A Heat map of Voters under 30 in Berkeley, California created in VoterMapping

The Young Vote is an important demographic in today’s elections. Today, there are over 44 million voters under the age of 29 (U.S. Census Bureau) . In recent years, the percentage of young voters that are politically active has jumped, doubling, even quadrupling in some states . These new voters grew up in the age of the internet, and often have vast resources to inform themselves and each other, using social media and new online tools. These tools mean that gaining one more young voter on your side is powerful because they spread the ideas they believe in quickly through online media , making more voters interested in your candidate, policy, or product. In addition to this, energizing young voters is especially important to campaigns because people who start voting young often continue voting, and continue voting with the same or similar political ideals. Already major campaigns are targeting young voters. Whether you are running a campaign for a politician , political ideal, or for a product, it is important to utilize demographics to find people who are interested in your movement, and to ask them the right questions to mobilize them into action.

Universes are selections of people used to make the walking lists you can canvass. You can create them based on different demographics.

With GroundGame, you can organize the area you want to canvass by important demographics like age, race, gender, income level, and occupation. These demographics are important because they contain clues to what things someone might be interested in. For example, when running a political campaign and trying to mobilize young people, ask questions and give information relevant to young voters – for example, education programs and student debt. People also respond better to others they feel they can relate to. For example, studies have shown that young voters respond better to canvassers who are more in their age range – because people under thirty have an easier time relating to people under thirty. This means that as someone running a canvassing operation, the tools available in VoterMapping and GroundGame can become incredibly useful in designing a campaign that captures the attention of your target audience. With this groundbreaking technology, it has never been this easy to make your message more powerful and memorable to young voters.

All finalized surveys immediately become filters, even before you’ve canvassed anyone .

If you survey people while you canvass, the new information that you gather will make VoterMapping even more useful. The information you gather in your surveys instantly become filters, which means that you have yet another way to better understand what kind of message the people you’re canvassing will relate to. Just like age, survey information lets you get a better picture of what people in an area want from a policy or politician, allowing your campaign to become increasingly relevant to their interests and ideals. For example, if we set up a survey asking young people to rate how important different political issues are, we will get a better sense of that demographic, their priorities, and how to better reach them politically and mobilize them. GroundGame and VoterMapping are unique in their ability to work with each other and make the data you create instantly useful.

Young Voters are more easy than ever to reach with the new technology available to canvassing campaigns. Just as importantly, GroundGame makes canvassing even more effective with its ability to target demographics and instantly use new data. Combined, these tools mean that campaigns everywhere can be sleeker and more effective than ever before.