Definition
The School Board Turnout Score is a predictive model that estimates the likelihood an individual will vote in school board elections. These models are custom trained for each specific municipality where the school board race is the top-of-ticket contest, or is held concurrently with municipal elections. Note that this score should NOT be used in federal or other statewide elections - in that case we would recommend using the appropriate statewide score (e.g. Off Year Statewide General Turnout score for races occurring on Nov 4, 2025, or the Midterm General Turnout Score/ Presidential General Turnout Score for races occurring in 2026/2028, respectively). In jurisdictions where the School Board Turnout Score is unavailable (either because local vote history data is unavailable, or because the election is a special election, e.g.), you can use the Local Voter Score as an alternative.
Technical Details
The score was built in each municipality where Murmuration has sufficient vote history in previous similar election types. Rather than a national or statewide model, the model is built using the vote history and demographics of individuals in a particular location. That is, the specific model for individuals registered in a Chicago school district will be different from the specific model for individuals registered in an Atlanta school district. This reflects both the different predictive power of model inputs across geographies and the different elections used as training targets. In each location, we identified a recent school board election and used it as the basis for labeling voters: those who voted are labeled as targets, and those who did not are labeled as non-targets.
The School Board Turnout Score ranges from 0–100, where an individual's specific score approximately corresponds to their likelihood of voting in an upcoming school board election.
We validated the model’s accuracy using a held-out test set of 20% of the original sample. Among individuals with scores in the top 20% of the School Board Turnout Score, 65% voted in school board elections, compared to 22% of the population at large. Thus by using this score for targeting, our partners are about 195% more likely to reach voters in school board elections than if they targeted at random.
Use Cases
As with turnout scores more generally, this score can be used in two broad ways:
- Persuasion/Name Recognition: Using the higher end of the School Board Turnout Score, organizations can focus outreach on individuals already likely to vote in upcoming school board elections. This is particularly useful in the early stages of a campaign — especially where name recognition is low — to ensure resources are directed toward voters who are most likely to turn out.
- GOTV: Voters who fall in the middle to low range of the School Board Turnout Score distribution (say with scores of between 30 and 70) can be targeted for GOTV outreach. When used in this manner, the score should generally target known supporters of candidates or issues to ensure partners are communicating with the voters most likely to support their work.
Targeting Table
The table below shows the score values associated with each decile to help you more easily target the top School Board Turnout Score nationally. Note: as this score is built in each particular jurisdiction, these score cutoffs differ based on the turnout patterns specific to your local districts - so you can use these as a starting point, but should adjust the thresholds according to your desired universe size.
| To target the top... | Set the minimum score value as... |
| 10% | 73 |
| 20% | 43 |
| 30% | 23 |
| 40% | 12 |
| 50% | 6 |
| 60% | 3 |
| 70% | 2 |
| 80% | 1 |
| 90% | 0 |
| 100% | 0 |