Key Words and What They Mean

If you are new to the team you may get overwhelmed by some of the terms used in campaigning. That is why we have compiled a list of keywords and what they mean so that you can be fully prepared to get started!

Voter ID
A Voter ID is the identification of the political affiliation of a voter. (Who they say they are going to vote for or have voted for in the past).

Questions 
Questions are used to record what you have asked voters and supporters. Questions are all dated and are linked to the following year’s electoral cycle. This means data collected in June 2020 will be stored in a question labelled 2021 as it is being collected for the May 2021 election. The electoral cycle restarts after the May local elections when new questions will be added to connect for the following year. You can create your own questions locally, but it's always worth using the national ones if you can, to keep the database as simple as possible.

Master Questions
In order to search across large groups of similar questions, Connect has what are called Master Questions.  These can be found at the bottom of question lists and can be identified by the fact that they don't have a year (or cycle) in their name.  That's because they are used for searching across all past data.  For example, if you wanted to make a list of all definite Liberal Democrats no matter when the data was collected you would use the Master Party ID question. When we create new ordinary questions in Connect, national admins map each response to a response on the master question so that we can easily make a list of all past data without having to list every question separately.  There are a number of different master questions - the question Type indicates which master question a regular question is mapped to.  For example, Vote Intent questions are mapped to the Master Party ID question, Volunteer questions are mapped to the Volunteer master question.  Party type questions are not mapped, but they do contribute towards something we call Canvass Analysis instead.

Canvass Analysis
This is a summary of all previous party political answers given by a voter, weighted to the most recent response. The last part of the description is the most recent canvass result, or where most of their past data indicates their allegiances can be found and the first part shows which other party they are most likely to consider.

For example “Blue Lib Dem” means they probably vote Lib Dem in most elections, but have canvassed as Conservative in the past or will consider voting Conservative in the future. “Yellow Conservative” is a person who mostly votes Conservative (perhaps in General Elections) but may vote Lib Dem locally or tactically to stop Labour winning.

Strong Lib Dem means they have been canvassed repeatedly as Lib Dem, Lib Dem means they have at least one recent canvass saying they are Lib Dem and have never expressed interest in another party, and Weak Lib Dem means their last canvass result was Lib Dem but it may have been several years ago or they were not very sure about it, so needs checking in case they have moved to another party since then. It does not mean that their commitment is necessarily any less than Lib Dems or Strong Lib Dems, only that we have not entered enough recent data to be sure.

Entering multiple data points against the same voter can strengthen their canvass analysis and make it more useful.  For example, saying that someone is voting Lib Dem this time, did so last time and will take a poster, will make them a Strong Lib Dem.  Recording that someone is planning to vote Labour this time but when asked if they will Consider Lib Dem in the future they say yes, will make them Yellow Labour and helps us to distinguish them from other Labour voters who might not be worth speaking to again.

NOTE: If you create your own local questions that need to be mapped or included in Canvass Analysis, you MUST put in a support request using the Contact the Admin link in Connect to let an administrator know, otherwise your voters won't appear in lists when you use master questions or the canvass analysis options.

Defs and Probs
Voters who identified themselves as definite or probable Liberal Democrats the last time we spoke to them.

Support
The group of voters who have only ever identified as Liberal Democrat, even if that support was only very weak.

Switch
A Switch voter is a voter that has indicated some level of support for both the Lib Dems and our main opponent.  A voter is considered a Switch voter when their values indicate that they may be persuaded to vote differently than they have in the past and we anticipate that they may be interested in switching their vote to us.

Squeeze
Squeeze voters have indicated support for third or smaller parties alone, or in addition to the Lib Dems. A voter is considered a Squeeze voter if they support or are predicted to support a party other than the main opponent and therefore may be willing to vote for us tactically in order to stop our main opponent from winning.

Stay At Home
The group of voters who we'd rather stayed at home because if they do vote, they will most likely vote for our main opposition.

Shuttleworth
The Shuttleworth is the list of people we want to remind to vote, because based on the information we have, if they do vote, they will probably vote for us.  It is also known as the Get Out The Vote list (or GOTV list).  A voter will usually be included in the Shuttleworth if their most recent canvass response is Lib Dem, or if they are in the Squeeze group - and therefore might be persuaded to vote for us tactically.

GOTV
Stands for Get Out The Vote and refers to the final phase of the campaign - usually the last two weeks or so, when we concentrate our effort on speaking to people who we have good reason to think will vote for us on polling day.

Tags and Codes
Codes are used to record specific attributes of a property (e.g. Housing access:inaccessible or Housing type:flats etc) while tags are usually attribute of people (e.g. Job:retired) they should not be used for things that may change from year to year such as poster requests which are better recorded as questions

Target Pool
Target pools are saved searches that we've created for you so you don't have to start from scratch.  No matter whether you're creating a list for canvassing, or for direct mail or for recruitment, the chances are you can just tick a box or two on the Target Pools tab of Create a List, narrow it to the part of your ward or constituency you are interested in and get going, without having to worry about building the list from scratch.

FPN (Fair Processing Notice)
A Fair Processing Notice is the wording needed to be given to voters on a leaflet when collecting information such as email or phone numbers from them.  You can find out more about data protection in the GDPR section of this website

User profiles 

Campaign Coordinator
This is the highest access level that Constituency Managers can assign. They can do most things a Constituency Manager can do, but can only create basic users and cannot export the electoral register. Ideal for people in central campaign teams.

Senior Activist
These users can access help with setting up Connect for the local party.  They can create new questions, scripts and forms for use by other activists. They cannot bulk upload data. Good for people who you can safely delegate important tasks to.

Activist
These users have full data editing access, but cannot change or add things like questions, scripts, forms etc. Ideal for newer campaigners or councillors who just administer canvassing and delivery in their own ward.

Repeat volunteer
Can enter all data, but cannot create lists or output data in any form. Ideal for office volunteers.

Temporary volunteer
Can enter canvass data, but cannot edit contact information. Ideal for first time volunteers

Phone Bank Only
A login for those who don't want lots of on-screen menus, but just want to make phone calls to help the campaign

Polling Day Committee Room Manager

To be assigned for polling day only for users that need to look at turnout stats on the day to make strategic decisions

Polling Day Operator
To be assigned for polling day only for users who will be entering telling data and sending out knock up lists

Constituency Connect Manager/Deputy Constituency Connect Manager
This is the highest level of access a local user can have on Connect. It allows the full use of Connect’s features, most notably Bulk Uploads and Exports. Only National Administrators can set up these accounts