“Rising Tide’s data-driven approach made sure we didn’t leave a single vote on the table in a tough environment for House freshmen. Their work with our analytics partners allowed for us to launch dynamic creative to multiple audiences that were all critical for our path to victory.”

Rep. Sharice Davids

Situation

In 2020, Rep. Sharice Davids was defending a House seat in suburban Kansas City where voters had shifted away from Trump but where the Republicans still held an 8.5 point registration advantage over Democrats. While Rep. Davids won her seat by 9.6 points in 2018, the pandemic and the presidential election were expected to create a fundamentally different electorate.

Strategy

To assure Rep. Davids’s reelection, we developed a digital persuasion and mobilization plan that would bolster support and turnout across key demographics and select state house districts at the center of her path to victory. This included the development of a hybrid persuasion-turnout audience priming highly important lower-propensity Black voters for later GOTV messaging, as well as layering in issue-persuasion models to ensure that voters received the messages that would be most likely to sway them — and least likely to generate backlash.

Results

In an election year where many House freshmen saw their 2018 margins significantly narrow, our multi-faceted, data-first approach allowed the campaign to overperform on key metrics and ensure victory. Rep. Davids gained in the percentage of two-party votes received in all five target state house districts from 2018 to 2020, and she outperformed President Biden in three of the five districts. We were proud to aid Rep. Davids in her 10-point victory.