There’s nothing more of a pain than trying to create good images for your campaign. It seems like a magical art that only a few people seem to understand and those people… cost a lot of money.

As a campaign in today’s environment, you will need to have optimized photos for all social media outlets, blog, flyers, and anything else that could possible come at you.

This is where canva.com come in.

Their slogan is “Amazingly Simple Graphics” and they aren’t kidding. From their drag and drop creation tool to their simple, pre-built templates, Canva will solve all of your graphic design problems. Canva makes it easy to create graphics for your different social media platforms by giving you customized image sizes to choose from before you create your graphic.

Canva allows you to upload any picture you have to their system and then edit it by adding filters, text, and objects. Most of the items are free, but there are some premium additions at $1 a piece.

This sounds simple, but the number of applications is astounding. And if it doesn’t sound simple, no worries, they have a free design school that will teach you how to use colors, objects, images, sizing, and every other graphics design knowledge that you could ever want.

And, if you can’t seem to get the right picture and you see that Canva provides one that you absolutely want to use, that element is only $1 to purchase. After that, you have the rights to use it where you please. The same goes with all the other objects, icons, and text that you find.

Check out the gallery of images to see all the different tools that canva provides:

Faquier Now highlighted Rick Gerhardt’s win as the new Cedar Run District Supervisor in Virginia:

“I just can’t believe the margin is this big,” Mr. Gerhardt said about 90 minutes after taking 63 percent of the vote to win the Republican nomination and unseat Mr. Sherbeyn, whose first term expires at year’s end.

Like many of our clients, Gerhardt used Voter Gravity to run a winning small campaign. He won with 1,184 votes to Sherbeyn’s 685. Continue reading →

Every campaign strategist worth their salt will tell you that you never need to win the “other side”: you only need to keep yours and convince the independent vote. While much research and advice has been given on this subject, one thing remains: according to an April 7, 2015 Pew Research study, voters who identify as independent are at an all time high:

“For more than 70 years, with few exceptions, more Americans have identified as Democrats than Republicans. But the share of independents, which surpassed the percentages of either Democrats or Republicans several years ago, continues to increase. Currently, 39% Americans identify as independents, 32% as Democrats and 23% as Republicans. This is the highest percentage of independents in more than 75 years of public opinion polling.” Continue reading →

While the benefits of direct mail pieces is often debated as to the full extent of their usefulness, some facts and tactics have and will remain true for the foreseeable future. A paper by University of Alabama professor Dr. George Hawley released by Voter Gravity identifies several ways to accomplish measurable success with direct mail efforts.  Continue reading →

How much do federal campaigns cost? The Center for Public Integrity published a listing of some interesting financial facts related to the 2014 mid-term elections in which they calculate that the estimated cost of the federal mid-terms to be at least $3.66 billion (others have estimated it to be $4 billion).

Where did all this money come from?

1,004 Super PACs and Hybrid PACs were registered as of late December of 2014. Of those PACs, 13 included the name “Hillary” or “Clinton” in their name. None of them included “Jeb” or “Bush.” Some of those PACs did more than just provide money though: the pro-Democratic PAC “Senate Majority PAC” ran over 50,200 ads, more than any other group. Some of those PACs made raised quite a bit of money too: liberal environmentalist Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action super PAC raised over $78 million all by itself.

What about non-PAC money? “Dark money” groups were plenty active as well: 6 key Senate races had at least 1 in 5 ads provided by dark money groups, and 3 of those Senate races had at least 1 in 4 ads provided by dark money. Illinois’ Republican Governor Bruce Rauner donated over $27.5 million to his own campaign.

You can find a full report here. What do you think: are we spending too much money on electing “public officials” (aka public servants)? Join the dialogue on Twitter.

At Voter Gravity we encourage PACs and campaigns of any size to rethink how they spend their money. Why waste money on things that don’t matter? We believe that money is saved when it is spent contacting the right voters at the right time with the right message. Focus and integrate. Request a Voter Gravity demo today to learn more.

The Voter Gravity Presidential Flash Poll this week was conducted in Colorado. We surveyed 8,296 respondents using the Voter Gravity touchtone survey tool. Don’t forget that if you’re a Voter Gravity client, you can run an unlimited amount of these flash polls yourself!

The Denver Post and Breitbart News picked up the story. Check out what they have to say about the results: Continue reading →

This week’s Voter Gravity Presidential flash poll was conducted in Colorado on March 17, 2015. It was conducted with GOP primary voters who voted in all four of the last four primaries, as our target for these polls remains exclusively the Republican base. It was featured in Breitbart News today. Click here to read, “Exclusive – VoterGravity.com Flash Poll: Walker Way Ahead in Colorado.”

The poll was conducted using Voter Gravity’s touchtone survey tool, and had 8,296 respondents from across Colorado. All our clients have access to this same resource to poll voters in their respective districts at any time.

Scott Walker continues to lead our GOP Primary voters polling across all states. Jeb Bush always does well, but Mike Huckabee did drop a bit in Colorado. We can’t offer a data driven explanation for why, but some solid issues based ID work would flush out those reasons.

The armchair analysis could be as simple as fewer people in CO identify with the social conservative issues that define Huckabee’s base. But, we let data inform us, and do not make any assumption.

If you’d like to flush out issues, supporters or narratives in your state, start by learning what we can help you accomplish here.

Click here to view poll results

Read full Roll Call piece highlighting Ned Ryun’s participation in the CPAC Activism Boot Camp here.

CPAC Campaign Boot Camp Trains GOP to Catch Up

By Kyle Trygstad

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Amethyst Archer probably wasn’t the targeted audience for the campaign boot camp held on the eve of the Conservative Political Action Conference, but the presenters made it clear the right needs all the help it can get in 2016 and beyond.

The Tulsa, Okla., resident is just 12 years old, and was the youngest of the few hundred activists and operatives — ranging from college students to senior citizens — who sat in for at least a portion of CPAC’s first-ever basic training for running effective, modern campaigns.

Continue reading →

The Voter Gravity team spoke to hundreds of conservatives about campaign technology at the CPAC 2015 Activism Boot Camp last week. Campaign staff and activists took away practical tips and fresh perspectives as they prep to make a difference on the ground this year and next. Here’s an excerpt from a piece by Breitbart News covering the event. To read the full piece, click here.

CPAC 2015 Digital Action: Conservatives Have Fallen Behind in Campaign Tech

By Warner Todd Huston

Conservatives and the Republican Party have fallen far behind the left in campaign voter outreach technology, and Ned Ryun hoped to help participants at CPAC 2015 learn how to gain that lost ground.

Ryun, the founder and director of the campaign operative training group American Majority, hosted a breakout session at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference titled, “Back to the Future: Catching up on Political Technology.” During his comments, Ryun warned that the center right is woefully behind the curve in campaign technology, and if things don’t change, it will seriously hamper the electoral future of conservatives and Republicans both. Continue reading →