How Many Households Must I Reach to Win A Local Election?

You probably don’t need to reach as many households as you might think. Let’s assume that you have already figured out the number of votes you need to win your election, but you want to know how many households that translates into.

In other words, how many doors can you expect to knock on?

Let’s assume that there are two voters per household. Some households may have three or four voters living under the same room. Some households will have a single voter. We can also assume that two spouses are likely to vote together, and if you talk to one member of the family, than you can probably expect to get the second vote.

So, how many households will you need to communicate with to receive the number of votes needed to win?

Let us say that your district has total number of 10,000 voters. In the last local election, there was 50% turnout of voters, or 5,000 votes cast. In a two-person race, you would need 2501 votes to win. In a multi-candidate race, you would calculate the number of votes needed based on the number cast for the winning candidate.

In this example, with a two-person race, there might be an average of two voters per household. That would come to 2500 households.

You can’t assume that every voter you speak with will be persuaded to vote for you. Let’s say you can persuade seven out of ten voters you directly communicate with to vote for you.

With those assumptions, you would need to talk to about 7150 voters or about 3575 households in order to be assured of the level of support needed to win.

The upside is that now you have a better idea how many households you will need to reach during your campaign canvassing. From there, it’s a matter of scheduling time to personally reach out to the voters.

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