This list is built from all of your voter contact opportunities — face-to-face, mail, Internet … and telephone.

This definition of the modern campaign is a reversal of the previous model which emphasized electronic media to the exclusion of "retail" politics. The previous model worked in a period of growing or at least stable turnout. But today, you confront "the incredible shrinking electorate." Republicans are particularly affected: from 1984 to 1996, we lost 15 million voters nationwide, as the voting age population grew by 28 million. It is more important for most GOP candidates to bring voters back into the electorate than it is to try to deny votes to their Democratic opponent.

Don’t misunderstand what we’re saying: the video image continues to dominate political communications. Voters want to see you, to hear your words from your lips. But traditional TV political advertising alone won’t get the job done of re-activating voters. Technology permits us to again focus our campaigns on the individual voter. And because of the integration of the computer and the telephone, telephones are more important than ever as a weapon in your arsenal. The telephone should be used to solicit opinions, to conduct voter ID, to advocate your candidate’s election, and to get out the vote. Its unique strength as a communications medium is its interactivity.

This may sound strange coming from a pollster, but we don’t think polls are as important as they used to be. Sure, we still recommend conducting a comprehensive survey to establish the essential strategy of the campaign — for campaigns which need and can afford them. For challengers, it is often more important to conduct a few professional focus groups. But in lieu of conducting polls as discrete moment-in-time soundings during the campaign — for which you could easily pay $30 or more per interview — we recommend conducting a continuous voter ID effort by telephone at less than $1 a call, which both adds to your data base of committed supporters, and continuously tracks the progress of the campaign, particularly the impact of your— and your opponent’s — electronic and print media.

Since the goal of a campaign is to make multiple contacts with voters through a variety of media, the telephone can and should be used as a advocacy device. QEV studies show that undecided voters contacted by telephone are more likely to actually vote.

QEV Analytics does telephones. We will coordinate your use of telephones for all of these campaign purposes, plus we will manage your voter data base, incorporating the information you develop about voters from all sources into your master voter file. But our analysis is our real comparative advantage: we start with an extensive experience in public opinion research, and add a profound understanding of the state of the electorate, so that we can tell you exactly how you’re doing at each stage of your campaign, and help you steer toward victory.