How a data-driven voter registration program in Indiana outperformed Civitech's national average.

MNCS partnered with nine Indiana House candidates to test whether targeted, data-driven registration could move the needle in one of the most voter-suppressed states in the country. It did.

The Situation

Indiana is a tough state to register voters in. The Secretary of State's office runs a hostile registration environment, turnout is chronically low, and most candidates running for state house don't have the budget or infrastructure to build a real registration program from scratch. The default approach, tabling at farmers markets and hoping for the best, wasn't moving enough new voters into the universe to matter.

Going into 2024, the question was simple: are Indiana Democrats getting voter registration right? And if not, what would it take to fix it?

The Diagnosis

Most registration efforts in the state were running on instinct, not data. Candidates were spending time and money on general outreach with no way to track who they'd reached, who actually registered, or whether those new registrants ever made it to the polls. There was no feedback loop, which meant no learning, which meant the same approach got repeated cycle after cycle with the same results.

The other gap was integration. Registration was being treated as a one-off activity instead of the first step in a voter's journey toward casting a ballot. Without a system to move newly registered voters into ongoing communication, the work essentially ended at the registration form.

The Plan

MNCS built a controlled program across nine Indiana House districts with three priorities:

  1. Use data to target. Identify potential unregistered Democrats (PUDs) using TargetSmart Movers data, unregistered college students, and public information records. Stop guessing who to talk to.

  2. Hit voters more than once. Two batches of mailings, four text reminders, and candidate-led wrap-around outreach. Marketing research says it takes 7 to 12 touches to move someone to action. Apply that here.

  3. Track everything in real time. Use Civitech's dashboard to monitor PUDs as they registered, then immediately move them into each campaign's communication flow.

The Execution

Each PUD received a mailer introducing the local Democratic candidate, a notice that they may not be registered at their current address, and step-by-step instructions to register by mail or QR code. Civitech followed up with text reminders as the deadline approached. Candidates and local volunteers used the dashboard to layer in additional outreach, door knocks, postcard drives, and informational drop cards.

In House District 24, Campaign Manager Raleigh Brown took the playbook further. Her team built custom maps of unregistered voters, knocked doors with QR-coded info cards, and prioritized neighborhoods with high population turnover. Her insight was that new residents, especially people moving in from other counties, didn't know they had to update their registration. Trust and personal contact closed the gap.

The Results

  • Registration: 34% of PUDs in Batch 1 and 32.9% in Batch 2 registered. The goal was 20%. Civitech ranked the program among the best in the country in 2024.

  • Turnout: 74.9% of newly registered voters from Batch 1 and 71.9% from Batch 2 cast ballots, beating Civitech's 70% national average during a cycle of declining turnout nationwide.

  • District 24 significantly overperformed the rest, validating the wrap-around model.

Pull Quote

"When campaigns shift from random registration efforts to targeted, data-driven approaches, we don't just register more voters, we create pathways to meaningful participation. This program's success rate of nearly 30% registration among PUDs demonstrates that even in challenging political environments, thoughtful outreach works." (Kaleb Hagen, TBH Strategies)

The Takeaway

Voter registration isn't a side project. It's the first step in the voter funnel, and it deserves the same data discipline campaigns use for turnout. When you target the right people, hit them more than once, track results in real time, and connect registration to ongoing communication, you don't just register more voters. You build a base you can actually mobilize. This program proved it works, even in a state designed to make it hard.