Net Democratic Vote

A “net vote” is produced as a direct result of a program. It is a vote that would not otherwise have been cast.

Many programs emphasize the total number of votes cast by their target audience as evidence of their impact, but a significant portion of those individuals would have voted regardless of whether the program was run.

To determine how many “net votes” a program produced, we calculate the number of votes the program yielded that would not have been cast otherwise through experimental tests that measure the program’s effects (for a more detailed explanation, see randomized controlled trials).

For partisan programs, we then calculate the number of “net Democratic votes” among the net votes. Usually, the voters a program mobilizes will not all vote for the Democratic candidate.

For example, if a program generates 10 voters who would not otherwise have cast a ballot, but only six vote for the Democrat and four for the Republican, the net gain for the Democrats (“net Democratic votes”) is only two votes.

The chart below illustrates this calculation for a program that sends vote-by-mail applications to a population of voters.