Now that Election Day has passed, Joe and Martín break down their experiences from this election cycle and what they learned for future campaigns. They discuss the highs and lows of the past few months and outline the key takeaways that campaigns and political professionals must learn from 2020.
We are finally in a post-Election Day world! This past election cycle was one that will go down in history, both for how important it was for Democrats to win back the White House and for how radically different campaigning has been in the age of COVID-19. In this special episode, Joe and Martín go over some of their personal highs and lows from 2020 and cover the most important lessons that candidates, political operatives, and advocacy groups should learn from this election.
Resources
Season 2 Email Priority Notification List
How Can You Deal with Election Stress?
Connect with us!
If you have campaign questions or want to learn more, reach out to us using the contact information below.
Twitter: @cmpwrkshp
Instagram: @TheCampaignWorkshop
Email: marketing@thecampaignworkshop.com
Joe Fuld
Twitter: @joefuld
Instagram: @joefuld
Martín Diego Garcia
Twitter: @gmartindiego
Instagram: @gmartindiego
Presented by The Campaign Workshop
(Intro Music)
Joe Fuld (00:07):
Hey friends, you're listening to how to win a campaign where you'll get an insider's perspective that teaches you not only how to run, but how to win. I'm Joe Fuld.
Martín Diego Garcia (00:17):
And I'm Martín Diego Garcia. And you can find us on Twitter @CMPWRKSHP or on Instagram @thecampaignworkshop. Thanks for tuning into today's special episode on post-campaign wrap-up.
Joe Fuld (00:34):
Today, we'll be talking about what we learned from the 2020 election cycle highlights and low lights. It was a hard year and a lot of things to learn from. Whether it's a national narrative that was hard to break through, COVID-19, BLM, the Supreme Court, problems with the post office, and hyper-partisanship, this year was a hard year for politics. Martín, what was your highlight and your low light of the year?
Martín Diego Garcia (01:04):
As you said, right? We, we, we have got through and are continuing to get through a lot in this country. And if you were anywhere near a campaign, it took a hard left turn around February of March, early of this year to try to figure out what to do. And I think one of my highlights from this year in seeing the record number of turnouts across the country, across the board, in terms of who turned out for this election, I think even with everything you mentioned, right, COVID-19 the black lives matter movement around race in this country, right? This idea, this quick nomination to the Supreme court, all of these things, the, the immense amount of voter disenfranchisement and voter intimidation that happened to still see these record turnouts among young folks among Latinos, among African-Americans right, among folks of color across the board, right? It only goes to show that people are really, really engaged in a political process this year. And I think regardless of who you voted for, regardless of where you stand on, the issues are in the politics, right? Like participation in democracy is key to ensure that our country continues to work. And I think for me, that is something we work day in and day out with our clients and, and our partners to do. And so to see that is really, really amazing. I think on the flip side, in that same vein, right? It has been personally hard for me to, to swallow the pill of,uhow many people continue to support this president and to continue to support his rhetoric, his hatred, his white supremacy views, his racism, right? Like list all the things four years ago as a voter. And you voted for Trump, right? You could still claim ignorance, right? You could still claim some ignorant bliss and, and four years later, you can't, you know, exactly what he stands for, you know, exactly what he's doing. Do you know exactly who he is as a person and the agenda that he's running. And so those 68 million, almost 70 million people who have voted for him, it's a hard pill to swallow. And it just goes to show that we have, do a lot of work to do. We have a lot of communication to do we have a lot of comfort conversations to have, but what about you, Joe? What are your highlights, low lights?
Joe Fuld (03:24):
Well, I mean, I'll start with a low light, right? Which is COVID 19 affected everything. It affected how we live, what we do, whether, you know, people could, you know, make a living, support their family and,
Martín Diego Garcia (03:37):
So many lost.
Joe Fuld (03:38):
I mean, it just, that is totally right. I mean, sad and crazy thing. Right. So start there, COVID-19 affected how we live and love and all of that. And then it also affected, right? Like, as far as like the work that we do, how campaigns are run, how people vote, how people engage in elections, you know, so it was a low light as far as the impact on people, but the way campaigns changed, adapted the way, like people in like organizations, you know, move to remote, all of that was like amazing. You know, the other part here that still is, was just a reality, was this whole idea of nationalized elections that these, all of these elections became national elections, even local elections was around, where around national issues, big and small. And it was just hard to localize races. And it was hard to have a local message that stood out in its own way. So that was like just a crazy part of this year, a trend we've been seeing for a while and a trend that has continued. Yeah. Martín, I mean, talk to me more about sort of how you saw campaigns and organizations change and adapt.
Martín Diego Garcia (04:56):
Definitely. I mean, to your point, right. I think it'd be interesting to see in sort of all the post analysis that's going to happen. Oh, did that message work right? Did and I, and we saw this across the board a lot, a lot of progressive and Democratic candidates were tying their opponents to Trump in one way or another. And it will be interesting to see whether or not that message stuck and played in the way they thought it was. Right. Did it encourage Trump voters to then vote for therapists, their opposition, or did it actually turn out their, their base? That it'll be interesting to see, see that messaging analysis, but in terms of how campaigns adapted, like I said, right, we had to take a hard left turn, come earlier this year and, and figure out different ways to still have that really impactful in-person one-on-one conversation. Um, that really drives a lot of these grassroots campaign. And so folks turn to phone banking, right? I think the second best thing you can do and still have that, that engagement on that one-on-one level is by doing a number of phone banks. So we saw that with the inclusion of text messaging and SMS campaigns. I know that I bombarded with a number of, text message campaigns. So again, in post analysis, I would love to see if any of the response rates or the open rates or the engagement rates shifted from this text messaging, SMS campaigns, knowing that this is very early, right. In the, in the number of cycles that has been part of campaigns.
Joe Fuld (06:15):
I will say Martín that they went up, right. My experience has been that they went up, my experience was that people are home and they are willing to have more of a conversation than they have ever had before. And we've seen that. I don't know that it means you're necessarily persuading with them. I think it might be that you're getting the base out or informing the base or informing parts of, of your audience about a down-ballot race. We saw a lot of straight ticket voting across the country. But I also think that there was more engagement in this sort of virtual field than ever before.
Martín Diego Garcia (06:53):
Oh yeah. Right. Like people were using things like Facebook live and other video content streaming tools. They were using telephone town halls to, to get their folks amped up and rallied and to spread information. I think one of the huge buzzwords that we continued during, right, was this relational organizing and communicating, to the friends and the family of the folks you were quarantining with, the people you were seeing and really shifting from going out and talking to strangers, right. Going door to door canvassing, which most of Dems really cut, maybe except for maybe the last GOTV, where they were doing it with social distance rules in mind, to talking to folks that you were already communicating with. Right. And already living next to yeah.
Joe Fuld (07:31):
I mean, we saw Republicans doing more of the canvassing at the end,
Martín Diego Garcia (07:35):
We saw Republicans doing a lot of not safe things, right.
Joe Fuld (07:37):
No, that is, that is true. But, but again, like this is a quest something we have to put in our calculus for the future. Right. For, for the special elections and for next year. I mean, the other thing that we saw on our end from like a creative side was that we were doing a lot of user generated content. We were worried about like sending out crews to people's homes. And so we, we did a little bit of that from a socially distance, but we did a lot. We used a lot of different platforms from a user generated content sense to have people engage and create custom videos. And frankly, we were able to engage and get real voices that we at a scale that we've never been able to do before. So that was a really new thing for, for us. And I think for us as a firm, but I think also in politics and you're going to see more and more of that.
Martín Diego Garcia (08:29):
Yeah. Yeah. Really. Some really cool creative alternatives, right. That, that campaigns really had to think up of on the fly. And so ton to learn a ton, to learn a ton, to learn. And we're going to dig into how to, how to learn from what we just went through. Right. And how to prepare for 2021 and beyond right after this break.
(Music)
Martín Diego Garcia (09:01):
And we're back. So a ton we, we just talked about in that first segment and Joe, and a lot to think about and a lot to learn from. So what's next, right? As campaigns and organizations are wanting to move forward, what should they be thinking about? What should they be doing?
Joe Fuld (09:16):
Well, I think folks need to be thinking about ongoing conversations. Again, there is a big opportunity to engage people who turned out for the first time this year. I think the number right now that I've seen is about 20% of the electorate that turned out this year had not voted in 2016. And that is both people from an age perspective, as well as people just who, who were eligible to participate, but didn't participate in 2016. So then it's, how do you engage folks for the longterm? How do you have deeper conversations with people? I think this idea of long-form conversations of canvassing, I think as a Democrat, we definitely have an issue we've got to address around issues versus message. I think sometimes we are overly focused on issues. I'm less focused around message. I think the strength for Republicans has been, their message is clearer. Their issues are murkier, but again, it's like, that's, that's the point, right? So we've got to figure out how to dig in there. The other thing that I think is a question for our lives is civility, right? How do we, how do we get along with each other? How do we figure out a live together? How do we figure out to communicate with each other? How do we move together as a country going forward? I'm not suggesting that I have all the answers, but I want to help solve those problems. I think that is emotionally hard. It is something we've got to figure out. There's a lot of problems in this country. I think one of the ways that we can find some common ground is through advocacy. There's a list of tons of things that people are going to want action on in 2021, what are, what should be at the top of the list? Can we come together as a country and make some real decisions about what we think the priorities are and make those priorities are real thing and make some things happen. That is a question. I think that's what people want to see. My hope is we can do that on a national level. My hope is we can do that on a local level.
Martín Diego Garcia (11:19):
As our listeners are thinking about doing that, right? Like whether it's doing some deep conversations with their memberships that they communicated with, whether it's analyzing their message, what is some information, some data, what would they need to start doing that? And what are some ways they can start doing that? Obviously knowing right, like the voter files and, and, and some of that data and information is still a long ways off from being uploaded where we can access it. Right. And so what is some things that they can be doing now to either set themselves up for those conversations or to start those conversations with what they have?
Joe Fuld (11:51):
I mean, the first thing that would be thinking about is work from the inside out, right? Have conversations with your coalition about what you all care about, make those sort of decisions for like, you have lame duck sessions coming up, you have legislative sessions coming up, have those conversations. Now start engaging in building, figure out where your weaknesses are, figure out people who might've turned out, that you've never engaged with an advocacy. Now's a good time to do it. Right? All of those things are things that are important. I mean, going to things that you do Martín, right? It's like thinking about the programs that you have and what worked and what didn't. Right. Can you talk a little bit about that? That to me is so important.
Martín Diego Garcia (12:36):
Agreed, right? I mean, most people just want to pack up and leave right there. Like the election has happened. It's over people cast their ballot, wrap it up, let's get out of here. And I would highly encourage against that. Right? Because there's so much that happened. There are so many factors that play into the politics this year and we need to learn from them. We need to figure out, did these creative ways of communication work or not work, did the messaging that we used, whether it was an overall message narrative, whether it was an issue, did those work or not work. And we really have to take a hard look in the mirror to say, here's where we succeeded. Here's where these things really helped put us over the line and put us over the finish line. And here are the things that didn't, so that we're not continuing to repeat the mistakes and we can avoid them next time and continue to grow and adapt to an ever changing political landscape. Right. And that looks like engaging your coalitions, right? If you're a campaign who were the other folks you've worked with on their campaign, working with your organizations who may have endorsed you organizations who may have run an independent expenditure or other outside education efforts within your districts and communities figure out what looks similar across all of the programs you all run, you all ran and start pulling out some trends there, right? In terms of communicating with folks, you have a membership list, right? If you're an organization that did outreach to members, if you're a campaign, you have that voter list. Right? And so there, there are ways in which you can start doing some of this qualitative data analysis and pooling of this data to communicate with folks, just to ask them, did you see our digital ads? Did you read our mail? Did you engage with our phone bankers? What did that feel like as a voter on your end? Right. And, and really start collecting that data so that we can start to learn from it. We can really start to think about learning from it. And if you have questions or need help on thinking through what a post evaluation for your campaign, your organization, your program, look like, feel free to reach out to us. We have some resources that we'll, we'll put in the show description as well, but, but a super important thing to do, particularly if your organizations who maybe this was your first run at politics, right? And you jumped in a couple of races to really learn what was the impact do you all mean? And how can you continue to increase that impact in the future, Joe, what can be doing or thinking about doing, to set them up for success over the next year or two years?
Joe Fuld (14:58):
So as a firm that does advocacy and politics, every two years, we're evaluating what worked and what didn't. So personally, I'm thinking about this. And then with clients, I'm thinking about this and whether you run a nonprofit or a political campaign,uor a labor union, you should be thinking about systems and processes, right? What worked, what didn't, what could do better? You know, what are things that you Excel that you want to think about the people around you creating, building a good team? What were things that might've been missing on your team and really growing that. You want to create that culture of empathy, both to your members and to people you're reaching out to, and really continuing to do that outreach. And you want to build community around your work. I think this is, you know, if you're a political campaign in the future, if you're a nonprofit, you want to be thinking about how you're identifying people for potential leadership in the future, people who were members of your organization that weren't engaged, how do you engage them more or people that were brand new, who did an amazing job, how do you rise them up, help them do more things within their community. And then again, as I said earlier, right, I think it's this idea of what is the change that you want to make now? How do you have that be? How do you have change, be an opening for growth in a community, whether that's a better conversation, whether that is one thing that your local or group and organization is going to get done in the legislature or the County council, or one thing that your organization is going to do to try and push with the US Senate, whatever it is. Think about that. Think about the priorities. Think about how you're going to build to me. That's what this is about is there is a huge opportunity out of this election. There are a lot of problems. There are a lot of issues, but there is an opportunity to have an ongoing conversation with a massive amount of people who turned out and engaged for the first time. And we can't let all the bad that is going on in the world cloud the fact that we have had the greatest amount of turnout since 1900, right? Like we have to think about then, okay, how's that a starting point? How's that a better conversation. How's that more engagement. And don't shy away from those hard conversations. Start having them, but also be open and understand in having those hard conversations, you might get answers that you're not happy with and that's okay too. Right? You gotta be open to that. You've got to have that tough conversation and you gotta like stick with it.
Martín Diego Garcia (17:42):
And I think right, before we wrap up, we have been talking about next steps, right? And want to acknowledge that whether you are a campaign, a campaign manager, an organization, a volunteer, anything, just a voter, right. We just expended a lot of energy and emotion into this election. So, so take a pause, take a breath, right? Like take a nap, do, do what you need to do to, to take care of yourself. But, but you'll hopefully recharge. Right? Cause as we said, there is still a lot of opportunity. There is still a lot of work that that really needs to be done. But but take that time to take a minute for yourself and take care of yourself.
Joe Fuld (18:21):
Yeah. I mean, we actually have a post on the blog. That's on election stress. I, when I wrote it, I thought it was just going to be about pre-election stress, but it is going on. So I dig in like check that out, but keep in touch with us. You know, we could talk more and more, but we want to hear from you, the listeners. Reach out to our social handles in the description, let us know what questions you have and how we can help you in the future.
Martín Diego Garcia (18:50):
Definitely. Thanks for tuning into this special episode on post-election wrap up. So until next time, this Martín Diego Garcia
Joe Fuld (18:58):
And Joe Fuld, breaking down how to win a campaign.
Joe Fuld (19:02):
How to Win a Campaign is Joe Fuld, Martín Diego Garcia, Daniel Lam, Heidi Job, and Elena Veatch. Music by Mike Pinto. Sound editing by the Global Startup Movement. Special thanks to the team at The Campaign Workshop. Please review, like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
(Outro Music)