How to Increase Voter Support for Your Bond Proposal

Did your recent bond request nearly pass, but you just needed a few more “Yes” votes? The best way to increase voter support is to work on convincing voters who are unsure about your request to support your request and vote.

Our research has found that up to 15% of voters are unsure about school bond proposals. Voters who support your request, as well as voters who are opposed to your request, are far more likely to vote than voters who are unsure. If you can convince an unsure voter to support your request, then they will also be more likely to vote.

Our Comprehensive Voter Approval Assessment examines how unsure voters feel about the district as well as your facility improvement needs and proposed bond requests to determine why they are unsure. Once you know the primary reasons why your voters are unsure, you can go to work addressing their concerns.

Every district and bond proposal is different, but three common reasons voters are unsure include:

What are you asking for? A lot of school districts copy a long list of facility needs from their facility assessment or construction management firm and share it with their voters. Unfortunately, these lists are often filled with jargon such as “building envelope improvements” or “chillers” which the average voter will not understand. Providing a long jargon-filled list of items doesn’t help the case when most of the items on the list are meaningless to the average voter. The amount you are asking for is irrelevant if voters don’t understand why it is needed, or what it will be used for.

Didn’t the last bond cover that? Amazingly, some voters have the memory of elephants when it comes to previous bond requests that often happened more than a decade ago. They are unsure if they will support a bond proposal because they believe that some of the items the district is asking for were bought and paid for years ago. Even one or two items in a list of a dozen or more items can be enough to make a voter unsure about supporting a bond proposal.

How much will I save? A recent trend among school districts is asking voters to extend an expiring millage at the same rate for an additional period of time. While you might think voters would just say “Sure, I can keep supporting the district at this level” the unsure voters actually want to know “How much would I save if I don’t support extending the millage rate?” These unsure voters need to know how much extending the millage will save them in order to make a decision about supporting the millage.

It is easier to convince a voter who is unsure about a school bond proposal to vote “Yes” than it is to get a “No” voter to change their mind and vote “Yes.” Our Comprehensive Voter Approval Assessment will help your district increase voter support by identifying which voters are unsure and understanding why they are unsure, so your district can address their concerns and gain their support.