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Hi there,

We’re Emily and Phong, Vote Forward’s data & research team. The team was just me (Emily!) for a while, so if you’ve joined one of our virtual data results chats in the last few years, or if you’ve taken part in a Vote Forward Labs experimental campaign, you’ve definitely heard from me.

Thanks in no small part to your support, we were able to bring Phong on to the team last year, allowing us to essentially double our analytic capabilities to make letter writing that much better for you.

 

[photo of Emily, Phong, and Malcolm on a hike]([link removed])

When we’re not crunching numbers, sometimes we get to meet up for a quick midday hike! (On this beautiful day we were joined by Malcolm, Phong’s new baby and our honorary teammate.)

 

Our team’s focus is on designing experiments and analyzing results to learn more about what really works to turn out voters. Our goal is to continue making Vote Forward’s campaigns more innovative and more effective.

We’re involved in every step of the campaign process, from coming up with questions to test, to designing new letter templates, all the way through to analyzing the impact of letters on voter turnout. This typically means conducting randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the most rigorous way of evaluating whether a tactic is effective.

A few highlights from our team’s work over the past few years include:

- In 2021, inspired by the wisdom of experienced organizers, we tested a new personal storytelling approach to letter messages where we provided training to help writers craft a heartfelt message rooted in their own lived experiences. The encouraging results from that RCT led us to integrate that personal storytelling approach into all Vote Forward campaigns, including our letter writing trainings and parties.
- We often run tests to help answer the most critical questions our volunteers ask us. For example, we get many questions about letter mail dates, so we ran mail date tests in 2020 and 2022 to understand more.
- Our experiments help us validate that our efforts are really paying off—like The Big Send in 2020, where Vote Forward letters boosted voter turnout in one of the most critical elections of our lifetimes.
- Our experiments can also show when something doesn’t work the way we expected so that together, we don’t spend valuable time on ineffective outreach.

We strive to keep trying new approaches to voter contact so we can keep learning more and more over time about what is working now—and what might work in the future.

Our most critical project this year is to understand the impact of The Big Send 2022. Additionally, we’re analyzing many other tests we ran in 2022 that will inform next year’s work, including campaigns where letter writers crafted messages about reproductive rights and climate change, our first ever candidate-focused campaign for Nevada’s secretary of state race, and a new approach to voter registration letters. We’ll use the findings from these experiments to develop 2024 campaigns that are as impactful as possible.

[You can help fund the work of our data & research team and support our efforts to make future campaigns even more effective by making a contribution to Vote Forward!]([link removed])

[Support the team]([link removed])

Our mission is to make it possible for anyone to get involved to support our democracy through letter writing, and make sure our community’s collective efforts have the greatest impact possible. That’s why thoughtful research and rigorous analysis are at the forefront of everything we do.

Thank you for helping our small team get big things accomplished. We can’t wait to encourage more voters to cast their ballots in future elections with you.

Emily Wasserman and Phong Le
Data & Research Team
Vote Forward

 

 

 

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