FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 25, 2024 Contact: Victory Insights [email protected] (929) 388-6585 Victory Insights Wins "Best Use of Data Analytics and Machine Learning" at the 2024 Pollie Awards Washington, DC – Last week, the American Association of Political Consultants hosted the 2024 Pollie Awards in Washington, DC. At this event, Victory Insights was awarded 1st place in the "Best Use of Data Analytics and Machine Learning" category. Our firm was honored with this prestigious award as a result of our groundbreaking campaign data management software, called Campaign Dashboard. Throughout the 2023 election cycle, Campaign Dashboard was used in dozens of campaigns to synthesize regular voter data with up-to-date on-the-ground data from polls, web forms, door-to-door campaigning, and more. Additionally, our software provides users with integrated AI chat functionality to pull outreach lists, analyze data, and receive campaign strategy recommendations driven by machine learning. Innovation is at the heart of everything we do. We were founded with the intention of shaking up the political polling industry, and that's exactly what we've done. We look forward to continuing to innovate how data is collected, analyzed, and utilized in the political industry. ###

General elections are frequently discussed, but rarely understood. Commentary about general election outcomes often resorts to pointing fingers and saying “I told you so,” instead of focusing on available data and objective facts. We believe that the largest contributing factor to this unfortunate phenomenon is the lack of a data-driven model capable of explaining general election outcomes. For this reason, we’ve developed such a model. This model can be expressed in two different ways: (1) qualitatively in a three-layer model for abstract discussion, and (2) formulaically for precise calculations. Let’s start with the qualitative three-layer model. As shown in the diagram below, the base of this model is Voter Registration, followed by Turnout, and finally topped with Support.

In mid-May of this year, Florida politicos on both sides of the aisle turned their attention towards Duval County, where the race for Jacksonville Mayor was coming down to the wire. Despite the fact that Democrats made up 4.3% more of the registered voter base than Republicans in Jacksonville, Republican turnout exceeded Democratic turnout by 3.2% by the end of Election Day. With turnout numbers tilted in their favor, Republicans were hopeful that their nominee, Daniel Davis, would come out victorious. That didn’t happen. Instead, Democrat Donna Deegan won with 52.1% of the vote, besting Davis’s 47.9%. Despite strong Republican turnout – bolstered by the Florida GOP’s get-out-the-vote efforts – the Republican candidate had lost, and many on the right were left scratching their heads and asking, “What went wrong?” In this article, we’ll be answering that question through the lens of the Victory Formula, a model developed by our team for the purpose of understanding general election outcomes. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into this formula, you can read this article explaining how it works. But for our purposes today, all you need to know is that the formula takes in nine variables (three about voter registration, three about turnout, and three about support for each candidate), and produces the exact margin by which a Republican candidate wins (or loses) a head-to-head general election. Since the election in Jacksonville has already happened, we were lucky enough to have exact final numbers for voter registration and turnout, meaning all that’s left for us to understand is the layer we refer to as “support.” This layer has three simple variables: Republican loyalty, Democratic loyalty, and nonpartisan loyalty. Republican loyalty refers to the percentage of Republican turnout that resulted in votes for the Republican candidate. For instance, if 100 Republicans voted in the election, but only 75 of them voted for the Republican candidate, then Republican loyalty would be 75%. Democratic loyalty refers to the same concept, just on the Democratic side. And finally, nonpartisan loyalty simply refers to the percentage of the nonpartisan/third-party that went to the Republican candidate. None of these variables can be found in the election result data. Instead, we must use the Victory Formula to make inferences about their values, and from there, draw conclusions about why the race ended up the way it did. But there’s an issue: with three unknown variables, there are many different combinations that could result in Deegan’s 4.2-point victory. In fact, these potential “solutions” can be mapped out on a three-dimensional surface:

Data analysis always helps – even on the School Board It’s not just political polling that benefits from rigorous data analysis. This past week, our firm was tapped to do some impromptu data analysis to check if a Collier County, FL School Board member’s claim was accurate. It turns out, it wasn’t – and we had the receipts to prove it. In November of 2022, Collier County elected an all-new conservative majority to their School Board, and the county’s superintendent “stepped away” from the job not long after. The ensuing process to hire a new superintendent was contentious, but eventually the Board decided on Dr. Leslie Ricciardelli, a longtime Collier County educator, and the next step was to iron out a contract. There were two schools of thought on the matter. One wing of the Board supported Dr. Ricciardelli’s request to be paid $305,000 per year. The other wing wanted to offer a lower salary, as that’s what was advertised in the job posting. At a public School Board meeting, conservative activist Rachael Schaaf questioned whether this $305,000 salary was a responsible use of taxpayer money. In response, School Board member Stephanie Lucarelli – the most outspoken proponent of the salary increase – argued that $305,000 was “in line with other superintendents across the state.” It is this statement that we were tasked with fact-checking. To do so, we collected data on superintendents’ salaries from every county in the state of Florida, as well as each county’s total student enrollment. We plotted this data in the chart below, and with the help of a trusty trendline, we clearly showed that the proposed $305,000 salary was out of line with counties with similar enrollments.

The belief has long been held that, in order for a candidate to win an election, they must be popular. After all, it makes sense: who would vote for someone they don’t like? While this age-old belief isn’t entirely false, the reality is far more nuanced, and varies greatly depending on whether we’re talking about primary elections versus general elections, crowded fields versus head-to-head matchups, and small-town races versus big-money slugfests. Let’s work through several different scenarios in order to unpack this. If you’re the only candidate with a sizeable campaign war chest in a race against unsophisticated competitors, then yes, your spending should primarily be aimed at gaining popularity and building Name ID. Your popularity alone will likely be enough for you to sail across the finish line in first place. However, what if it’s a crowded Republican primary in which several candidates are well-funded? Now, things are different. In this scenario, it’s unlikely that any one candidate will win more than 50% of the vote, so you’re no longer seeking a majority – only a plurality. In this case, even if a majority of voters like you, what good does that do? It’s not enough voter voters to like you. They need to like you more than your competitors. Let’s use a real-world example here. In both our Florida and Iowa polls regarding the 2024 Republican presidential primary, more GOP voters had a positive opinion of Ron DeSantis than of Donald Trump. Put simply, DeSantis was more “popular” than Trump. Nevertheless, Trump annihilated DeSantis in head-to-head matchups, winning by 15% in Florida and 19% in Iowa. The moral of the story here is that, in such a situation, it’s not about whether or not people like you, it’s about whether they support you more strongly than they support your opponent. Building such support inherently requires taking risks. If you only make wishy-washy statements designed to appease everyone, and your competitor makes bold statements that strike a chord in the hearts of voters, the voters will choose your competitor over you nine times out of ten. They very well may like you, but they won’t like you enough to vote for you over your competitor. Of course, most elections aren’t crowded primaries between sophisticated and well-funded campaigns. Most are simple, and can be won by hitting base hits, not home runs. Nevertheless, it’s crucial to know the difference, and how this difference affects your strategy. To round out this discussion, let’s refocus our discussion on general elections. Once you’ve made it out of the primary and are now facing a Democrat, the election becomes much more about popularity. General elections are, in most cases, a head-to-head race. Thus, whoever can win over 50% of voters plus one wins the race. Of course, the ease of accomplishing this varies greatly depending on the district. If 70% of likely voters in your district are Republicans, it’s much easier for you to win than in a district where only 35% are Republicans. But regardless of the partisan makeup of your district, the general axiom remains true: the more popular candidate wins. And in many districts, that means winning over nonpartisan and third-party voters, which requires you to conduct targeted outreach and fine-tune your messaging. (Hint: if you’re in a purple district, the “Top Issues” page on your website should shift closer to the center of the political spectrum during the general election.) In summary, although popularity is a key factor in most elections, it’s certainly not the end of the story. In many cases, intensity of support is more important than breadth of support. Your strategy should take into account the makeup of the electorate, your competitors, and the type of election. Best of luck!