Making the Tough Calls

Why Adjustment Must be a Separate Step from Evaluation in a Campaign

The last step in HexaCom Group’s “Six-Point Advantage” is the Adjustment Phase. Over time as we distilled our approach to running campaigns into this six-point process, it became clear to us that Adjustment is a distinct step from Evaluation, although many often blend them. We see them as distinct because Evaluation is an ongoing process, but Adjustment is when you reach that point and have to make a tough call.

When all your polling and monitoring of the campaign shows numbers not moving as you expected, or not as fast as you hoped for, what do you do?

Stay the course?

Make a few tweaks?

Make wholesale changes?

How do we decide? This is where the art and science of running campaigns comes together.

Often in tracking polls, the main ballot test is the last to move, but indicators of moving public opinion that are precursors to a shift in the ballot question can give you a clue. It may even be as simple as opposition votes moving from strongly to only somewhat backing the other side.

It's well known that in candidate campaigns (and IEs), we like to see favorables of our candidate rise, or our opponent's unfavorables rise, we hope, before the ballot test moves.

In a ballot measure, for example a tax measure we’re opposing, the “No” vote on the polling may not rise right away, but increases in the number of voters who express concerns that new revenue won’t be well spent can indicate the voters are hearing your message.

We will also often see voters repeating back to our field teams or on social media the messages we’ve been delivering, another indication that the message is getting through, and that more serious poll movement should be coming soon.

Sometimes, it is just a gut feeling that a campaign is working or not. In truth, however, it’s not “just” a gut feeling, but the collective wisdom born from running hundreds of campaigns before.

The bottom line is this – as we said before, campaign plans are not static – they last only as long as the planning phase. Once execution begins, we’re immediately starting to gauge how’s it’s working, what our opposition is doing, and if/how the political environment has changed.  

You must have the courage to make adjustments to your strategy and your tactics as warranted by what we observe, and equally to know when the plan will work given time. The ability to decide when to stay the course, when to make tweaks, and when to make wholesale changes to your plan is a skill that takes decades to sharpen, and one that HexaCom Group brings to your side in a fight.