noticed on occasion that when you initiate a merge of two records it has taken slightly longer than expected and this is due to the large number of merges being run by the data team.

This will be a regular process our team runs going forward to ensure data quality control.

You may also have noticed in the constituent merge section, merges that have not completed due to conflicts initiated by Data Control. These will be merges our processes could not complete, but you can go into and resolve. Please feel free to resolve them with your local knowledge if you can.

You will no doubt still come across examples of data that our automated processes have been unable to resolve though, so it is important that people continue to manually merge records where applicable.

This does mean following the process through to completion though, not just starting a merge and leaving it.

We have found this year that whilst some people are happy to start the merge process if a conflict arises that needs to be resolved they abandon the merge. If this does occur and you are unable to resolve the conflict, please do click on the Do Not Merge option to end the process.

If you need a refresher, or have not undertaken a Merge before, guides can be found in the Help Centre on VoteSource under the Merging heading.

Insights

Canvassing

Like lots of other people, you make sure you use the 0-10 question when canvassing. Because it gives you much more accurate answers, so you can be certain your and your volunteers’ time is being used as effectively as possible.

But we also need to make sure we’re asking how people voted in previous elections - so we know what vote journey they’re on. It helps us in the Insight department check that the audiences we put on to VoteSource are accurate - and helps us make those audiences better. And it helps you because you’re building up a more complete picture of your electorate.

Marked registers

It’s really important to enter into VoteSource the marked register, after each election. It’s the list of people who voted - and it is incredibly helpful to make us as effective as we can be. Shortly we’ll be adding to VoteSource Get Out The Vote audiences. They’re the people who we think you should focus your campaigning on in the last couple of weeks of the election campaign because they’re the sorts of people who we think we’re most able to influence as to whether they go and vote or not.

We make these audiences available everywhere, but associations that have a history of entering lots of marked registers should see the audiences be the most accurate - because your own data is used in their creation.

To find out more about either of these topics please email insight@conservatives.com