Committee of Seventy and Crowdpac Ballot Tool Drives Increased Engagement in 2015 Municipal Election
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Aileen Kain, Committee of Seventy
(267) 861-6041 (o)
(610) 331-4107 (c)
Liz Jaff, Crowdpac
(515) 779-1415 (c)
COMMITTEE OF SEVENTY AND CROWDPAC BALLOT TOOL DRIVES INCREASED ENGAGEMENT IN 2015 MUNICIPAL ELECTION
Collaboration's success prepares platform for impact in 2016 Philadelphia primary
PHILADELPHIA (Nov. 9, 2015) - Committee of Seventy, Philadelphia’s better government and elections advocate, and Crowdpac, a Silicon Valley-funded start-up focused on campaign innovation, released results of their election collaboration today. The results showed a significant increase in the number of users of their online Ballot Tool in the November 3rd election compared to its performance in Philadelphia’s May primary elections. Despite a lack of competitive races for Mayor, City Council or row offices, the ballot tool experienced an impressive increase in usage and engagement:
- 15,000 people used the Ballot Tool for the November 3rd Election and generated 20,000 visits, an increase of almost 10% from Philadelphia's May primaries;
- 36% of users were under 34 years old, likely triple the percentage of young voters who turned out on Election Day;
- the number of users is equivalent in size to about 6% of the number of total voters in the general election;
- users of the Crowdpac tool spent an impressive 7 ½ minutes on the site (4 minutes more than primaries) and visited 12.2 pages per visit (5 pages more than in May primaries);
- City Council races attracted the most interest, as 6,100 users viewed the Council ballot pages 9,000 times.
David Thornburgh, President of the Committee of Seventy, said, “Even as turnout has lagged recently in Philadelphia, we’re thrilled to see more people using tools like Crowdpac. It’s particularly encouraging that young voters, whom we desperately need to bring into the electoral process, are using Crowdpac to find out about candidates and issues.”
The collaboration between the Committee of Seventy and Crowdpac married Crowdpac’s free, easy-to-use tools and data with Seventy’s non-partisan research on each candidate for municipal and state elections as well as endorsements of those candidates. Since the May primary, a major enhancement gave users the ability to view and adopt endorsers’ ballots and share them within their own network of friends and colleagues. Crowdpac will be launching its Ballot Tool 2.0 next year in time for the April Primary in Philadelphia and will also be expanding to 9 other cities.
“What’s so exciting is that we are seeing returning users, and people actually spending more time on the site to research. Additionally, people, organizations and political individuals are taking advantage of the tool to share their slates with others – it would be great to focus on the wards next. Former Gov. Ed Rendell’s slate was the most popular on the site”, according to Liz Jaff, Political Director for Crowdpac.
“Crowdpac had identified Philadelphia as a key test market for its nationwide rollout in the 2016 election, and we benefited from combining our innovative tools with the trusted, non-partisan work that Seventy is known for. We’re thrilled with the results of the partnership, especially as we continue to work together toward even greater engagement in the 2016 primary, when Philadelphia has contested House and Senate races,” said Steve Hilton, CEO of Crowdpac.
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The Committee of Seventy is an independent nonprofit advocate for better politics and better government in Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. For more information, see www.seventy.org.
Crowdpac’s mission is to give politics back to people - to make it easier for citizens to learn about politicians, and to find, nominate and support political candidates that match their priorities and beliefs. Crowdpac is independent, non-partisan and for-profit. For more information, see www.crowdpac.com
