Three first-time candidates, three races, and how each spends the first year

Every first-time candidate believes three things. One: her race is special. Two: her opponent is beatable. Three: a yard sign is a strategy. The first is flattering, the second is sometimes true, and the third is the reason local consultants buy boats.

Here is what actually separates a winner from a nice person with a lot of lawn signs: arithmetic. How many votes does the race take, how many doors is that, how many dollars, and how many nights away from the dinner table? Those numbers change enormously from one office to the next, and a plan that fits a school board will bankrupt a state house run and a plan for a state house run will drown a school board candidate in consultants.

So here are three hypothetical candidates. Every name, district and dollar figure below is invented for illustration, including the unit costs. Your own numbers will differ, and you should replace mine with yours before you spend a nickel. The method is what matters, and the method is on the table: find the win number, convert it into doors, convert doors into hours, convert the plan into dollars.

The method, in four lines

1. Win number. Expected turnout, divided by two (for a two-candidate race), plus one vote. Then add a cushion of about ten percent, because the expected turnout is a guess.
2. Households. Expected voters divided by the average number of voters per household.
3. Hours. Households divided by the doors a volunteer can knock per hour, times the number of passes. I use 20 doors an hour as a working assumption. Walk your own turf and time it.
4. Dollars. Add up each item as units times unit cost, and divide by the win number to see what a winning vote costs.

the win-number worksheet, how many votes does your race really take has the full worksheet. We will run it three times.

Candidate A: Dana, the school board

A hypothetical parent running for an at-large school board seat in a district with 18,000 registered voters. School board elections are often held off-cycle, and turnout is low. Dana assumes 20 percent.

The win number. 18,000 × 0.20 = 3,600 voters. Two candidates: 3,600 ÷ 2 = 1,800, plus one is 1,801. Add roughly 10 percent for error (1,801 × 1.1 ≈ 1,981) and round to 2,000 votes as the working goal.

The doors. With 1.6 voters in the average household, 3,600 ÷ 1.6 = 2,250 households. At 20 doors an hour, one pass is 2,250 ÷ 20 = 112.5 hours. Dana plans two passes: 225 hours.

The calendar. Say the campaign is ten weeks of real work. 225 hours ÷ 10 weeks = 22.5 hours a week. Dana takes 12; three volunteers take 3.5 hours each (3 × 3.5 = 10.5). 12 + 10.5 = 22.5. The plan holds.

The money.

That is about $1.51 per vote in the 1,801 she needs to win ($2,712.50 ÷ 1,801 ≈ $1.51). Cheap, because the electorate is tiny.

The timeline. Nine months out she reads the filing rules and attends board meetings. Six months out she reads the district budget, line by line; A Worksheet for Reading Your School District's Budget Line by Line shows how. Four months out she collects any petition signatures. Three months out she files. Ten weeks out she starts knocking.

The biggest mistake to avoid. Running on a national fight the board cannot decide. A school board sets a budget, hires a superintendent, approves contracts and adopts a policy. If Dana's whole pitch is a culture-war slogan, the voter who asks "what will you do about the bus routes?" gets an answer about something else. The board candidate who knows the numbers beats the one who knows the talking points. A Playbook for Running for School Board, From Filing Date to Election Day has the full playbook.

Candidate B: Ray, the city council ward

A hypothetical small-business owner running for a ward seat on the city council, in a ward with 9,000 registered voters. The election is in the spring. Ray assumes 25 percent turnout.

The win number. 9,000 × 0.25 = 2,250 voters. Two candidates: 2,250 ÷ 2 = 1,125, plus one is 1,126. Add a ten percent cushion (1,126 × 1.1 ≈ 1,239) and round to 1,250 votes.

The doors. At 1.5 voters per household, 2,250 ÷ 1.5 = 1,500 households. One pass at 20 doors an hour is 1,500 ÷ 20 = 75 hours. A ward race is close enough to the voters to afford a third pass, a door-hanger the weekend before. Three passes: 3 × 75 = 225 hours. By coincidence, the same total as Dana.

The calendar. Spread over 15 weeks, 225 ÷ 15 = 15 hours a week. Ray takes 9; volunteers cover the other 6. Fifteen weeks is longer than Dana's ten because the third pass takes time, because a spring race starts when the weather is bad, and because a council candidate usually needs a few endorsements from civic groups.

The money.

$5,620 ÷ 1,126 ≈ $4.99 per winning vote, so just under five dollars.

The timeline. A year out Ray makes sure he lives in the ward and has been there long enough to meet the residency rule, which is set by his city charter. Nine months out he goes to council meetings and listens to the public comment period. Six months out he meets with the neighbourhood and business groups, and the party's county organization if the race is partisan. Four months out he files. Fifteen weeks out he starts walking. running for city council, what the job covers and how to win a ward describes what the job covers once he wins.

The biggest mistake to avoid. Spreading effort evenly across the ward when only some precincts vote. In low-turnout elections, a few precincts cast most of the ballots. Ray should get the past results from the clerk, rank the precincts by how many people voted in the last two off-cycle elections, and walk the top of the list twice before he walks the bottom of the list once. The same mailer to every address is a polite way of throwing money away.

Candidate C: Alicia, the state house

A hypothetical attorney running for a state house seat that has a contested Republican primary and a competitive general election. The district has 12,000 registered Republicans and 45,000 registered voters overall. Alicia assumes 25 percent turnout in the primary and 55 percent in the general.

The win numbers. There are two of them, and the order matters.

• Primary: 12,000 × 0.25 = 3,000 voters. In a two-way race, 3,000 ÷ 2 = 1,500, plus one is 1,501.
• General: 45,000 × 0.55 = 24,750 voters. 24,750 ÷ 2 = 12,375, plus one is 12,376.

The doors. At 1.5 voters per household, the general election has 24,750 ÷ 1.5 = 16,500 households. One pass is 16,500 ÷ 20 = 825 hours. Two passes are 1,650 hours. Over 30 weeks that is 1,650 ÷ 30 = 55 hours a week. Alicia can walk 25 of those if she is a full-time candidate; the other 30 need to come from volunteers, which means roughly 10 volunteers at 3 hours a week, every week, for 30 weeks. That is a real organization, not a few friends.

The money. Mail is where state house money goes.

(Primary households: 3,000 ÷ 1.5 = 2,000.) Divide by the general election win number: $112,400 ÷ 12,376 ≈ $9.08 per winning vote.

Now the part that scares people. At an average gift of $100, raising $112,400 takes 1,124 gifts ($112,400 ÷ $100). Money for a state house race is a part-time job on top of the full-time job. the fundraising call sheet, how a first-time candidate asks for money is the place to learn how to ask, and How campaign finance law works, and why you should check the FEC for the numbers explains why you should check the reporting rules before you collect a dollar.

The timeline. Eighteen months out she meets the county chair and the local legislators. Fifteen months out she builds the list: donors, neighbours, church and civic leaders. A year out she makes the decision, sets the budget and files her committee paperwork. Filing deadlines vary by state; some open in the winter before the primary year, so she checks the state's published calendar and works backwards from it. Six months before the primary she begins the first pass of doors. After the primary she resets: new messages, new mailers, a general election electorate.

The biggest mistake to avoid. Treating the primary as a formality on the way to the real race. The cheapest votes in the entire campaign are the 1,501 she needs in the primary, and the voters who back her opponent in the primary are the ones the party needs back in November. A candidate who skips the primary phase of the campaign to save money for the general is spending nothing on the only election that can end her campaign in the spring. Caucus, primary or convention, how Republicans actually pick a nominee explains how nominees are chosen, and the rules differ by state.

Stress-test your assumptions

Every number above rests on a guess about turnout, and the guess is where first-time candidates fool themselves. Take Dana. She assumed 20 percent. Suppose the real turnout is 30 percent instead: 18,000 × 0.30 = 5,400 voters, and the win number jumps to 5,400 ÷ 2 + 1 = 2,701. Her mailer now reaches 5,400 ÷ 1.6 = 3,375 households, and at $0.55 apiece that is 3,375 × $0.55 = $1,856.25, which is $618.75 more than the $1,237.50 she budgeted. Suppose turnout falls to 15 percent: 18,000 × 0.15 = 2,700 voters, and the win number drops to 1,351.

The sensible move is to build the plan for the high number and the budget for the low one. Then you are never surprised by a crowd, and never stuck with ballots you cannot afford to chase. To get a better guess, ask the county clerk for the turnout in the last three elections of the same type, not the last presidential election. A school board race on the same day as a presidential race and a school board race held alone in the spring are different animals.

The first thirty days are the same for all three

Whatever the office, the first month looks alike. Find the filing rules and the deadline, in writing, from the office that takes your paperwork. Open a committee or register as your state requires, and name a treasurer before you take a dollar. Open a bank account for the campaign and never mix it with your own. Write a one-page message that fits on a palm card. Then go outside and knock on fifty doors before you spend anything on printing, because the doors will tell you which part of your message is a hit and which part makes people check their phones. running for local office, the first thirty days, step by step goes through that month day by day, and door-knocking that works, a walkthrough from the turf map to the thank-you covers the doors.

The three side by side

Look at what the table says. Dana and Ray need the same number of door-hours. Ray needs fewer households but one more pass, so the hours come out the same, just spread over five more weeks. Alicia's race is nearly seven times the doors (1,650 ÷ 225 ≈ 7.3) and about forty times Dana's budget ($112,400 ÷ $2,712.50 ≈ 41). The cost per vote rises because the electorate is bigger and mail is the main way to reach it.

Now, a counter-argument I want to answer. Someone will say that the seats with the biggest budgets are the ones with the most power, and that spending a year on a school board is a waste of a good candidate. I disagree with the premise. School boards set tax rates and curriculum policy for a generation of children, and city councils write zoning, spend the local sales and property tax, and decide whether a small business gets its permit. The state house is where those two meet the state budget. A bench that starts at the board and moves up produces legislators who know how a budget works. That is why how a county party recruits candidates for every empty line on the ballot belongs on every county chair's desk.

What the job costs after you win

Winning is the cheap part. A school board seat typically means regular meetings, often a couple of times a month, plus committee work and a packet to read before each one. A council seat can mean weekly or biweekly meetings and a constant flow of phone calls about potholes. A state house seat means session, whose length varies enormously by state, plus a district office, plus the drive. The pay ranges from nothing to modest. These are generalizations, so check your own state and city for the real schedule before you file.

The reason to write it down now is that people drop out of the second year, not the first. They won on enthusiasm, and the job turned out to be a lot of paper. A candidate who has looked at the schedule in advance can tell her family what it is going to take.

The bottom line

• Do the arithmetic first. Expected turnout, divided by two, plus one, plus a cushion. If you cannot write your win number on a card, you are not ready to file.
• Match the plan to the office. A school board takes about 225 door-hours and a few thousand dollars; a state house can take seven times the doors and about forty times the money. Nobody wins with the wrong plan for the right office.
• Pick your biggest mistake in advance: an issue the board cannot decide, a ward walked evenly, a primary treated like a formality.
• Check your state's filing calendar and your city's residency rules before spending anything.
• If you cannot run this cycle, recruit someone who can. Every empty line on the ballot is a seat handed over without a vote.