Introduction
As you may have noticed, VAN does not include a lot of good information about voters' ethnicity or other characteristics. This is because VAN is based upon the Secretary of State's voter file, which unfortunately does not include any details on ethnicity or demographics, or even on supplementary information like religion, language, or occupation, so we have to obtain that information separately, usually directly from the voters themselves.
In order to provide you with more accurate and detailed ethnicity and demographics information in VAN, the Texas Democratic Party is migrating all data to a set of new Activist Codes, which will be shared with all VAN committees and explained in-depth below.
Using the new Activist Codes
It's important to know that there are appropriate times and places for using these new Activist Codes. Generally, including them in Scripts for canvassing or Virtual Phone Bank is only appropriate if the purpose of the voter contact effort is to identify specific members of a demographic group, or if the question is appropriate to ask. For instance, it wouldn't be advisable to simply include the "Korean - Confirmed" Activist Code in every phone bank, asking every caller whether or not they were Korean, but it would be appropriate to include it for a phone bank run by a Korean-American Democratic organization or in a script created by campaign focusing on Korean-American outreach.
Another potential use for the new Activist Codes is in Counts & Crosstabs or in Reports. They can be used to gauge what demographics groups to target in a specific district or precinct, or can help predict the highest-impact voters to contact. It will take some time for the new Activist Codes to become populated with data, but they will be an awesome resource for campaigns that want to target specific voters.
Activist Codes types
Our new Ethnicity and Demographics Activist Codes are broken up into five types, and two subcategories. If you notice one listed here that is unavailable in your committee, please submit a help ticket and TDP will add it. Firstly, let's explain the two subcategories:
Likely - Activist Codes with "- Likely" at the end are used to tag voters for whom there is evidence that they belong to a specific demographic category, but that we have not yet confirmed. Voters tagged using these Activist Codes are generally marked using surface-level information such as names and publicly-available household information. Including these Activist Codes in your searches will increase volume, but reduce precision.
Confirmed - Activist Codes with "- Confirmed" at the end are exclusively used to tag voters for whom we have conclusive evidence they belong to a specific demographic category. Voters tagged using these Activist Codes have generally either self-tagged themselves or have been confirmed either through a prior voter contact effort or through data collected by TDP from a vendor or through publicly-available data. Including only these Activist Codes will drastically increase precision, but at the same time will drastically lower volume.
The Activist Codes are also broken up into five types, similar to how Survey Questions have types such as "Volunteer" or "Action." These are used to denote the type of demographic category the Activist Codes are a part of, and are as follows:
Constituency/Issue - These Activist Codes denote specific groups of voters who share a common cause and are generally allied on political issues. Examples include Disability, LGBTQ, and People with Disabilities (PWD) Ally.
Language - These Activist Codes denote voters who are able to communicate in a specific language. They do not indicate, however, that a voter prefers a specific language or wants to be contacted by a canvasser in that language, nor do they indicate that a voter belongs to a specific ethnic group, so please be sure to note the difference. Examples include Cantonese, Hindi, and Telegu.
Occupation - These Activist Codes denote that a voter either currently works at a specific job, or is retired from a specific field. Examples include Educator, Military - Veteran, and Attorney.
Race/Ethnicity - These Activist Codes denote specific ethnic groups or categories that voters may consider themselves or self-identify as. These are not all-inclusive categories, so please be respectful of voters and how they identify. Examples include Latinx, Korean, and Portuguese.
Religion - These Activist Codes denote religious groups that people may identify as. Some people may identify with more than one religion, so please be aware that such instances are anticipated. Examples include Jewish, Southern Baptist, and Buddhist.