Thread by @benwikler

NEW: Nationwide, @MoveOn was the biggest spender on political ads on Facebook last week. Today, we're pulling back the curtains on this election's "secret weapon": a groundbreaking new way to do digital ads that leapfrogs the GOP's political tech. THREAD. wired.com/story/moveon-s…

Traditional political advertising works like this: campaigns run polls to see what voters care about. They choose a message. They spend ~$10k-30k to shoot & edit. If they're smart, they test them, often via dial-test or focus groups. Then they pay to put them online & on TV.

This year, MoveOn turned that model on its head. We started by asking real voters in key races why they’re supporting their Democratic candidates. We collected more than 2500 authentic, unscripted videos—people talking into their phones. Watch them here: realvotervoices.moveon.org/video-gallery/

We used a new, rapid, low-cost, and highly accurate technique to test whether the ads moved people. Classic scientific experiment, with randomized treatment and control groups. We found 260 videos that worked as extraordinarily persuasive political ads.
wired.com/story/moveon-s…

We used Facebook's targeting technology to run the 260 ads to people matching the specific folks who found them persuasive in our tests, across 89 House races, 10 Senate races, and 10 governors' races. In all, we're reaching more than 20 million potential voters in key areas.

These @MoveOn ads don't look slick. They look real. Because they are. That might help explain their impact. Or maybe it's the topics people talked about—not stuff brainstormed on a consultant's whiteboard, just actual people speaking from the heart.

Regardless of exactly why, the most striking thing about this program: it actually *works* to move votes. (More info below.) Which is, unfortunately, a very rare thing in politics. See, for example, this huge study of 2016 tactics. Very few worked at all.
vox.com/policy-and-pol…

So, how big is the Real Voter Voices program's impact? Big enough to tip close races. We ran tests in the Virginia 2017 elections & Alabama's special Senate race. Per @WIRED, independent analysis found Dem margins were 0.4 percentage points higher in precincts where we ran it.

To put this into perspective: Conor Lamb's margin in PA-18 special election was 0.2 percentage points. (We also ran a test in that race. And we found a similar impact.)

Nerdy note: Normally, the impact of tactics can't be measured until voter files are updated the spring after an election. But our methodology lets us randomize interventions at the precinct level, so we can compare margins in treatment v control precincts as soon as they report.

All told, based on the scale of the program we're running this cycle, we calculate that Real Voter Voices will move hundreds of thousands of votes in key races to the Democratic column. That's... remarkable.

We've kept a tight lid on the program over the last 18 months because we didn't want the GOP to copy it. We didn't even send our first email fundraiser about it until mid October. But the response was overwhelming—helping us to scale it nationally.
milled.com/moveon-org/mov…

This program wouldn't be possible without thousands of regular people making themselves vulnerable by recording the videos at the heart of the program. It wouldn't be possible without thousands of people chipping in. All of us at MoveOn are grateful to everyone who's powered it.

This is just one part of MoveOn's election program. Our volunteers have organized 1000 GOTV events, sent 30 million texts, donated $4.5 million to campaigns. And there's no telling whether all of our combined efforts will be enough tomorrow. Things could still tip either way.

But we know this: no matter what happens, we won't have that sinking feeling of regret, that we didn't do everything we could think to do. We, like millions of others across the country, are leaving it all on the field. And we're learning how to fight smarter at every step.

We're also grateful to our partners in this program: For Our Future, @iAmericaAction, @NextGenAmerica, @peoplefor, @SEIU, @IndivisibleTeam, and @PPact. Like so much of the progressive movement, especially since 2016, this has been a team effort. We're all stronger together.

And thanks to @issielapowsky for the fair and thorough write-up that captured exactly what makes this program unique and, in our view, worth betting on.

https://twitter.com/issielapowsky/status/1059438392084172800