Higher Ground Labs' 2024 Political Tech Landscape Report: "Scale alone is not enough"

2024 State of Political Tech Landscape Report

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Despite Democratic campaigns achieving an extraordinary scale of outreach, reaching 70% of registered voters in competitive battleground states and over half of the nation's voters, actual voter engagement dropped significantly, particularly among younger voters and key demographics. This highlights a central challenge: strategies and tools, while enabling scale, haven't kept pace with rapidly changing voter behavior and a fractured information ecosystem.

Here are key takeaways from the report, highlighting specific successes and challenges:

Successes and Innovations:

• Data and Infrastructure Resilience: The progressive data infrastructure demonstrated strength and resilience, with improvements in security and interoperability. Core platforms withstood widespread DDoS attacks thanks to collaborations like the Good Catch bug bounty program and support from organizations like Defending Digital Campaigns. The Democratic Data Exchange (DDx) served as the largest pool of voter contact data, and the Movement Infrastructure Group (MIG) facilitated data movement between tools.
• AI Experimentation: 2024 was an experimental cycle for AI, with testing showing promise for content creation, analysis, and time savings. Tools like Quiller and Change Agent emerged for progressive-specific AI content. AI is being used for tasks like synthesizing voter contact data and analyzing qualitative feedback.
• Message Testing Accessibility: Self-service message testing proliferated with platforms like Blue Rose Research, Grow Progress, and Swayable, making rigorous testing broadly accessible and helping campaigns refine messaging.
• Relational Organizing Maturity: Relational organizing matured into a respected tactic with proven potential for deeper engagement and improved contact quality. Tools like Rally by Relentless and Empower drove significant relational programs, demonstrating impact and cost efficiencies.
• Fundraising Innovations: While traditional tactics saw fatigue signals, fundraisers explored new approaches like smarter giving platforms (Oath), spare change roundups (GoodChange), relational fundraising (Impactive), and audience-powered livestreams (Hovercast). ActBlue continued its crucial infrastructural role, processing over $1.5 billion in Q3 2024 despite increasing attacks.
• Improved Modeling: Smarter modeling tools emerged, including DNC's in-house Demographic Models, TargetSmart Ethnicity+, and the Voter Registration Prospecting (VRP) database. Matchbook by Indigo enables accessible predictive modeling.
• Social Listening Sophistication: Social listening tools became more sophisticated, with tools like Civic Sentry specifically monitoring multilingual disinformation.

Challenges and Areas for Improvement:

• Engagement Gap: Despite unprecedented outreach scale, engagement dropped significantly, pointing to stagnation in traditional voter contact methods and a need for new approaches that prioritize genuine connection over volume. Certain demographics are particularly hard to reach.
• Organic Media Disparity: Despite record paid ad spending, Democrats struggled to achieve the reach of the right's robust organic media strategies. The right built extensive organic networks across diverse platforms (TikTok, YouTube, Rumble, Twitch), while Democrats concentrated efforts on a narrow set of platforms and underinvested in emerging spaces. Influencer marketing was widespread for Democrats but still fell short of the right's investment and often came late in the cycle.
• Infrastructure Vulnerabilities: NGP VAN, the core CRM, faced significant scrutiny due to stability issues and concerns about overreliance, sparking exploration of alternatives by organizations like The Movement Cooperative and the DNC.
• Data Integration and Measurement: Despite progress, data integration remains a challenge, hindering accurate measurement and cohesive execution. Reporting and goal-tracking systems need better integrations. There's a need to move beyond predicting who to contact to understanding how to engage different segments.
• AI Implementation Lag: While experimentation grew, widespread strategic AI implementation lagged behind individual experimentation. Training and guidance on effective AI use across campaign verticals are needed.
• Underinvestment in Tech: Tech spending by campaigns remains low, averaging only 1-10% of budgets, limiting the ability to adopt and integrate tools effectively. Campaigns often delay key tech decisions.
• Voter Registration Shortfall: Republicans outpaced Democrats in adding net registered voters, highlighting a need for stronger prioritization and investment in voter registration tech and strategies that consider the full eligible population.
• Evolving Threat Landscape: Cybersecurity threats escalated, including DDoS attacks, business email compromises, and third-party risks. Personal security threats like doxxing also increased. Evolving state privacy laws create new challenges for data strategy. Political targeting of Democratic-aligned organizations under a potential second Trump administration is a significant concern, requiring coalition building and leveraging existing tools for defense.
• Guidance and Training Gaps: Campaigns and practitioners struggle to navigate the complex landscape of available tools without sufficient guidance, training, and support for adoption and effective implementation.

The report concludes that winning future battles requires fundamentally reimagining approaches to reflect how voters make decisions today, prioritizing resonance and persuasion over scale alone, and making strategic choices that translate the existing technological foundation into electoral victories.

To learn more, access the full report here: 2024 Political Tech Landscape Report

Click to learn more about Higher Ground Labs: https://highergroundlabs.com/