Practical resources on political campaigning, strategy, and data visualization.
A complete walkthrough of how real field programs are built. Covers phased voter contact, volunteer recruitment, the neighborhood team model, door and phone outreach, GOTV, training, retention, and the tools every campaign team should be using.
These are the actual volunteer sign-up sheets I’ve used on campaigns for years. You get five formats for events, clipboards, and field work. All built to collect clean data, track commitments, and help volunteers actually show up.
You're running for State Senate District 12. This game is about choosing winning strategies and avoiding the pitfalls new candidates often fall into...
From Episode 6 of The Art of Campaigns. This episode I talk to Josef Lentsch, co-founder of Partisan.community about how European elections...
From Episode 5 of The Art of Campaigns. In this episode of The Art of Campaigns, I sit down with Michael Cohen, a longtime campaign strategist, pollster...
From Episode 4 of The Art of Campaigns. In this episode, I spoke with Elijah Day and Madisyn Pettit from Patriot Grassroots about running smarter field operations. We talked through canvassing timelines, data integrity, volunteer burnout, and...
Most campaigns fail because they treat strategy like an idea instead of a system. I’ve managed campaigns for 15 years, and I’ve lost count of the number of candidates who say they have a plan, only to point to their head when asked to show it...
From Episode 3 of The Art of Campaigns. Fundraising is part of every campaign but it can be quite challenging. Too often, campaigns sabotage their own success by burning through donors, ignoring ...
From Episode 2 of The Art of Campaigns. Campaigns today live and breathe data. They analyze voter files, track engagement metrics, and build sophisticated models to predict turnout. But...
From Episode 1 of The Art of Campaigns. The campaigns that succeed are the ones that think several moves ahead, anticipate their opponents’ actions, and execute their strategy with discipline...
Most campaigns fail before they even get started, because they don't have an actual strategy. Winning is about data-driven decisions, disciplined execution, and...
Conventional wisdom says partisanship is at an all-time high, and the narrative suggests moderates don’t stand a chance...
Paper walkbooks are a scam. The purpose of knocking doors is to sort voters into buckets, and build a relationship with IDed persuadables to ensure they remember your name on election day...
Uncovering campaign trends with heat maps: Comparing past and present results...
Are you considering running for office in the upcoming election, but not sure if you're ready to take the leap? Making an informed decision is crucial, and this helpful flowchart will guide you through the essential questions every potential candidate should ask themselves...
Voter Contact is important! The goal of your voter outreach effort is to build relationships with the voters themselves, and create a connection.
Choropleth maps are a powerful visualization tool for displaying geospatial data and are often used to show the distribution of a particular variable across a region. In this tutorial, I will walk you through the steps of creating interactive choropleth maps in Python using these two powerful libraries.
When planning a political campaign, you have to look at everything from a top-down view, often called a 30,000ft view, or the big picture. Detaching yourself from your first-person viewpoint takes practice. I find books like these are precisely the kind of practice I need to keep my correct orientation. I often suggest them to interns and staff looking to improve their ability to engage in strategic thought.
