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Battleground Virginia: Handicapping the ’14 Senate Race

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Executive Summary

• Øptimus conducted a high-sample read in May on the state of the Virginia Senate Race between Ed Gillespie and Mark Warner

• Opinion read key takeaways:

o Once the electorate connects Ed Gillespie is the Republican candidate, the race stands at 43.3% Warner, 35.5% Gillespie, 21.2% undecided

o Once leaners are taken into account, the race moves to 48.0% Warner, 45.5% Gillespie, 7.5% undecided

• Modeling the Virginia electorate for turnout and vote choice reveals

this battle will be decided in the, at this point in time, sizable persuasion universe

o The turnout universe will likely be relatively small, and the return on even an exceptional GOTV program will have minimal effects on race outcome (under 1% vote result change)

o The persuasion universe is large (1.06M) and believable shifts in its vote choice (10-20%) could easily effect the outcome of this race given where the opinion read stands

• Gillespie faces an up-hill battle

o It is unlikely that Gillespie will hold a resource advantage over

the well-funded opposition campaign, and its personally wealthy candidate

o Given this resource disadvantage, and given its existing 3.5% disadvantage in our opinion read, the Gillespie campaign will have to be more targeted, and more effective in its persuasion activity (on a $ spent to convert basis) to stand a chance of winning

• Conclusion: baring major change in the electoral climate or news on this race (e.g. scandal), lean Warner

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Part I:

Results from the high-sample read

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Introduction

The upcoming Senate race in Virginia pitting the well-funded incumbent Democrat, Mark Warner, against seasoned GOP operative Ed Gillespie lies just outside of the Tier 1 races being watched this cycle. Many suspect that this race could be closer than conventional wisdom suggests. This report provides the Øptimus point-of-view for this race, largely based of a high-sample read conducted between 5/10 and 5/13, and our thoughts on the path to victory. The read design

The opinion read was conducted off the Virginia voter file, with those included in the sample being “proven Virginia off-year voters”, or those voters who had turned out to the polls in at least 1 of the last 3 off-presidential year general elections we had data for (2010, 2009, 2006). At the time of the read, we did not have access to 2013 race turnout data.

The read utilized a high-sample voice-variable robo call. The unique feature of “voice variable” allowed for the first question of our survey to confirm/refute that we were talking with the intended target (by asking if we were talking to <first name>) for the call. Targets were allowed to take the surveys, non-targets were thanked for their time, and the target was re-attempted in subsequent waves of calls. The raw results were balanced to the average composition of the electorates observed in 2010, 2008, and 2006 using cohorts stratified by sex, ethnicity, and age group. For this read, three age groupings were used, 18-34, 35-54, and 55+. Øptimus does not discard partially completed surveys. We have found that doing so tends to disproportionally weed out those with weaker opinions, or those of less severe partisan leanings. We include each participant’s opinions to the extent they provide them. So if a participant answerers 3 of 5 questions in a survey, their answers to the first 1-3 questions are included in the pool analyzed in this document. Due to this, the sample size used for each piece of analysis is provided, as this number fluctuates based on question position in the script. Lastly, two scripts were executed as part of this survey. The first version of the script asked questions about the candidates without party identification provided. The second version of the script linked candidate names with their party affiliation.

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Warner Holds Significant Lead over Gillespie

In the first version of the script, 2,319 respondents identified their choice for Senate when given no information about party affiliation of the candidates. We consider this the “current” state of the race (as of the date of the race), as attention has not been focused yet on this contest, and major campaign expenditures are largely being held in reserve. In this view, Gillespie likely suffers because many Republicans do not yet know that Ed Gillespie is the Republican in the race.

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Good News for Gillespie: A bounce once candidates party affiliations are known

Gillespie’s team can take some solace, as Gillespie’s support increases drastically once party affiliations are known, as in the second version of our script, for which 2,445 participants provided candidate preference responses. Note that Warner’s numbers remain statistically unmoved when compared to the first version of the script without party affiliation information, while Gillespie gains 14 points largely from the undecided group. The good news is Gillespie will enjoy a significant base once his name ID and party affiliation permeate the consciousness of voters. The bad news is, even when this happens, Gillespie will still find himself at an 8 point disadvantage.

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Undecideds break toward Gillespie

Of the 2,445 participants in the second version of the survey (party affiliations provided), some 21.2% identified themselves as undecided. We asked these respondents a “push” question, as shown in the green bracket above. Some 35% of those we pushed refused again to take a position (i.e., 7.5% of the total sample). Of those that did take a stance, they split for Gillespie at a rate of 2 to 1.

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Taking into account those who will take a stance when pushed, the situation improves markedly for Gillespie

Attributing those who took a stance when pushed as “leaners” to their respective candidates, Gillespie is able to pull within 3.5 points of Warner. 7.5% of respondents remain unwilling to commit, and comprise the true “undecideds” group in this race. The “persuasion” universe for these campaigns begins to come into view: the leaners and true undecideds in this race, representing 21% of the electorate.

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Support for both candidates is not yet steadfast, creating further opportunity for persuasion universes

For those respondents who did state a preference in the original candidate choice question, we followed up with a question to gauge the stead-fastness of the candidate choice. The above graph shows the new total picture of the electorate when we take into account these support levels.

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A surprisingly large persuasion universe (~28% of electorate) emerges for the campaigns to focus on

Given this total read, we see the combination of true undecideds, lean supporters and those who declare themselves likely to change their minds to total to roughly 28% of the electorate. On the face of it, this is good news for the underdog Gillespie, though bad news as he is the candidate viewed to be at a resource ($) disadvantage to the well-funded and personally wealthy Mark Warner. More dollars will likely result in more air-time, resulting in more “at-bats” with the persuadable universe (which will be discussed in Part 2). This campaign 'starts' with Gillespie needing to keep all who support him or lean towards supporting him, and on top of this, the campaign needs to persuade another 5.4% of the electorate.

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Part II:

Keys to Gillespie Campaign Victory

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Øptimus Modeling Step Øptimus constructed two models as part of this analysis. We do this to allow for a continuous predictive model to be produced as more sample is collected (i.e. this read is designed to get better as the race goes on and the model is re-calculated) First, Øptimus used the vote file, as well as appended commercial and census data, to model the likelihood that each voter would turn out in the upcoming election. Second, we used the results from the survey calls that were conducted to model that likelihood that each voter would vote for Ed Gillespie. Visualized, the results of this exercise:

On the X axis, each voter was assigned to 20 buckets based on the probability that they would turn out to vote. This results in the 20 columns above. Each column of data was then sliced based on the likelihood that a voter would support Ed Gillespie. For ease of interpretation, we added the traditional partisan colors and their shades to denote relative support rates for candidates. Thus, an extremely red segment represents voters that are predicted to support Gillespie at a rate of ~95%+, while segments that are white represent those voters modeled at ~50% likelihood of supporting Gillespie and segments that are deep blue represent those voters with ~5% likelihood of voting for Gillespie.

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In this way, we hope to show the electorate and its likely performance in terms of turnout and vote choice (at the time of this read).

Insight #1: GOTV opportunity is limited

The classic definition of a GOTV target is someone who is likely to support you, but somewhat unlikely to turnout. Given this, the area highlighted in yellow above becomes the grounds for the likely “turnout” universe. The Gillespie campaign should make every-effort to ID this segment of the electorate to confirm support, and then work to turn out supporters in this region to realize the largest return on their GOTV efforts. That being said, the total potential gain for this activity is limited, and must be kept in perspective. We start with a universe of some 460k potential targets. Literature is filled with GOTV treatments and techniques, largely reliant on intense volunteer contact that can be counted on to deliver 1-3% gains in turnout, on an intent-to-treat basis. Assuming all 460k of these targets could be attempted within critical voter contact windows, and the top-end (3%) marginal gain could be realized, the result would be the production of 13,800 marginal votes for Gillespie. In the context of the most recent similar election (Cuccinelli v McAuliffe 2013) which logged 2.24M total votes, these 13,800 voters would represent a .3% difference in final outcome of the election. An argument could be made for an

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expansion of the GOTV universe, but you would be hard pressed to find another 460k voters to include, and even if you did, you’d only be at a .6% impact on the election outcome. The big takeaway: Gillespie should not bank on GOTV efforts to win this election, the numbers just don’t support the strategy. Put another way, if Gillespie finds himself down in (quality) polls more than 1-2% leading into Election Day, don’t expect a GOTV program to save him.

Insight #2: This election will be decided in the battle for the persuasion universe

In contrast to the turnout universe, a large persuasion universe can be carved out. Under this basic analysis, we find some 1.06M basic persuasion targets (those modeled as likely to turnout, but not extremely likely or unlikely to vote for Gillespie as determined by modeling on our high-n read). Ideally, a deeper analysis will be conducted by the campaign to determine not just those individuals who score as middle-of-the road likelihood for supporting Gillespie, but also those individuals in the universe most susceptible to the campaign messaging (a true persuadable universe). If we accept the 1.06M sizing for benchmarking of effect, it becomes clear the importance of winning this persuasion battle. If the average turnout rate of these

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voters will be 75%, a 10% opinion shift in this universe is worth 106k total marginal potential voters, of which ~80k will make it to the polls. It is very easy to see then how 10% shifts in this segment can quickly add up to changing the election outcome (of an election with turnout in the neighborhood of 2M). The big takeaway: the path to a Gillespie victory will come through success in the relatively large (still ~1M voters at this point) persuasion universe. Given the Gillespie campaign’s likely resource disadvantage, Gillespie’s campaign will have to be extremely disciplined in targeting and layering highly effective voter contact onto these targets to stand a chance to pick up the 5.4% (see part 1) vote gain needed to claim Victory in November.