RAGA Expands Use of Tracking Polls with Cygnal Pulse

Cygnal Pulse stretched our polling budget, and quickly and accurately gave us the results we needed to make funding decisions.

– Scott Will, Executive Director, RAGA

Cygnal_Pulse Case Study 3-01

Gathering voter insights leads to better decision-making

Insights derived from the actual audience you need to understand and influence is highly key to accurate decision-making. In political campaigns, it pays to ask questions of the right electorate if your goal is to know what the voters are thinking. The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), the only national organization with the mission to elect Republicans as Attorneys General, prides itself on its ability to project resources to meet its mission. When RAGA needed insights to make resource allocation decisions at the end of heated races, they turned to Cygnal’s cost-effective, accurate survey research to gain the insights needed.

Identifying turnout universes properly is key to accurate polling

RAGA leverages many forward-thinking tactics to activate the right voters. They understand that targeting accurate profiles is crucial to matching the appropriate tactic to the different ways voters engage. As a cycle draws close to its end, budgetary resources can begin to tighten. Although this happens, an organization should not compromise their abilities or sacrifice lower priority goals. Late in 2014, RAGA found itself in this position and wanted to maintain their edge in voter insights to best use their remaining resources to meet their targeted goals in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Having accurate polling data is required for smart resource allocation

The team at RAGA places a lot of stock in making smart, informed decisions. They understand that to impact their targeted races, they need accurate tracking polls that don’t bust the budget.

With an average turnaround time of 48 to 72 hours, RAGA employed Cygnal Pulse, our affordable survey research product, to measure the targeted general election electorates in Wisconsin and Michigan. RAGA approached Cygnal to field hybrid phone polls in those states over the course of several weeks leading up to Election Day. They needed complete demographic profiles and results that could be used to parlay advertising decisions both in media markets and more locally, if necessary.

Matching the desired number of polls and the budget is possible

RAGA is an organization that requires national reach. It must extend resources across several states at once. It is in their best interest not to waste time or money. They also did not want to have generic messaging that could turn out voters for the opponent.

We worked with RAGA to design surveys that could be quickly fielded with high response rates yet still comprehensive enough to provide valuable insights of voters based on demographics, behavior and geography. Most importantly, this was all done at a price 1/3 less than traditional brush fire polling.

The results speak for themselves

RAGA’s tracking polls conducted using Cygnal Pulse hit tough general election races right on the head. Both RAGA-supported candidates won within the margin of error, just as our polls showed.

In the end, RAGA got all the data it needed at price points that left plenty of resources available for crucial voter persuasion and contact activities.