The Wave is Coming

There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

The wave is coming.

Will you be ready?

The Democrats’ victory in a Trump +20 district brings the fight for 2018 to a new level. Not only do Republicans need to be concerned about the 24 seats they hold in Clinton territory, but about a surge of Democratic turnout in a large number of seats Donald Trump won by a margin much narrower than in Pennsylvania’s 18th. House Republicans hold a total of 57 seats where Donald Trump lost, or won by less than 10 points, and just 114 GOP districts were redder than PA-18 in 2016.

At Echelon, we’ve been preparing candidates and groups in the fight to get ready for an environment more challenging than we’ve seen in decades. We’ve mined voter file data from all the special elections so far this cycle to understand who’s voting and who isn’t, building the most advanced 2018 turnout model in the industry. From this, we’ve developed a target audience of At-Risk Republicans — the Republicans who may have been likely to vote in a good midterm cycle like 2010 and 2014, but are at risk of staying home in 2018. Mobilizing these voters will be crucial to Republicans holding their majorities this November.

Of course, you can use our data on At-Risk Republicans to precisely target the right audience for turnout. But that’s only half the battle. We can provide you actionable insight on At-Risk Republicans that only an integrated polling & analytics firm can:

• Focus groups to meet these voters face to face, understanding their priorities and anxieties about the current state of politics
• Dedicated surveys, oversamples, & crosstab breaks in your polling or analytics tracking work, understanding their views on a range of issues and seeing their movement over time
• Advanced regression analysis of the messages that will move them from point A to point B
• Use the data to target for digital or TV advertising.

Turnout has been a major problem for Republicans thus far this election cycle. According to many independent analysts, Conor Lamb failed to clear his win number in most of the counties of the 18th district, but because the turnout came disproportionately from his strongest areas, he won anyway.

There’s no time to waste. While not every Trump +20 seat will fall, hundreds of Republican officeholders throughout the country will have a real race for the first time. Let’s talk about how our tools can give you every chance of success in 2018.