Tools used for optimal results from E-canvasser.

When we combine the results of 9,600 polling stations with big data, it becomes clear, via our analysis on a postal code level (based accurately on 450,000 postal codes), where the constituents of political parties are located and where citizens reside who feel connected to society. The constituents are not expressed in clusters of 1,000 households, but in clusters of 35 households. A courtyard, apartment building, one side of the street, or square where your target group resides in ‘hostile’ territory; these are examples of hidden potential and can make the difference between winning or losing.

Determining where constituents are located based on styles of citizenship or other stereotyping is risky. Sometimes no relationship exists between (voting) behavior and a profile. This leads to risky or even false interpretations and target group selections. Determining the significant citizen characteristics from the target group based on a statistical analysis provides a relevant and sharp profile of your target group. You can base your communication strategy on this.

‘Winning an election’, ‘seeing the turnout decrease’, are often not steady trends in the operating territory. That is, a gain or loss can have multiple causes. By making a fingerprint of your success in your operational territory you know where your support is significant and where it is small. By plotting this in time, the upward pressure (trending gain) and downward pressure (trending loss) are made visible. We do not calculate this on the inaccurate polling station level but on the grid level of 500 x 500 meters. This enables you to see what worked in the past and you can repeat this, you will therefore also know what provided a negative result and you will be able to make adjustments or prevent this from happening in the future.

Winning and losing is most beautiful when it changes as the water level. Evenly. Losing in such a manner, provides opportunities to recover. However, if there is disintegration, then there is another problem. Disintegration forces one to make intrusive strategy changes. Such a situation may not be ignored. Not every loss is the same. We would gladly visualize your loss situation.

You will not be on your own in the process of acquiring the support of citizens. Your opponent is not your competition. The competition can best be determined statistically. It can be determined on a neighborhood level how you compare to this statistical competitor. You can keep an eye on your competition in a focused manner in order to see if they are further weakening the basis of your already vulnerable areas. You can subsequently determine whether you should attack or rather defend. This information has a significant influence on your choices in regards to content, strategy, and communication.

By making the influence that participating parties have on each other visible, you will understand how the participating parties relate to each other. The flow of citizens which switch parties becomes visible. Are you on your own, or are you in a competitive environment, and who are your competitors, are questions which will be answered.

Canvassers are your ambassadors. Your success depends on them. Their knowledge and skills are equally important. Knowledge is often acquired via websites and newsletters. Skills are often trained in classrooms. This is expensive, not efficient, and does not reach everyone, while progress and having the knowledge stick are very uncertain matters. Via a special e-canvas online learning environment, both knowledge and skills are trained, progress and participation are monitored and canvassers are stimulated to become skilful via incentives in intrinsic motivation.

Common conversation scripts, which provide guidance for canvas interviews, have proven to achieve the opposite in practice. A successful canvasser is able to initiate a change process in the mind of a citizen. By determining what a citizen is thinking about, subsequent strategies can be activated, causing the citizen to achieve the desired result on his/her own. The strategies used to have the citizen make the desired mental steps, are combined with a content-related context and are trained via the e-canvas online learning environment and made available the canvas-app.

Building on the concept of postal codes where your constituents and hidden potential can be found, a special canvas-app will be made available to your canvassers which plans the most optimal routes based on the available capacity. Progress is kept track of. Content and demographic location-dependent information which simplifies the work of the canvassers is presented. Data are collected on the way and stored centrally. The main office has direct contact with the canvassers and the canvassers have contact with each other.

Does canvassing constitute a strong offline experience? In the modern campaign approach it combines offline with online canvassing. A complete designed dashboard helps with online micro-targeting. Trending is not only indicated via the usual social media monitor, but all abovementioned data collections are integrated in it. Your data, the e-canvasser analyses, including the provided feedback of canvas conversations via the canvas-app and the routes which were taken. This is all provided real-time enabling you to anticipate immediately.

The core of strategic data analyses is the interactive online maps and the accompanying charts. These are integrated in a well-organized dashboard where all the relevant data for your campaign is presented graphically. As your campaign data is connected to your organization, links can be made with your existing database systems, so that your own data become part of the campaign.

All data which become available during the training sessions and the approach of your target group are processed real-time and presented via the dashboard. Not only can you see exactly how your campaign is doing at any point in time, it is also possible to make real-time adjustments. Static inflexibility is now something of the past. Fine-tuning of online and offline communication and responding to unexpected events, such as absent canvassers are within reach.