Your company's assistance was invaluable to the Tax Accountability Coalition and McGuireWoods in defeating the $1.2 Billion Riley tax in Alabama this year.
I have always excelled at turnout, however despite having surveyed several hundred thousand "likely voters" prior to testing your product - I was concerned that we were counting on TV and radio to reach the hundreds of thousands of additional voters that might actually show up election day.
Ability to GOTV hundreds of thousands of additional supporters than ever before possible. Your unique Interactive Voice Response -Speech Recognition (IVRSR) system made it feasible to go after all 1.57 million voting households, and your ability to help us target additional households based on 9-digit zip codes and other criteria truly took our turnout operation to another level.
Less expensive and BETTER response rate. I was not surprised that the IVRSR made this many calls affordable, but I was surprised that you got an even better response rate than most live operations AND that the system was so clear that many people thought they were talking to a live person. For those who realized it was automated, I have concluded that many voters are willing to start an automated script because they know they can “quit the call” at any point without being rude or trying to get the telemarketer off the phone.
Profiling even voters who refused to answer the survey. The reporting you were able to provide enabled me as general consultant to profile even the voters who would not answer the phone, or give their opinion. Your ability to take hundreds of thousands of records and break them down by demographics, counties and even 9-digit zip codes allowed us to target our GOTV efforts, through your company and by several other means, in a way that not only helped us meet our voter turn out goals but in many key areas, exceed these goals by as much as 100%.
End result: GOTV turned out more votes than any GOVERNOR had ever received. Our ability to work with you to combine our innovative messaging with your interactive technology to call them back with creative and innovative GOTV programs turned out more voters than anyone dreamed possible. Predictions were that fewer than 1 million people would vote in this odd-year, odd-month single question primary. In fact, 866,000 voted with us -more than had ever voted for any Governor in Alabama's history. You did all of this in a matter of days and at a fraction of the cost it would have been to employ other means to do the same tasks. In fact, I am not sure that what Election Research did for the Tax Accountability Coalition could be duplicated using any other method, regardless of the cost.
Turnout added up to 16 points to our win margin ELECTION DAY. Pro-tax forces outspent us by millions of dollars and during the final week of the campaign, they had closed the gap in our tracking from a 33-point lead to a 22-point lead. The fact that we won by 38-points, 5 points more than we had EVER polled and 16-more points than our final polling, can be attributed to a far superior turnout operation. I cannot say that this was exclusively your doing -as we did have a great ground game and follow-up on our live calls by Conquest. However, I can say that the volume and quality you produced accounted for the largest part of that 16-point swing. Bottom line - you are worth 10 points to any campaign. In short, after years of winning races from the local level on up in a number of states, I am quite confident that a campaign that uses you will add at least 10 points to their final total -and that is enough to win most elections. Once in awhile a new breakthrough "breaks the code" and gives one side a huge advantage. Most people will insist on ignoring new breakthroughs for years - and established vendors are bound to attack the new breakthrough. Frankly that is fine with me - the fewer of my competitors use you in the future the bigger advantage I will have against them and I look forward to winning many more races with you!
Again, thank you for assisting the Tax Accountability Coalition in this noble cause. I look forward to working with you again on future campaigns and I will gladly recommend you and your company to any interested client.
Sincerely,
John Pudner
VP National Grassroots Operations, McGuire Woods Consulting
General Consultant to Tax Accountability Coalition
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