Observation Deck
Featured Posts
Why experiments still matter
How to Sign-Up and Get Started With Deck
Effect of Deck in 2022
Evaluating our 2022 Forecasts
Organizing with Deck
All Content
Why experiments still matter
In 2022, Deck conducted a large-scale paid relational field experiment in Pennsylvania with Relentless. We pursued this test because, to our knowledge, there was no experiment establishing a causal relationship between paid relational organizing and voter turnout. Instead, the effect of paid relational programs had been measured using observational causal inference.
Evaluating the effect of relational organizing
We worked with Relentless in 2022 to study the effect of paid relational outreach by randomly assigning Pennsylvania voters within an organizer’s social network to a control, relational outreach, or cold outreach condition. Cold outreach to relational networks outperformed relational organizing.
Hubble Voter File
At Deck, we’ve spent years building massive, complex data pipelines to gather and process data on candidate filings, election results, campaign finance records, and more. So we know how painful it can be to work with this messy, hard-to-find data. We started solving this problem in early 2021 with our launch of Hubble, our data subscription service that gives you access to everything we know about campaigns and elections from 2008 to today.
How to Sign-Up and Get Started With Deck
Welcome to Deck, a web-based tool that helps Democratic candidates identify voters most likely to support their campaigns. Deck creates "universes," or voter lists, which campaigns can customize. We also provide tools and training to help campaigns plan their voter outreach.
Effect of Deck in 2022
In 2022, Deck usage was associated with 0.6 percentage points in higher vote share and 0.8 percentage points in higher vote share relative to Biden performance.
Deck in 2022 Case Studies
In 2022 we had the pleasure of working with hundreds of campaigns. In this blog post I'll walk through how a few of those campaigns used Deck.
Evaluating our 2022 Forecasts
This cycle, significant polling bias against Democrats stoked fears of a red wave. But Deck’s forecasts not only much more accurately predicted the final results of elections, but most importantly was far less biased in doing so. Deck’s median absolute error (MAE) was 2.9pp for Democratic vote share across all state and federal races in November 2022. Deck’s forecast’s underpredicted Democratic vote share by an average of 1.04pp.
Organizing with Deck
All campaigns need to recruit and retain volunteers. Deck offers tools to help you find and contact potential volunteers and in this blog I cover how to best make use of those tools and cover general organizing best practices.
A Complete Guide to Targeted Facebook Ads
Deck's Facebook integration makes it easy to launch targeted digital ads using posts from your own Facebook page. In this blog post I cover best practices for creating ads.
How to Fundraise Over Text
Deck's fundraising texting lists make it easy to raise money. In this post I walk through best practices from fundraising experts.
Looking back at our 2021 forecasts
At Deck, we help progressive campaigns and organizations reach the right voters.
Redistricting at Deck
Anyone working in politics right now knows redistricting has stalled campaigns this year. Between waiting for maps to be proposed, approved, challenged in court, voter file updates, and redraws, redistricting can feel like one endlessly drawn-out process.