Fail
It’s disappointing—if not downright devastating—to see months of work end in a failed bond referendum. But even if your election didn’t go the way you hoped, it’s important not to lose heart. A failure is an opportunity not to beat yourself up, but to learn from the experience and prepare your school community to move forward.
Conduct a post-election analysis. For advice on next steps, we turn to Dr. Don Lifto, an expert on school referendums and the co-author of School Tax Elections: Planning for Success in the New Normal. According to Lifto, one of your top priorities should be conducting a post-election analysis, or PEA. The PEA “is not a survey,” Lifto explains. “It’s not asking anybody their opinions about anything. It’s a profile comparing the demographics of your whole registered voter base to the demographics of who actually showed up to vote.” Conducting a PEA is a useful exercise no matter the outcome of your election, but it’s particularly necessary in the event of a failure. “After winning, it paints you a demographic picture of how you won,” Lifto says. “But after losing, it provides a roadmap for what needs to change in the demographics of turnout to get a successful outcome next time.” The process for obtaining voter data varies from state to state, but in general, you can get a voter file for election research from the county or state agency that oversaw your election. (Commercial vendors are also a potentially easier and more cost-effective option; Lifto recommends Washington-based vendor L2.) This file will give you a wealth of demographic information about all the registered voters in your community, including which elections they’ve turned out for in the past. As Lifto points out, an annotated voter file is an invaluable asset in the initial planning of a school bond—but after the fact, it can also help you determine your campaign’s weak points. Here are a few critical points to consider in your postelection analysis.
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Parent turnout According to Lifto, as you look at your election results, you always want to see parents and guardians overrepresented. This simply means that if, say, 30% of registered voters are parents, you want parents to make up more than 30% of those who actually voted. After all, voting “Yes” should be a no-brainer for people with children, who stand to directly benefit from improved schools. This is probably the easiest thing for a bond campaign to get right—so if parents and guardians are underrepresented, it’s a sign that something’s gone horribly wrong. “Either there was a serious flaw in the planning and/or execution of the campaign or the district’s proposal was significantly out of alignment with the priorities of the parent population,” Lifto writes in School Tax Elections. Before you conduct a future bond or levy campaign, it will be crucial to consult with your community more extensively—especially families—to make sure your proposal reflects their most pressing concerns. Even if parents are overrepresented, though, further examination of this population is in order. What percent of all parents or guardians who are registered voters actually showed up to the polls? You want that percentage to be as high as possible—to “maximize the parent vote,” as Lifto puts it. Isolating your parent data into smaller categories will help you determine how to do this in the future. For example, did some neighborhoods see a stronger parent turnout than others? If so, you might reexamine your campus-by-campus messaging. Was it clear what each neighborhood’s school stood to gain from the bond? Your district’s families are your most natural supporters—so it’s crucial to do everything you can to get them to the ballot box.
Other supporters Throughout your campaign, you should have identified supporters of the bond—people you were confident would vote “Yes.” Compare that list to the actual Election Day data. What percent of those supporters actually made it to the polls? Ideally, this group should also be overrepresented in your final results. If they’re not (or even if they are), break down your data even further to determine any patterns, just as you did with the parent population. Lifto recommends “looking at the gender, age, party affiliation, and geographic location of identified supporters.” If only a few of your supportive older adults