Election Impact Reports: Understanding Your Turnout Difference

What an Election Impact Report shows

After an election, Vottiv builds an Election Impact Report for each recent election in your state. Each report answers one practical question: did the voters your campaign contacted turn out at a different rate than comparable voters you didn't contact?

A voter counts as contacted when your campaign knocked their door, sent them a text, called them (including leaving a voicemail), mailed them, or emailed them.

Every report has four parts:

• Turnout Difference — the headline comparison between the voters you contacted and similar voters you didn't, shown at the top of the report.

• By outreach channel — the same comparison for each channel you used, drawn on one shared scale and ranked so you can see which moved turnout most.

• Who you contacted — how many voters you contacted through each channel (door knocks, texts, phone calls, mail, and email).

• Where your contacted voters live — a neighborhood-level map of your contact footprint.

Finding your reports

Your reports live in the Election Reports section of your account dashboard (Account Home). The section lists your recent elections — each row shows the election's name, date, and type (General, Primary, Presidential Primary, Municipal, Runoff, Special, and so on) along with a status label:

• Ready — the report is complete and ready to read.

• Finalizing — the report is available, but turnout is still being reported, so the numbers may still move.

• Awaiting data — turnout results for this election are still being gathered; the report will fill in automatically.

• Not enough data — there wasn't enough comparable data to produce an estimate for this election.

Only elections held since your organization's first voter contact are listed. Elections that took place before you started outreach have no contact data to analyze, so they're hidden automatically rather than cluttering the page with empty reports. If your organization hasn't contacted any voters yet, the section stays empty until your first outreach.

Click any election to open its full report. If you have more elections than fit in the section, click View all to see the complete list.

Reports build when you open them

Opening a report that hasn't been computed yet starts the computation right away — you'll see "Building your report", and the page fills in on its own, usually in under a minute. There's nothing to click and no need to refresh.

Every report also has a Recompute now button in its header. Use it when you want the report rebuilt with the latest data on the spot — for example, right after a new batch of turnout results lands — instead of waiting for the automatic nightly refresh.

Reading the Turnout Difference

The report opens with a verdict panel: the observed turnout difference in large type, with two bars showing the turnout rate for the voters you contacted next to the rate for comparable voters you didn't. Turnout comes from the public voter file and counts every voter who voted, whether they voted early, by mail, or on Election Day.

Below it, the like-for-like difference compares your contacted voters against uncontacted voters who look alike on area, age group, party, and voting history — this controls for who your campaign chose to reach.

• Every number comes with a range. Estimates are drawn as a dot on a bar: the dot is the estimate, the band around it is the likely range, and a tick marks zero. A narrow band means a firm number; a wide band means read it loosely.

• "Statistically significant" means the difference is large and consistent enough that it's unlikely to be a fluke.

• One caveat, stated on the report: campaigns choose whom to contact, so some of the difference reflects targeting rather than the outreach itself.

If there wasn't enough comparable data to build an estimate at all, the report says so and shows your contact counts and map instead. Curious how firm the numbers are? Open the "How solid are these numbers?" section on the report for a plain-English rundown: the smallest difference the analysis could reliably detect, how the comparison group was built, and any notes about incomplete data.

By outreach channel

The report breaks the comparison down by channel so you can see which of your efforts moved turnout most. Every channel you used gets its own headline number — the turnout difference for the voters contacted through that channel versus similar voters you didn't contact — along with its range, its contacted-voter count, and its own significance badge. All channels are drawn on one shared scale and ranked by turnout difference, largest first, so you can compare them at a glance. A channel that reached only a small number of voters still shows its number; its wide range tells you to read it loosely.

Because a single voter is often contacted several ways, these per-channel figures overlap — a voter who got both a knock and a text counts in both — so they don't add up to the overall Turnout Difference.

Exporting a report as a PDF

Click Export PDF in the report header to download a polished, shareable PDF of the full report — headed with your campaign's name, and including the turnout verdict, the channel comparison, your contact counts, the footprint map, and the methodology notes. The PDF is generated on the spot from the numbers on screen, so what you share always matches what you see. Use it for board updates, donor briefings, or post-election debriefs.

Why some reports say "results still finalizing"

Turnout data arrives gradually after Election Day as counties report and the voter file updates. A report opens in a "finalizing" state and refreshes on its own as more ballots are recorded, settling once the results are complete. You don't need to refresh the page — though Recompute now is there if you want the very latest numbers immediately.

What the report can and can't tell you

Election Reports measure whether someone voted, drawn from the public voter file. They never reveal who anyone voted for — that information is secret and isn't available to anyone.