Definition
The Grassroots Engagement Score indicates a person's likelihood to contact an elected official or donate to a state political campaign.
Technical Details
The model was built from the following polling question:
Which of the following describes an activity that you did in the last few years?
- Contacted an elected official
- Donated to a political campaign
Respondents who answered yes to any of the above were labeled as targets in the model. Those who did not answer yes to any of the activities were labeled as non-targets.
The Grassroots Engagement Score was trained on polling data from the 2021 and 2023 Murmuration polls. We collected 12,000 responses via phone and online from registered voters. The survey used stratified random sampling to ensure national representativeness across age, race, gender, partisanship, education and geography.
The model was trained using gradient-boosted decision trees. Model features were drawn from the Atlas by Murmuration dataset, which includes demographic (age, race, gender, etc.), commercial, geographic, and vote history information for all registered voters nationally.
Scores range from 0-100, where higher scores indicate greater likelihood that a voter will engage in grassroot engagement activities, i.e. contact an elected official and/or donate to a political campaign.
We validated the model using a held-out test set of 20% of the original survey sample. Among individuals with scores in the top 20% of the Grassroots Engagement Score, 50% contacted an elected official (67% more likely than the average voter) and 46% donated to a political campaign (84% more likely than the average voter).
Use Cases
Our Grassroots Engagement Score can be used for both political campaigns and community outreach, and can help organizations better connect with different groups of people and potentially increase overall participation in political activities. Below are a few examples for how partners could use this score:
- Advocacy Campaigns: Voters with high Grassroots Engagement Scores are the most likely to contact their elected officials, and so groups organizing advocacy campaigns can use this score to identify those most likely to respond to a call to action. When policy issues arise, organizations can mobilize these engaged individuals to get in touch with their representatives' offices via phone calls, emails, or letters. By using this model in conjunction with a typical issue score, partners can find voters who are most likely to vocalize their beliefs on and support an issue.
- Targeted Fundraising: Campaigns and organizations planning fundraising efforts can use this model to identify individuals who are most likely to donate but haven't yet contributed to their cause. By focusing fundraising efforts on these potential donors, organizations can efficiently exclude voters unlikely to donate, saving time and money. Using this score alongside an issue score allows for tailored messaging that resonates with voters, optimizing outreach and maximizing fundraising efficiency.
- Volunteer Recruitment and Community Engagement: Partners can use this score to identify highly engaged supporters who haven't yet volunteered or otherwise taken steps to show their support (via activities like joining a leadership fellowship, attending an event or protest, etc). These individuals are prime candidates for more involved roles, such as organizing local events, leading phone banks, or helping run door-to-door canvassing efforts. By motivating them to volunteer, you can build a stronger, more active base for your ongoing advocacy work.
Targeting Table
The table below shows the score values associated with each decile to help you more easily target using the Grassroots Engagement Score nationally. Note: these score cutoffs may be different in your local districts.
| To target the top… | Set the minimum score value as… |
| 10% | 40 |
| 20% | 34 |
| 30% | 30 |
| 40% | 26 |
| 50% | 23 |
| 60% | 20 |
| 70% | 18 |
| 80% | 16 |
| 90% | 14 |
| 100% | 6 |