Every serious election campaign must start with a baseline survey. Period.

How do I define serious or professional election campaign? In my experience, the benchmark is a campaign budget of around half a million US dollars. This amount may vary depending on the country and the purchasing power on the ground, but in general, $500,000 is a pretty good standard for a professional campaign.

If you are running a professional campaign, you can afford market research. And during my time in the U.S., I learned that as a rule of thumb, one should allocate 10 to 20% of the budget to market research.

A baseline survey would certainly include the question for the voting, the so-called horse race question: If the election were today, who would you vote for?

But a baseline survey can do much more than that. It helps to:
– Evaluate possible campaign scenarios
– Test potential running mates
– Identify strengths and weaknesses of the various candidates as perceived by voters
– Refine campaign messaging
– Test campaign materials (before spending lots of money on producing or airing it)
– Show the potential to grow a candidacy
– Define target audiences (low-hanging fruits)

Quite a number of candidates hesitate to conduct research and I have come to realize that it’s mostly because they fear the results. They prefer to take some action first—run an ad or go around—before conducting a survey. But this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of a baseline survey.

The goal of a survey is not to reassure yourself that you are winning, but to serve as a basis to make informed decisions regarding your campaign strategy, in other words, to guide the campaign towards where you want to be on Election Day, in the winner’s circle.

The pilot analogy
Such candidates remind me of a pilot who says: “I don’t need a navigation system to take off; I’ll just fly, and when I’m lost in the sky, then I’ll turn it on.” Good luck with that!

PS: Check out my channel on YouTube where I address this topic in my latest video.