Fireside State Using Voter Data to Connect with Constituents

The audience editor is an excellent tool in Fireside that provides you with a great way to find and connect with constituents. If you’d like to target folks around a pressing issue or do some proactive outreach, this is a great way to do it.

One of the key components of all of this is voter data. Here we’ll dive into how to use it in your emanager.

Do You Have Most Recent Voter Data?

First thing’s first. You’ll need to determine how current the voter data is in the system. Here are a couple options to check for that:

1. If you have access, go to Face icon > System Settings > Fields and Tags > Affiliations. Once you’re there and have clicked the dropdown to see the list of affiliations, you’ll want to do a simple ctrl + f for “Fireside Voter Data” to see what you’ve got.

2. Try out the audiences tool (navigate to Outreach > Audiences), and search by Field > Affiliations and see if you can find “Fireside Voter Data.”

3. Reach out to us in chat, send us an email at [e-mail], or give us a call at 202.621.5121. We’ll be glad to check that for you and let you know when you received your last update of voter data! If you have never received voter data from us, we’ll be glad to provide info on how you can moving forward.

Lastly, if your office’s voter data is from a few years back, it’s our recommendation to work with what’s most current. Take a look at some key info about the data integration process and then be sure to reach out to us to get that process started!

What Should I do with All of This Information?

Here’s where the audience editor comes back into focus. You’ll want to go to Outreach > Audiences to get started. There, you’ll create an audience with rules specific to voter data. As this data information is categorized by affiliations, our rule will be set from that criterion. For a quick refresher on audience creation, click here.

Let’s say you want to reach out to constituents who voted in the last two general elections. Here’s what you’ll do in the audience editor:

In the Include People Matching section, you’ll:

1. Change “Any Of” to “All Of” so that when you choose two voting history affiliations, you’ll be making sure that the data involves folks that voted in both listed, rather than one or the other.

2. Add the Affiliations field.

3. Click the plus button next to Fireside Voter Data to expand the children affiliations so that you can search for the “Voted in General Election” specific affiliations.

4. And finally, hit save. If you’d like to take a look at how many people are in that data set while working on your audience, feel free to click the refresh button in the top-right above the Include People section and below the save button to see how many folks you’ll be contacting. Do make sure to click save when done to lock your changes and save your work.

Can I Use Voter Frequency Data Instead?

Definitely! Although the above approach while working with voter data affiliations is more convenient, you can choose to create an audience around a voter frequency score. The data that we provide scores a constituent based on how often they vote. Here’s more info on that front:

• There’s a voter frequency score scaled from 0-8, with 8 being the best score showing a very high frequency of voting.

• The score is connected to elections on even years for primary and general elections. So if someone voted in the both the primary and general elections in the last four years, their score would be 8. If they voted in two primaries and four general elections, they’d get a 6 score. And if they voted in two primaries and one general election, they’d get a 3.

Here’s how you’d put this information into the Audience Editor:

So there you have it! If you’re looking to build out an outreach program that will help to build and/or cement strong relationships with your constituents, as well as help them know that your office is there as a resource in times of need, utilizing your voter data readily available to you in Fireside is a great way to do so.