Hi Michigan VAN Users,
We have three newly released scores for 2022 now available in VAN! You’ll find some information about each of these scores below. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to our team at van@michigandems.com
The 2020 versions of the Dem Party Support and Turnout scores are no longer updating. If you’re using 2020 scores in saved searches, you’ll need to update your searches with the 2022 scores.
2022 DNC Dem Party Support Score
The DNC Dem Party Support Score represents the confidence that someone will support Democrats over Republicans in a head-to-head setting. It does not predict the strength of their support. For example, someone with a score of 80 has an 80% likelihood of supporting Democrats over Republicans, while someone with a score of 60 has a 60% likelihood of Dem support. However, it does not mean that the person with a score of 80 is a stronger Democrat than the person with a score of 60. Use cases for this score can include GOTV, donor and volunteer recruitment, and household level-messaging.
It is not recommended that you use this score to try to identify persuadable or independent voters. Persuadability or intensity of support are not encoded in this model at all. This score is also not designed to help identify high or low turnout voters. There is a separate 2022 DNC Turnout score that can be used for turnout-based targeting.
Inputs: - Voter file demographic fields, including age and gender
- Vote history, including single-election turnout and turnout patterns across a series of elections, as well as party primaries
- VAN survey response data from previous election cycles
- Demographic scores, like education level and religious affiliation. This includes demographic scores built internally by the DNC and models provided by vendors like Civis
- Census data including ancestry and origin, education, race and ethnicity, population density, income, and marital status
Dropped Inputs: While the 2020 Dem support model included inputs from consumer and ElectionBase fields from TargetSmart, these fields have been dropped from the 2022 model in favor of the higher quality and more stable fields listed above.
2022 DNC/Clarity General Turnout Score
The 2022 General Turnout model is a probability score that predicts the likelihood that an individual will vote in the 2022 General Election. As an example, the model predicts that a voter with a score of 80 has an 80% likelihood of voting in November.
This score should be used in combination with candidate support, party support, or ideology scores and IDs to build your targets. This score does not predict partisanship in any way, only turnout likelihood.
Because this score relies heavily on previous election turnout, newly registered voters with little to no vote history may be unscored. It’s a good practice to add unscored, left-leaning new registrants to your GOTV targets.
2022 Malaise Score
The 2022 Malaise Model identifies voters who are most affected by the negative national mood towards Democrats. The model was built by modeling individuals whose favorability rating of President Biden has decreased since 2020. A higher score indicates that a voter has become more unfavorable towards President Biden since 2020.
The Malaise score can be used as an early cycle persuasion model to help prioritize voters for campaign persuasion outreach. The score does not represent a likelihood that a voter can be persuaded, but can be used to rank order voters for outreach. Voters with higher malaise scores have shown support for Biden in the past, but will likely need a push in order to turnout for Democrats in 2022.
The Malaise model does not distinguish between likely and unlikely voters. You should include turnout criteria when using the Malaise score to build persuasion targets. The Malaise score should also not be used to calculate votes gained through outreach. The model measures change in favorability, which doesn’t translate to votes gained.
As always, if you have any questions, you can reach out to our team at van@michigandems.com. You can find a full list of VAN support channels and resources at midems.co/van-help
All the best,
MDP Data Team | 