RunningMate FAQs

Democratic and progressive candidates and organizations can access RunningMate.

No, you do not need to be endorsed by the Democratic Party. However, you must hold Democratic or progressive values in your campaign. Each campaign or organization undergoes an internal vetting process to ensure alignment with our mission. We reserve the right to deny service to those who do not meet this criteria.

After checkout but before the first payment is processed, we use publicly available information to ensure each client aligns with Civitech’s mission and values. RunningMate users must be affiliated with the Democratic party, another progressive organization, or exhibit progressive values in their campaign.

RunningMate integrates with the Civitech Source voter file, TargetSmart’s voter file, and Civitech’s PIR unregistered file. It does not currently integrate with TextOut, but this feature is on the roadmap. Contact your account representative or support@civitech.io for customization options.

No, not yet. While RunningMate can be used on a mobile device, its format is not yet optimized for mobile.

The Target Summary shows an overview of your district. The interactive map allows you to click on precincts to isolate them or zoom in to the household level.

For access to view unregistered individuals identified by Civitech in your district, please email your account representative or support@civitech.io. The account owner can also click on any of the yellow lock icons on the platform to submit an inquiry to the Client Success team. They will follow up with pricing information for the unregistered voters for your district.

Use Goal Tracker to calculate your win number, set campaign goals, and view progress at the state, district or precinct level. Users can follow a guided workflow within Goal Tracker to determine likely turnout and win number, set engagement goals, and track progress.

Yes, you can use Civitech’s pre-set filters (Base, Turnout, Persuasion, Registration) or customize filters based on district, voting history, modeled partisanship, turnout, and demographics. Using demographic filters can help you tailor your campaign’s messaging plan across the district, getting as granular as you need.

Yes, as long as the data includes state voter ID numbers. Users can upload data with custom data tags or support scores to view in RunningMate.

Our turnout model is based on:

• Registration status in previous elections
• Vote history
• Demographics

A higher score indicates a higher likelihood of voting.

Our partisanship model predicts how likely someone is to vote Democratic based on:

• Actions (party registration, voting history)
• Demographics
• Location

A higher Party Lean score indicates a higher likelihood of voting Democratic.

For those who don't have access to VAN, RunningMate is a great tool out of the box. If you currently use VAN, our PIR add-on to RunningMate enhances your campaign toolset.

RunningMate is an excellent addition to your toolset if you are already organizing using Votebuilder or another voter file management tool. It is also an affordable, robust campaign management and data visualization tool for organizations that do not have access to VAN.

RunningMate uses the Source voter file, which is a lean dataset that primarily contains the statewide voter file. Many RunningMate users tend to upgrade their subscription to also gain access to the PIR likely unregistered voters in their district.  

Other tools often have multiple data models, each of which may include different features, preprocessing, and/or cross-validation than our model. You may need to consult with the provider for your other tools to understand which models are being used for analysis.

You can export RunningMate data for use in Google MyMaps. Filter and export lists, take screenshots, and use the data for canvassing with a spreadsheet or printed list.

Check out our help article on how to canvass in Google MyMaps.

Yes, the interactive map shows district boundaries and potential voter locations. The target density scale helps uses darker shading to show high concentration of targets. This helps you determine where to concentrate canvassing efforts versus other engagement methods.

For detailed instructions, visit our Help Article.

Yes, you can tag voters with custom labels (e.g., teachers, volunteers, donors) and visualize them on the map. Use these tags to filter your dashboard and track outreach efforts.

Import support scores and data tags to track your outreach efforts. The help article is linked here. 

Use the download and upload features as you contact voters and learn about their likelihood to support your campaign or other useful information about them. This could include issues that are important to them or things like occupation, union membership, parental status, volunteer status, or willingness to donate.

After you’ve added support scores or custom data tags, you can filter your RunningMate dashboard by that information. 

If you have survey responses from other tools, you can tie them back to our data using the state voter file ID as custom tags, then visualize them on the map in RunningMate.

Yes, you can gather and upload municipal election data with a custom data tag indicating municipal election voters.

No, not yet but it is on our product roadmap.

No, not yet.