Most campaigns treat phones as a last-minute tool. There’s good reason for that instinct. When all of the mail is delivered, the digital ads are bought and the doors are knocked, you can still deploy phones and make sure your candidate’s name is the last one in that voter’s ear when they head to the polls.
But the best political campaign strategies don’t wait until GOTV. A GOTV push on Election Day works, but it can’t do in 12 hours what should have started weeks earlier. By the time a campaign figures that out, the election is already over, and there’s no going back to do it right.
There are three things campaigns can do in September that change the outcome in a close race:
- Find out which swing voters are leaning your way and which low-propensity voters are planning to show up.
- Have a longer conversation with people before they’re fed up with being contacted.
- Make sure every seat at every event is filled.
1. ID Before You Spend, Not After
Two things make a robust Blind ID program especially worth doing right now. Swing voters who came out for Trump in 2024 are showing signs of drifting on affordability, and ticket splitters in states with strong Democrat candidates are still open to voting Republican further down the ballot. But they often don’t break across predictable lines, and you end up targeting the wrong people.
Blind ID is a live call or text survey that asks a voter what they think today, without your message shaping the answer. It’s not a persuasion call. And it’s not a poll where 300 completed surveys stand in for everyone on the list.
On a recent Blind ID program, independent voters were identified as supportive, opposed or genuinely undecided for $7.69 per definitive answer, and 43% said it mattered to them that elected officials from different parties work together.
Do it in September, before voters have already been hit with 27 texts and six door knocks, and you’ll get more answers, and truer ones. Remove the people who aren’t voting for your candidate so you aren’t mistakenly turning out your opposition on every mail piece, text and digital buy that comes after it.
2. Have the Longer Conversation Before Voters Tune Out
A telephone townhall is a podcast where you alredy know who’s listening.
People are bombarded with so much information that they are tuning most of it out. They skip the ads, scroll past the social media posts and doubt what they do see. Everything feels like it could be fake, AI-generated or taken out of context. So they’ve stopped believing anything at face value, except long, unfiltered conversation. That’s why podcasts have exploded.
Here’s what makes a telephone townhall different from a podcast, webinar or in-person event: We dial out. We don’t wait for people to show up or RSVP. We only call the people you need to reach.
Compare that to an in-person town hall where you rent the room, run some ads and 12 people show up, none of whom is an undecided voter. A telephone townhall costs a fraction of that and reaches the people you actually need.
On a typical 60-minute event, about 12% of the people dialed join, and they stay on for around eight minutes on average, typically for under $1.50 per person. Dial 50,000 to 100,000 people and the result is a live audience of 5,000 or more, asking questions and responding to polls in real time. And the numbers hold up for candidates at every level, from U.S. Senate to state representative.
September works especially well for this because voters haven’t hit peak election frustration, so they’re more likely to engage.
3. Fill the Room Before Someone Else Does
A full room is not optional.
Press expects a full room. So do volunteers and the candidate, who look at empty seats and wonder whose fault it was.
But the people who show up aren’t your low-propensity list. They’re the supporters who already back the candidate, and the way you get them there is by calling and texting them directly. And you get the double duty of reminding your most likely voters that you care, which again allows you to focus your persuasion and turnout resources on the voters who need it.
Confirm attendance the way you’d confirm anything else you actually care about and keep the guest list to people whose support you already know. An event hijacked by protestors becomes the story instead of the candidate, and that’s avoidable if you’re deliberate about filling the seats with the right people.
Live calls still work here too. On average, 35% of people answer over multiple attempts, and total reach climbs to 75% when a voicemail is added on the final attempt. People still pick up the phone.
None of this works without the reach you get from TV, mail and digital. The best political campaign strategies make that reach more effective. September phones save money and win more votes because they give you the information to aim that reach correctly, the conversations you need before the volume drowns them out and the full room every event needs to build momentum.
Start Your Political Campaign Strategy Before GOTV
None of this replaces the reach you get from television, mail and digital. The best political campaign strategies make those investments more effective.
September phones give you the information to aim that reach correctly, the conversations you need before the volume drowns them out and the full rooms your events need to build momentum.
The problem isn’t that campaigns forget to use phones. It’s that they wait until there is only enough time left for one final reminder.
Start in September. Identify the right voters, have meaningful conversations and build visible momentum before the final GOTV push begins.
CampaignHQ can help you put that plan in place now, while there is still time for it to pay off in November.