04·Mississippi · small district

Campaign strategy in Mississippi HD22

Mississippi HD22 has just ~16,000 registered voters. We show how a small district rewrites the playbook — about 100 hours of door knocking a candidate can cover largely on their own.

Step by step The written version

1

Start with the size of the electorate

Moving from HD16 to HD22, the first thing to read is the raw number of registered voters — it drives turnout, cost, daily workload, and where effort should go.
2

Diagnose how small it is

We've looked at districts of 150,000 and 50,000 registered voters; HD22 has about 16,000. For a new candidate, diagnosing that size early is the step most campaigns skip — and they waste effort by skipping it.
3

Read the partisan baseline

HD22 is D+5, a real 5-point gap. In a big district that means a lot of mail, money, and time; in a district this small the same margin is far more manageable.
4

Break down the actual workload

The target universe is about 4,500 voters across 3,200 households — roughly 100 hours of door knocking. Over June through September that's ~25 hours a month, about 7 hours a week.
5

Lean on a hands-on candidate

At that size a candidate can make three full passes through the district on their own. Volunteers still help build the team and work Republican doors, but you don't need name recognition or expensive advertising to compete.
6

Recruit for work ethic, not résumé

Bigger districts reward prior office, big fundraising, and heavy advertising. HD22 rewards a candidate willing to do the work and build real, personal connections with voters.
7

Export the list and start

The practical next step: export the voter list to CSV, load it into a walk program, and start reaching voters directly.

Read the full transcript

0:00 So, take a look back at Mississippi. Last time we talked about HD16, so let's take a look at HD22. 0:10 And again, now that we're talking about Mississippi, one of the big things here is the, just the raw number of folks who are registered to vote and thus who are expected to turn out in these elections, really changes so much. 0:22 Yeah, I think what's interesting is, right, we've looked at districts with 150,000 registered voters, 50,000. and here we are with 16,000 and so just the importance for especially a new candidate to diagnose the size of the district because it really changes the dynamics of what they need to do on a 0:41 day-to-day basis and their expected cost. It's really going to focus where their efforts are going to need to go and the efforts that get wasted in a lot of campaigns are often because they fail to do this step right off the bat. 0:58 That's true. That's that's definitely true. You know, you look at again, you know, these numbers, right, you look at the D plus 5, that means that they have a 5% advantage that you're going to have to make up and that's that's hard, right? 1:12 That's that means a lot of mail, that means a lot of money, that means a lot of time spent, except in a district where there's just a little over 16,000 folks. 1:24 52 to 47 seems maybe approachable but you know the more you're around in politics, the more that number is going to be a little scary. 1:33 Until you scroll down and you realize that what we're talking about here is 4,500 voters living in 3,200 households. If you head on down to this section, you see that it is 100 hours of door knocking. 1:50 That is over the course of June, July, August, September, four months, 25 hours a month, which is something like seven hours a week, which if a candidate told me he was working seven hours a week, we'd be having a pep talk. 2:07 The fact is that you can pass through this district the full three passes that I would like to see on your own without help. 2:16 Obviously you want volunteers and you should if you have the time spend it knocking on these Republican doors to build your team to build your base up so that you can have real conversations with volunteers here, but it really means that, like you said, if you don't have name recognition, you don't have 2:41 to build it because you can move directly to the stage of building real connection. Right, so you start to see the avatar of who is a potential successful candidate where in other places it really is. 2:54 You know, they had to have served in these public offices before they have to have the significant amount of funding in order to do advertising and marketing. 3:04 It's really, somebody who is willing to do the work and to have that personal connection with voters is very likely to be able to win this district. 3:16 Yeah, well said. I would spend my time taking a look at this list right here, exported to CSV, pop it into my walk program. 3:27 I think they use We'll have a look down here and I would just start reaching out to people and if you want to see one of these for your district head on over to bootstrap office, scroll down and fill this out, Ryan and I will get an email and we'll contact you super shortly. 3:47 Super shortly. Yeah. Check it out.

Next guide

Turning low registration into long-term gains

Watch next