Political Canvassing

MapInfo and PCensus makes it easy to review past voter results and helps candidates economize their energies.  

Here’s How:

Using MapInfo Professional, voter precinct boundaries in Greenville County, South Carolina provide the electoral map to strategize from past results and focus future efforts.

Using the 1996 Election results from Greenville County, South Carolina, selected voter precincts can be classified as either Republican or Democratic in MapInfo. The party with the dominant number of votes in each precinct had its color assigned to the precinct. This would provide critical information on which areas have to be held and which areas have to be won over.

The assigning of colors to both major political parties, the labeling of voter precincts and the displaying of street maps can all be customized to provide the clearest picture to efficiently allocate staff resources.

A further step would be to use PCensus to target precincts who’s voters follow a particular issue. For example, an issue that focuses on the quality of education is a primary concern for families with school aged children. According the National Decision Systems’ 1999 Estimates and 2004 Projections, there were 62,560 children aged 5 to 17, out of a total 1999 population of 357,174. That represents 17.5% of the total population.

Using PCensus, a custom lifestyle can target only those voter precincts that have a minimum of 20% of its population in the school age category. Thus, for these precincts, education is a "hot button" issue. A ranking report from PCensus, easily lists the precincts by their school children percentage, as well as showing other import demographic information.

Using MapInfo again, the critical information from the PCensus target report can be translated into a professional map. The voter precincts are thematically mapped out in green, labeled with both their names and the total number of eligible voters found within their borders. All aspects of the map (scale, colors, layers) can be customized to any design and purpose. Thus candidates can efficiently schedule their time and provide relevant arguments to selected voters.

Using MapInfo again, the critical information from the PCensus target report can be translated into a professional map. The voter precincts are thematically mapped out in green, labeled with both their names and the total number of eligible voters found within their borders. All aspects of the map (scale, colors, layers) can be customized to any design and purpose. Thus candidates can efficiently schedule their time and provide relevant arguments to selected voters.