As the November election approaches, candidates should be actively engaged in executing their campaign plan to achieve victory on November 5th.

When students interested in running for office ask for advice, I typically ask two questions to determine whether they have done their homework.

HOW MANY VOTES DO YOU NEED TO WIN?
The first step in identifying and targeting voters is to determine the size and composition of your winning coalition.  That is, how many votes do you need and where must they come from?  To calculate this number, take the 1998 voter turnout rate for the district
and multiply it by the number of registered voters now living in the district.  This produces the projected turnout if the election were held today.  Take this number and adjust if for voter registration growth anticipated in the district between now and Election Day.  In a hypothetical two-person contest, the number of votes either candidate needs is 52%+ of this figure (50% + 1, plus a safety margin).  If redistricting changed the district lines since 1998, use the aggregate of the 1998 voter turnout data for the precincts located in the new district (since district wide figures for 1998 would be irrelevant).  

The second part of this process, determining where those votes will come from, is more involved but equally necessary.  In partisan terms, the campaign must determine how many likely-voting Republicans, Democrats, and members of other parties he/she needs
to identify as favorable before election day.  For  instance, a Democrat in a heavily Democratic district might rely on securing 90% of the Democratic vote plus 50% of the Decline to State vote and no Republicans in order to reach their minimum vote goal.  A Republican running in the same district might rely on 90% of the Republican vote, a higher percentage of the Decline to State vote, and a substantial portion of Democrats to win.

While the breakdown of the minimum winning coalition can be done in partisan terms, other methods are also available.  For instance, a candidate may determine he must draw 70% of his voters from the north side of town, and only 30% from elsewhere.  This kind of geographic, rather than partisan, breakdown of the minimum winning coalition can currently be seen in the campaign for Valley secession in Los Angeles, where secessionists believe they must draw a bulk of their votes from the San Fernando Valley to compensate for other parts of the city.
 

A candidate who can tell me exactly how many votes he or she needs on Election Day demonstrates that he or she has gone through this exercise and has a basic understanding of the need to target voter contact activity to build a coalition large enough to secure victory in November.  

HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU NEED?
It’s one of the candidate’s two primary missions to ask for money (the other is to ask for votes).  In most cases when I ask how much money they require to win, the answer is usually non-existent, vague, or something along the lines of “as much as possible.”  

Consider a businessman with a startup company who goes into the financial markets to capitalize a new company.  If an investor asks, “how much money do you need?” and the response is “well, the more we raise the better our chances so how about you
contribute as much as you feel comfortable contributing,” that businessman is going to be looking for a new line of work.  But yet, this is exactly the kind of exchange that happens all the time when candidates are fundraising.

Being able to answer the “how much money do you need” question with a sound, accurate number demonstrates that the candidate has likely developed a campaign plan, set priorities, determined voter contact programs to achieve their goal, and believes that if the
plan and budget are fully funded, it will achieve victory.  Donors want to know that a candidate has gone through this process – it establishes credibility for the campaign.  Candidates should be prepared to defend the number they give in response to this question, so having a realistic budget and timeline available to show a potential donor can make the difference between walking away with a check or with a disappointment.

Experienced donors and volunteers have no shortage of candidates seeking their help, so it’s particularly helpful for candidates to be able to demonstrate they’ve done their homework before asking others to make sacrifices on their behalf.