Post-Electoral Evaluation: Qualitative

Building a sustainable, long-term voter engagement program hinges upon organizers' commitment to a comprehensive analysis of each project.

The post-electoral qualitative evaluation is not only an opportunity to review the major decisions and actions of the project, but also to construct a narrative of the work you’ve done, stregthens ties with allies, and inspire the folks that'll be leading the efforts in the next election cycle. To do an effective evaluation, campaign organizers will need some input. The best sources are the folks who worked tirelessly over the last few months as well as the people they met along the way.

Meet with staff, volunteers and allies

Discussions about the quantitative results will move naturally into talk about qualitative aspects, but you might want to formalize it a bit more. During post-election meetings with organizers, core staff and/or allies you might follow a list of specific questions, addressing each one in turn; invite folks to share their impressions, round-table style; or ask them to fill out short surveys. Of course, you might do all three. Questions to consider include:

• What went well in the project?
• What would we do differently if we could? If the answers to this question are things your organization couldn’t control (for example, an ally organization never sent promised mail pieces into your neighborhoods), ask yourself, how could we avoid finding ourselves in such a situation again?
• What did the project teach us about our organization?
• What opportunities did we gain from doing this work?
• What new challenges have arisen? (For example, have we realized we’re desperately in need of a better database?)
• Was the budget we drew in the planning phase realistic?
• Who were our biggest donors? How did we reach them? Why did they donate? What work have we done to build a relationship with them?
• Was our messaging effective? What was effective/ineffective about it?
• Did we teach people about the main issues as well as the electoral process?
• Why did people want to volunteer for the project?
• Did our volunteers learn organizing skills? Are we developing new leaders?
• Do our volunteers want to get involved in the organization?
• What follow up work needs to be done to harvest our wins? (Watch out – you’ve just entered a new planning process!)

Go back to the voters

This only covers one side of the story, though. In the video, Robby Rodriguez talks about the surveys that SWOP has sent to the folks who volunteers identified as supporters. Not only does this help organizers to figure out what worked and what didn’t, it also gives those supporters the opportunity to become involved in the organization. Surveys may not work for every project – in a large-scale initiative campaign, the results may be all you need or want to know about the effectiveness of your campaign message – but for the organizers who choose to do them, the input is invaluable.

Click to hear from an organizer

Robby Rodriguez: surveying voters after the election has multiple benefits