PDI Functional Models

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Partisanship of Independent Voters Model

Introduction

PDI’s new internal modeling is being provided free of charge for the Primary Election cycle. They will be placed in each account and be included on all polling samples.

These models are what we consider “functional models,” intended to provide for greater targeting of voters by any campaign.

These differ from issue-based models, like a calculation of someone’s likelihood to be pro-choice or support gun control, and they are not persuasion models, like a calculation of someone’s ability to be swayed to vote for a particular candidate or measure.

Models Overview

The three models available are:

Ideology Liberal / Conservative: This is a measure of how conservative or liberal a voter is. This utilizes voter registration as only one criteria – basing more emphasis on other factors that can be identified in the voter file.
Partisanship of Independent Voters: This allows campaigns to expand categorization of voters in minor parties or with no party preference.
Down Ballot Drop-off: Literally hundreds of city, school district and other local municipal elections are moving to the statewide ballot. With more voters, the key for these campaigns will be to identify those who are most likely to actually vote in a local race and either spend more mone persuading those voters, or spend resources getting others to actually care about a local contest. This model was created to help target communication in these cases.

The following sections below feature a listing of each model, the base number of survey respondents that was used to populate the model, and the breakdown of the survey portion of the data among All Voters and Likely Primary Voters using the PDI 18P3 Likely Voter Universe.

Ideology Liberal Conservative Model

These two models identify how conservative or liberal a voter is based on a number of factors. The analysis begins with the survey responses, but then also includes elements such as the actual party registration, household partisan composition using PDI’s 27 different household party type codes, and precinct level election outcomes in key past elections. Note: If you are using the Catalist Ideology model the scores are inverted with 0 being the most conservative and 100 being the most liberal.

	All Voters	Likely Primary
Very Liberal	14%	12%
Liberal	26%	24%
Moderate	37%	37%
Conservative	18%	21%
Very Conservative	5%	6%

To use this model in the PDI, select a score from 1-100, where 1 is the most liberal, and 100 is the most conservative. As can be seen in the following chart, the median result is a more liberal voter, however there is a second hump in the data showing a strong population of conservative, but not “very conservative” voters. A score below 42 represents someone classified as a liberal, and a score over 72 represents someone classified as conservative. Within the range of 42-72, where voters are categorized as moderate, scores from 42 and 57 will lean liberal and scores from 57-72 will lean conservative.

Partisanship of Independent Voters Model

The PDI includes party registration, and a set of party descriptions called DemPlus and RepPlus which can be used to capture both those party registrants, and people who have donated to, pulled ballots for, or previously been registered Democratic (DemPlus) or Republican (RepPlus). This model builds on this by allowing campaigns to target independents who model to primarily vote with one party.

This model adds household partisan makeup, ethnicity, age, registration date and voter surveys in which independent voters were asked if they primarily sided with Democrats or Republicans.

	All Voters	Likely Primary
Always Support Democratic	4%	4%
Mostly / Lean support Democratic candidates	50%	44%
Go back and forth between voting for Republicans and Democrats	7%	8%
Mostly / Lean support Republican candidates	34%	38%
Always support Republican candidates	4%	6%

To use this model in the PDI, select a score from 1-100, where ranges closer to 1 will be more within the Democratic base, ranges in the middle will be swing voters, and ranges going up to 100 are more supportive of Republican candidates. As can be seen in the chart, there are effectively two humps around the “mostly/Lean” partisan where most of the voter population resides, with about 60% of that being on the Democratic side – which is consistent with other research about independent voters. In practical terms, a score from 0-54 is a voter choosing Democratic candidates at least most of the time, and a score from 77-100 is a voter choosing Republican candidates at least most of the time. For ‘Independent’ voters in the midrange from 54-77, the exact break from leaning Democrat to leaning Republican occurs at the score of 70.

Down Ballot Drop-off Model

Many California cities, school districts and other jurisdictions are being moved away from off-cycle, odd-year elections, and being combined with the statewide elections for Governor and President. In this transition, local municipalities are shifting from low-turnout elections with high-information voters who generally vote in all contests, to high turnout elections including voters who may not know much about the candidates or issues, and may simply skip voting in city, school board or other down-ballot races.

In order to focus resources on the voters most likely to cast a ballot in the municipal race, this model identifies voters who are less likely to vote in these contests utilizing data on municipal vote history and self-described interest in voting in contests in which the voter has little information.

This model can be used to focus spending on voters who are most likely to participate, or, in the inverse, it could be used to tell likely supporters to remember to vote on the lower-ticket contests.

	All Voters	Likely Primary
Drop-off down ballot, leaving some blank	28%	28%
Vote on every issue/candidate even with little or no information	72%	72%

This model is most populated at the higher end of the 1-100 scale, so to use this model, selecting 0-70 will give you a voter more likely to drop-off and greater than 70 will be voters more likely to vote down-ballot.