The Vote Get Goal Worksheet
A weighted turnout model, not a calculator. Feed it two prior elections and your current registration; it returns your vote-get goal, your likely votes, and the number of voters you actually have to persuade — precinct by precinct.
- Excel + Numbers
- Instant download
- Built precinct by precinct
The one number your whole campaign is built on.
Ask a first-time candidate how many votes they need and you usually get half the district, or a shrug. Both answers lose races. Your vote get goal sizes everything else: how many doors you knock, how much money you raise, how many volunteers you need. This worksheet gives you that number, and the number of voters you actually have to persuade, for every precinct in your district.
Real election results in, your vote goal out.
Your vote goal comes from who will vote, not who is registered. The worksheet walks you through it in order: your district's past results, how much each of those elections should count, and your current registration. Pick your party once and every column relabels around it. When you're done, you have your vote get goal, your likely votes and your voters to persuade, precinct by precinct.
A worksheet for every step.
Start with what really happened.
We show you how to pick the right past elections for your race and pull the results that matter, so your vote goal is built on how your district really votes, not on a guess.
- How to choose elections that look like yours
- How to find the registration and turnout numbers you need
- How to enter them precinct by precinct
- Turnout calculated for every party, automatically
Make the right elections count.
A presidential year and a quiet off-year aren't the same electorate. We show you how to decide how much each past election should count toward yours, so your turnout estimate fits the race you're actually running.
- How to judge which election looks more like this one
- How to weight each one for your race
- How to fine-tune the estimate for a single precinct
- Likely turnout for every party, calculated for you
Know exactly how many votes to win.
Add your current registration and historical election results, and the worksheet walks you through the rest. We show you how to read and predict: how many people will vote, how many votes you need to win, how many your party gets you, and how many voters you still have to persuade in every precinct.
- How to find your vote get goal for every precinct
- How to see the votes your party already gives you
- How to spot exactly where you need to persuade
- How to use it as your turf priority list
What's included.
- Excel .xlsx (opens in Excel and Google Sheets) plus an Apple Numbers version
- Models two prior elections side by side and lets you weight each one
- Turnout broken out by Democrat, Republican and Other — for every cycle
- Pick your party once; the whole model re-labels and recalculates around it
- Outputs: vote-get goal, likely votes, and voters to persuade
- Built precinct by precinct, so it doubles as your turf priority list
Built for the people who do the work.
First-time candidates
Find out whether the votes are there before you spend a dollar, and how many it takes to win.
Campaign managers
One number to size the field plan, the budget and the volunteer program around.
Field directors
A precinct-by-precinct list of where your margin comes from, and where you need to persuade.
A note from Craig.
This is the model I build for every campaign I work on. It's the first thing I want to see, because every other number in a campaign comes from it.
Most win number calculators treat every past election the same. They aren't. A presidential year and a municipal off-year bring out different voters, and pretending they're the same is how campaigns end up chasing a goal they could never hit.
The number that surprises candidates most is voters to persuade. It's usually much smaller than they feared and much more specific than they expected, and it tells you whether your race is won on turnout or on persuasion.
Ten minutes of data entry for the number your field plan and your budget depend on. Do it before anything else.
The Vote Get Goal Worksheet
Every door, every call, every mailer and every dollar is sized off this one figure. Get it wrong in March and you find out in November.
Prefer to be walked through it? The First 30 Days course shows you how to find your win number with your voter file and make your go or no-go decision. Learn about First 30 Days →