UpVote Campaigns - Political Outreach Software

02/16/2026

Happy Presidents Day!
Today we celebrate leadership, public service, and democracy.

02/11/2026

Field directors are dealing with the same reality in 2026: answer rates are down, spam filters are stricter, and it is harder than ever to get voters on the phone, even with strong lists and motivated volunteers.

Classic phone banking still matters. Autodialers and campaign numbers help with scale. But scale does not always translate into real conversations.

That is why more campaigns are adding a simple supplement: friend banking.

Phone banking vs friend banking:

Phone banking: volunteers call voters from campaign numbers or dialers

Friend banking: volunteers call their own contacts from their own phones

Friends answer friends. Those calls are warmer, last longer, and are more likely to end in a real commitment.

If you want to see how this works in practice, here is a quick tutorial video: https://youtu.be/5albVEUQUxs?si=_s3YSDCFvZ4Mwce3

Volunteer visual guide plus downloadable PDF: https://up-vote.org/knowledge-base/phone-bank-guide-for-volunteers/

If your campaign already runs phone banking and you want to layer friend banking on top of it, I am happy to share a simple rollout plan.

Check out this visual guide to phone banking on UpVote! You can download the guide as a PDF to print or share with volunteers.

01/28/2026

At UpVote Campaigns, we partner with candidates who aren't afraid to innovate. That is why we are proud to partner with Grayzel For Congress in the upcoming special election for New Jersey's 11th Congressional District on February 5th.

Jeff Grayzel isn’t a career politician. He is a two-term mayor, an engineer by training, and an inventor with 13 patents. From developing medical devices that save lives to becoming the first Democratic mayor in Morris Township's history, Jeff has spent his life finding a way forward when others said it was impossible.

Join team Grayzel on the UpVote app. Sign-up through the link in the comments to mobilize friends and family right from your phone:

• Discover the registered voters in your contacts who can vote February 5
• Send bulk texts in seconds using customizable templates
• Get updates as mail-in ballots are counted and track progress in the app

01/21/2026

🔒 Protecting campaign data is the most important responsibility for campaigns and vendors. That's why UpVote Campaigns is constantly upping our cyber security protocols.

UpVote just completed a gray box, OWASP based web application pe*******on test plus a full retest, performed by CREST accredited testers, and the results came back strong.

Why does this matter?
• Independent experts tested real attack scenarios, including logged in workflows
• Testing aligned with OWASP guidance, focusing on common, high impact risks like access control and data exposure
• CREST accreditation is a rigorous global standard, often required in regulated sectors like finance, signaling proven methodology, technical competence, and ethical testing quality

Campaigns trust us with sensitive data, and we take that responsibility seriously. Security is an ongoing commitment, and we will keep investing in it as we continue improving the UpVote platform.

01/21/2026

It is an election year! Mark your calendars and get ready to vote!

01/19/2026

Your Volunteers' time is valuable, make the most of it.

UpVote empowers your supporters by putting the right data in their hands. Manage, motivate, and track progress right from your UpVote dashboard to run a powerful grassroots campaign.

12/29/2025

Want 2x voter turnout among your supporters in 2026? 🗳️

Start with Relational Organizing. It enables authentic connection between volunteers and voters, bringing grassroots mobilization into 2026.

Enroll in this practical course to broaden your GOTV skill set and learn the tactics that help UpVote campaigns achieve 2x voter turnout among targeted voters.

Link to enroll in the comments below.

12/24/2025

Merry Christmas from UpVote Campaigns 🎄

This season, we’re thankful for the people who show up for their community, make the calls, send the texts, and turn real relationships into real turnout. Wishing you peace, joy, and well earned rest.

12/17/2025

Traditional voter outreach methods are producing weaker results than campaigns expect- or would like to admit.

Cold calling, mass texting, and blanket messaging rely on scale, but modern voters are increasingly selective about who they engage with. Unknown numbers are ignored, impersonal messages feel “spammy” and voters are overwhelmed by political communication from sources they do not trust.

This challenge is supported by research. A field experiment conducted by the Campaign Center for Innovation found that peer-to-peer text messages sent by people the voter did not personally know had no statistically significant impact on turnout.

These findings help explain why campaigns feel like they are working harder for diminishing returns. The issue is not the quality of the message or the amount of effort invested. It is the absence of trust between the sender and the voter.

When outreach lacks a personal connection, even well-designed campaigns struggle to break through. This reality is pushing campaigns to rethink not just what they say, but who delivers the message. This is where relational organizing comes in.

Relational organizing is a grassroots voter mobilization strategy that prioritizes trusted messengers over mass outreach.

Rather than relying on campaigns to contact voters directly, relational organizing empowers supporters and volunteers to reach out to people they already know. These personal connections significantly increase engagement and turnout because they are rooted in trust.

This approach is supported by rigorous research. A field experiment conducted by the Campaign Center for Innovation, titled Measuring the Power of Personal Connection: A Relational Organizing Field Test, found that voters who received messages from people they personally knew were 8.6 percentage points more likely to vote than those who did not. The study focused on conservative audiences and demonstrated that relational outreach significantly outperformed traditional peer-to-peer texting.

UpVote campaign results reflect the same pattern.

In South Florida, an UpVote relational organizing campaign achieved 69 percent turnout among targeted voters, compared to 32 percent turnout among the rest of the electorate. Another UpVote campaign in Westchester County, New York, used a similar approach which resulted in approximately 60 percent turnout among relationally engaged voters, while overall district turnout was about 27 percent.

These results show that relational organizing is not a niche tactic. It is a scalable, data-driven strategy that aligns with how voters respond to outreach.

Citation: “Measuring the Power of Personal Connection: A Relational Organizing Field Test – Center for Campaign Innovation.”

12/09/2025

🔍 Introducing UpVote’s Smart Match Tool
The ultimate tool for matching incomplete voter data to your district's voter file!

If you're working with a list of potential voters from a third-party source, Smart Match will cross-reference those names, phone numbers, and more with your voter file.

📊 How it works:

1. Upload your partial list of voters (names and phone numbers, no addresses or voter IDs needed).

2. Smart Match finds potential matches in the Voter File.

3. You get a list of matches with confidence scores, higher scores mean better matches!

5. Review and confirm the best matches, then assign them to your volunteers.

5. Tag voters and track their progress all the way to Election Day.

You can work with lists even if they're missing key info and easily manage your outreach with clear match results. Smart Match let's you make the most of your data to maximize voter engagement.

Ready to start matching? Smart Match takes the guesswork out of your voter list management and streamlines outreach.

12/01/2025