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7

January

Why Facebook Custom Audiences?

by Team tallyED Voter Education 0 0 Comment 241

Unlocking the Power of Precision: The Significance of Facebook Custom Audiences in Political Advertising

Why Facebook Custom Audiences?

Simply put, political campaigns save money because they can increasingly leverage the targeted capabilities of Facebook to reach their audience effectively – and with more frequency – than with mail, radio and television. This custom audience feature allows advertisers to tailor their messaging with unprecedented precision while receiving real-time metrics.

Now, let's delve into why Facebook Custom Audiences are indispensable when placing political ads on this social media giant.

Precision Targeting: Facebook Custom Audiences empower political advertisers to refine their target audience based on a plethora of parameters. And by using tallyED voter data, campaigns can ensure that their messages reach the right voters at the right time.

Engaging Previous Supporters: Political campaigns can harness the power of Facebook Custom Audiences to reconnect with individuals who have previously shown support. By uploading email lists, phone numbers or voter lists, campaigns can create a custom audience of supporters, ensuring that they receive tailored content and updates.

Exclusion Targeting: Equally important is the ability to exclude specific groups from viewing ads. This ensures that resources are not wasted on audiences that are unlikely to be swayed or have already committed their support.

And to dive deeper into the intricacies of Facebook Custom Audiences, political advertisers should consult the Facebook Business Help Desk. The platform provides comprehensive guides, tutorials, and FAQs to help political campaigns make the most of this powerful tool.

Things to Remember:

Get Authorized to Run Facebook Political Ads

All Facebook Political Ads Show Up in the Facebook Ad Library

Facebooks Ads About Social Issues, Elections, and Politics Defined

Let’s discuss one other Facebook targeting feature: Lookalike Audiences. This feature identifies users with similar traits to a custom audience thereby expanding the reach to more Facebook users who share characteristics with their existing base.

For big and small businesses, non-profit organizations, and industry associations, this feature may prove cost-effective. However, for political campaigns, Lookalike Audiences encompass everyone – primary election voters, general election-only voters, infrequent voters, casual voters and non-voters – which means campaigns will be unsure of their Facebook targets and wasting money.

In conclusion, as political campaigns continue to navigate the digital landscape, Facebook Custom Audiences emerge as a crucial asset when paired with tallyED voter data. Their ability to fine-tune targeting, engage past supporters, and optimize ad content ensures that political messages resonate with the right audience (voters only), ultimately maximizing impact.

So, candidates, is your campaign using Facebook Custom Audiences with tallyED voter data?

14

December

Florida Primary Election: 250 days until voters cast their ballots

by Team tallyED Voter Education 0 0 Comment 392

There are 250 days until the 2024 Primary Election, which will take place Aug. 20.

Still eight months away, it's never too early to begin researching the candidates who will appear on your ballot.

New candidates continue to file ahead of next year's qualifying period. Log in to your tallyED.com account to research candidates, view your ballot in real-time and rally support for the candidates you will be voting for next year.

Here are some key dates to remember for the 2024 Primary Election:
- Deadline for your Supervisor of Elections to send Vote-By-Mail ballots to UOCAVA (Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voters): July 6, 2024
- Deadline to send Vote-By-Mail ballots to domestic voters: July 11-18, 2024
- Bookclosing Date: July 22, 2024 (To be eligible to vote in the 2024 Primary Election, you must be registered to vote by the Bookclosing Date.)
- Early voting period (mandatory period): August 10-17, 2024
- Deadline to request a Vote-By-Mail Ballot: August 8, 2024

A reminder: Florida's 2024 Presidential Preference Primary Election will be March 19, 2024. Go here for important dates related to Florida's PPP.

27

September

How to become a poll worker in Florida

by Team tallyED Voter Education 0 0 Comment 2457

Election season is nearly here, which means Florida's Supervisors of Elections are gearing up to conduct their elections later this year and for the 2024 presidential election cycle.

Preparing for the upcoming elections includes recruiting and hiring poll workers. Election poll workers are residents who work at polling locations during Early Voting and on Election Day.

To become a poll worker, you must apply with your local Supervisor of Elections. We included links to all 67 county SOEs if you scroll down on this blog post. Click on the link for your county to get more information.

Poll workers are paid for their time and are expected to work a 14-hour day on Election Day. Compensation is based on the position worked, and it includes payment for training. A check is typically mailed to you after Election Day.

Election poll workers must:

→ Be a pre-registered or registered voter in the county in which they’re applying to work in
→ Attend a scheduled election poll worker training class prior to each election
→ Remain nonpartisan in what is said and worn on Election Day

There are several positions your county Supervisor of Elections might be hiring for, including clerk, assistant clerk, book inspector, ballot box inspector and deputy. Your SOE will have more information on their website.

You can't work as an election poll worker if you are a candidate for office, a candidate's treasurer, an immediate family member of a candidate or if you are serving in a leadership position with a local political party.

For more detailed information on becoming a poll worker from your specific county, click on the link below.

Find your county below for specific information on becoming a poll worker
Alachua
Baker
Bay
Bradford
Brevard
Broward
Calhoun
Charlotte
Citrus
Clay
Collier
Columbia
DeSoto
Dixie
Duval
Escambia
Flagler
Franklin
Gadsden
Gilchrist
Glades
Gulf
Hamilton
Hardee
Hendry
Hernando
Highlands
Hillsborough
Holmes
Indian River
Jackson
Jefferson
Lafayette
Lake
Lee
Leon
Levy
Liberty
Madison
Manatee
Marion
Martin
Miami-Dade
Monroe
Nassau
Okaloosa
Okeechobee
Orange
Osceola
Palm Beach
Pasco
Pinellas
Polk
Putnam
St. Johns
St. Lucie
Santa Rosa
Sarasota
Seminole
Sumter
Suwannee
Taylor
Union
Volusia
Wakulla
Walton
Washington

18

September

National Voter Registration Day is today (September 19)

by Team tallyED Voter Education 0 0 Comment 419

National Voter Registration Day — a nonpartisan civic holiday celebrating America's democracy — is today, Tuesday, Sept. 19.

More than 5 million voters have been registered to vote nationally on the holiday since the day was first observed in 2012, according to NationalVoterRegistrationDay.org. The day is celebrated annually in September, and it involves volunteers, organizations and Supervisors of Elections from all over the country using a coordinated effort to get more people signed up to vote.

Florida residents can register to vote online at this link.

The registered voter rolls in Florida have changed over the last few years.

There are 14,074,530 total active registered voters in Florida as of July 31, 2023, according to the Florida Division of Elections. That is down from the 14,536,811 active registered voters as of the last update for 2022.

There are more registered Republicans (5,244,138) than Democrats (4,676,087) in the Sunshine State. The total No Party Affiliation registered voters is currently 3,861,950 — down from 4,032,731 in 2022.

In 2017, there were 12,867,189 active registered voters in Florida.

To see a breakdown of Florida’s voter registration by county and party, go here.

National Voter Registration Day is endorsed by the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the National Association of Election Officials (The Election Center).

14

September

Here are some services your Supervisor of Elections offers that you might not know about

by Team tallyED Voter Education 0 0 Comment 588

Your local Supervisor of Elections is the constitutional officer — elected by you, the voters — who is designated by Florida law to administer elections and voter registration for their respective county.

The local Supervisors of Elections in Florida handle tasks we're mostly familiar with, including conducting all public elections, registering voters and issuing voter information cards, removing voters from the registered voter rolls, and many other tasks (see below for a more comprehensive list of what your local SOE does).

But, what about tasks that aren't commonly known? There are things some of the different SOEs throughout Florida offer that aren't within their regular "job description."

One offering from SOEs throughout the state is mobile voter registration drives.

The Duval County Supervisor of Elections recently posted on Facebook that they sent a representative to the Silver Creek Apartment Complex on Sept. 5 after complex managers asked the SOE for a voter registration booth.

The SOE's representative brought voter registration applications and helped residents get registered to vote.

The Lake County Supervisor of Elections offers a facility tour and the chance to book the Supervisor of Elections for speaking engagements at civic organizations, businesses and classrooms.

Brevard County Supervisor of Elections Tim Bobanic and his staff are also available to speak to schools and civic groups about elections, voter registration and voting, as well as to conduct voter registration drives throughout the community.

Here's a full list of what a Supervisor of Elections does in your community:
→ Conduct all public elections
→ Register voters and issue voter information cards
→ Remove voters from the registered voter rolls who no longer live in Florida, are deceased, or for any other reason if they are no longer eligible to vote in Florida
→ Change information on registered voter rolls when a change request is received (name, address, party affiliation, signature)
→ Send advance notice of election to voters who are overseas, in the military, or who request information
→ Accept Vote-By-Mail ballot requests and send, receive and verify mail ballots
→ Qualify candidates for county offices
→ Receive candidate campaign finance reports for county offices and make them publicly available
→ Receive financial disclosure reports from elected county officials and make them publicly available
→ Maintain election equipment
→ Hire and train poll workers
→ Acquire and equip polling locations
→ Maintain statistics on elections results, voting history and voter registration
→ Verify petition signatures for initiative petitions and candidate qualifying petitions
→ Maintain precinct information, including a listing of streets and parts of streets that are in each precinct
→ Reply in a timely manner to public records requests

8

September

🤑 Want to reach voters with your Facebook content? You will likely have to pay

by Team tallyED tallyED Research 0 0 Comment 519

It seems like forever ago, but Facebook used to be a beacon of hope for publishers trying to get their message out to users on the platform.

All of that has changed — and now, publishers are largely deprioritized in Facebook's Newsfeed, meaning there are plenty of Pages that get minimal organic engagement. There are, of course, pages that still get plenty of organic reach and interactions, but there aren't many in the political space that are succeeding without putting money behind their content.

At tallyED, we wanted to put this to an A/B test. Over the last few months, we have taken different approaches to posting content, including various topics, post types and timing.

We then put some money — and by some, we mean very little money — behind a post to see how it performed.

The post we selected, which was related to Florida voters having to request new Vote-By-Mail ballots for 2024, was boosted to a targeted audience for $1.99 over just a few hours. In that time, we had 38 engagements, which was exponentially more than any organic post in recent weeks.

We are explaining this process in full transparency to share this message with you if you're running for office yourself or managing a Facebook Page for a campaign/candidate/organization: There are some organic things you can do in order to rank in the algorithm, but you will need to put money behind your content if you want people to see it this election season.

Speaking of ranking in the algorithm, there are some things you can do.

Hootsuite, a social media management platform, wrote a blog in February breaking down the latest iteration of Facebook's algorithm. The algorithm is constantly changing, so things that recently worked might not be as effective now.

Hootsuite recommends Facebook publishers should "engage with their audience." That seems basic — and really, it is — but most Pages, especially political candidates/campaigns, do not do this.

"The algorithm prioritizes posts from Pages that a user has had meaningful interactions with in the past. This means that bumping up your reply game is key," Hootsuite writes.

If you're looking to put some money behind your social media content this election season, one of the most effective strategies is to boost your content to a Custom Audience of voters you're trying to reach. Check out this blog for more information on how to buy voter-targeted Custom Audiences on tallyED.

7

September

See who is running for office in your community

by Team tallyED Voter Education 0 0 Comment 430

The 2024 elections are not far away, and more candidates are filing daily to run for office at all levels — local, state and federal.

It's always a good idea to keep up with who might appear on your ballot when you go to bubble in names, and so we wanted to provide a few quick resources to check and see who has filed to run for office in your community.

See who is running for local office

To see who has filed to run for local offices in your community, you will need to go to the local Supervisor of Elections Office website.

To walk you through the lookup process, we'll use Alachua County as an example.

Go to www.VoteAlachua.com and click on Campaigns → Candidates For Office. Once you navigate there, you will need to change the dropdown menu to show the "2024 Presidential General Election," which is set to take place Nov. 5, 2024. This is where you'll find all the filed candidates who are running for local office.

Scroll down to the bottom of this post for links to all 67 Supervisors of Elections in Florida.

See who is running for state office

To see who has filed to run for offices at the state level, go to the Florida Division of Elections website and click on Candidates, Campaign Documents, and Committees. On the following page, click on Search Candidates and Races Database. From there, make sure the General Election dropdown is on "2024 Election" and click on "View List."

On the page with the full list, you can either search using the various search functions or you can simply scroll through.

See who is running for federal office

For federal elections, go to www.FEC.gov → click on Campaign finance data → click on Candidates.

Click on the All candidates option at the top and then use the various search tools to find exactly what you're looking for or scroll through the entire list. You can use the filters along the left-hand side of the page to look at just Florida candidates.

At tallyED, we're always ready to help create a more informed electorate and help voters. If you're still not sure where to find these lists, email us at team@tallyED.com, and we will get back to you.

31

August

The median age of your Florida lawmaker is 52 years old

by Team tallyED tallyED Research 0 0 Comment 783

The median age of a Florida lawmaker — including the Florida House, Florida Senate, the Congressional delegation and the two U.S. Senators — is 52 years old, according to a tallyED.com analysis.

Here is a breakdown of the median ages for the four different levels of government who are serving the Sunshine State in 2023:

→ The median age of a Florida State Senator is 53 years (note: tallyED was unable to confirm the age of 1 State Senator)
→ The median age of a Florida State Representative is 51 years (note: tallyED was unable to confirm the ages of 6 State Representatives)
→ The median age of a member of Congress from Florida is 56 years
→ The median age of a U.S. Senator from Florida is 61 years

The youngest member of the Florida Senate is 29-year-old Alexis Calatayud, who represents District 38. The oldest member of the Florida Senate is Victor Torres, of District 25, who turned 76 earlier this year.

State Rep. Juan Carlos Porras, who represents the Miami area, is the youngest member of the Florida House of Representatives, at 26 years old. State Rep. Sam Killebrew, at 78, is the oldest member of the Florida House.

Frederica Wilson, who represents portions of Miami-Dade and Broward counties, is the oldest member of Congress from Florida at 80 years old. Rep. Maxwell Frost, 26, of the Orlando area, is the youngest member of Florida's Congressional delegation and the youngest member of the entire 118th Congress.

We compiled the data for Florida lawmakers to compare the ages of elected officials across the national landscape.

The U.S. House of Representatives is getting younger: The median age of the 118th Congress is 57.9 years, which is a year younger than the 117th Congress. The median age of Americans is 38, according to the most recent U.S. Census data.

The median age of Florida's Congressional delegation is 56 years old, slightly below the median age of the entire 118th Congress.

The Senate's median age, however, continues to rise, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. The new Senate's median age is 65.3 years, up from 64.8 in the 117th Congress, 63.6 in the 116th and 62.4 in the 115th.

The ages of Florida's two U.S. Senators, are 70 (Rick Scott) and 52 (Marco Rubio), so slightly younger (61) than their colleagues in the other 49 states.

30

August

Ahead of 2024 elections, X announces it will allow paid political ads, lifting Twitter's earlier ban

by Team tallyED tallyED Research 0 0 Comment 421

It's been about eight months since Twitter, now known as X, announced it would relax its political advertising policy, and on Tuesday, X made it official.

X confirmed in a blog post this week that it is lifting its ban on paid political ads, a move it committed to earlier this year shortly after Elon Musk took over the social media network.

X said in January that it intended to expand political advertising after first relaxing its policy for cause-based ads in the United States that "can facilitate public conversation around important topics."

In its latest announcement this week, X said it will allow paid political ads as part of its efforts to build on its commitment to free expression. Twitter first banned political ads in November 2019 under former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey.

"Starting in the U.S., we'll continue to apply specific policies to paid-for promoted political posts," the company said in a blog post. "This will include prohibiting the promotion of false or misleading content, including false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election, while seeking to preserve free and open political discourse. We'll also provide a global advertising transparency center so that everyone can review political posts being promoted on X, in addition to robust screening processes to ensure only eligible groups and campaigns are able to advertise."

Meta already has a similar transparency center, known as the Ad Library.

Advertising ahead of next year's elections, which includes the 2024 Presidential Election, is already ramping up.

The impact political ads could have on X's revenue is unclear. Ned Segal, Twitter's former Chief Financial Officer, said in an October 2019 tweet that the political ad spend for the 2018 U.S. midterms was less than $3 million. Twitter's total revenue in 2018 was $3 billion.

A New York Times report in June states X's ad sales in the United States has dropped by 59% year-over-year.

21

June

Tracking political advertising spends on Facebook and Instagram for the 2024 GOP presidential candidates

by Team tallyED tallyED Research, Voter Education 0 0 Comment 415

With nine months until the 2024 Florida Republican Presidential Preference Primary, candidates are ramping up their advertising spends across all mediums, including Meta's Facebook and Instagram platforms.

We looked at what the Republican candidates are spending. The data below covers the 30-day period between May 18, 2023, and June 16, 2023, according to the Meta Ad Library. (All totals are estimates, Meta says.)

Here's what we found.

Perry Johnson, a businessman and author, leads the Republican field in Meta ads spending at $143,951 across 330 ads.
→ Donald Trump: 123 ads totaling $110,065
→ Ron DeSantis: 1,213 ads totaling $76,329
→ Tim Scott: 153 ads totaling $59,920
→ Vivek Ramaswamy: 144 ads totaling $55,048
→ Ryan Binkley: 90 ads totaling $28,286
→ Doug Burgum: 152 ads totaling $14,712
→ Asa Hutchinson: 27 ads totaling $5,347
→ Nikki Haley: 227 ads totaling $4,823
→ Mike Pence: 11 ads totaling $1,166
→ Chris Christie: 10 ads totaling $1,034

President Joe Biden has spent $239,301 across 386 ads — almost $100,000 more than highest-spending Republican candidate over the last 30 days.

There were no ad estimates posted in the Meta Ad Library for Larry Elder and Francis Suarez.

It's worth noting: These totals only cover ad spends from each candidates' main page. This does not include ads spent on the candidates' behalf from other pages, such as groups, organizations and political committees.

We will continue to track campaign advertising totals on social media through the election. The 2024 Florida Republican Presidential Preference Primary is March 19, 2024.

If you're a registered Republican voter in Florida, you can tally your digital support for your candidate in the tallyED.com poll.

tallyED Blog

tallyED Blog Posts

7

Why Facebook Custom Audiences?

14

Florida Primary Election: 250 days until voters cast their ballots

27

How to become a poll worker in Florida

18

National Voter Registration Day is today (September 19)

14

Here are some services your Supervisor of Elections offers that you might not know about

8

🤑 Want to reach voters with your Facebook content? You will likely have to pay

7

See who is running for office in your community

Links to Florida's Supervisors of Elections websites

31

The median age of your Florida lawmaker is 52 years old

30

Ahead of 2024 elections, X announces it will allow paid political ads, lifting Twitter's earlier ban

21

Tracking political advertising spends on Facebook and Instagram for the 2024 GOP presidential candidates