A step-by-step plan for the stretch between registration and Election Day.
Getting someone registered is a win. Getting them to the polls is the goal—and the distance between the two is where midterm elections are decided. Every cycle, voters who signed up with real intent get busy, miss a deadline, or never lock in a plan, and potential ballots go uncast.
This free playbook, “The Last Mile to the Ballot Box,” is your guide to closing that distance. It's a field-tested look at how to increase voter turnout in a midterm year, when the momentum that pulls first-time and occasional voters to the polls is harder to sustain. You'll find three strategies you can run with the tools you already have, each built to help the people you've reached this cycle follow all the way through and vote.
What You'll Find Inside
The playbook is a start-to-finish guide for the weeks between now and Election Day, Nov. 3, 2026.
Inside, you'll get:
- Three core strategies to move the people you've reached from registered to voted.
- A reminder timeline mapped to the key dates every voter needs to hit.
- A barrier-to-solution reference your volunteers can use on every call.
- A printable last-mile checklist your whole team can work through together.
Current data and research on what actually lifts turnout, so your effort goes where it counts.
How to Increase Voter Turnout: 3 Strategies
Strategy 1: Confirm the Connection
A signed form isn't a registered voter. Applications stall over a missing signature or a mismatched address, and often no one catches it until it's too late to fix.
Confirming registrations is the first rule of how to increase voter turnout—one of the fastest, highest-value follow-up activities. Inside, you'll learn how to close the loop and keep your outreach landing in the inbox.
Strategy 2: Stay in the Frame
Voting rarely falls apart over conviction. It falls apart over a forgotten deadline or a polling place someone didn’t look up in time. A steady drumbeat of well-timed reminders is one of the most cost-effective, dependable ways to keep the people you've reached on track.
This playbook provides a ready-made reminder timeline—every key date and touchpoint from registration through Election Day—so no one slips through for lack of a nudge.
Strategy 3: The Re-engagement Push
Good intentions don't cast ballots; plans do. When someone maps out exactly when, where, and how they'll vote, they're far more likely to show up—enough to lift turnout by as much as 9%.
By downloading the playbook, you'll learn how to run a re-engagement push built around logistics, not persuasion: a quick guide to solving the barriers that stop people (a ride, a work shift, a missing detail), and a simple way to turn a plan into a pledge.
How Organizer Helps You Close the Voter Turnout Gap
Every strategy in this playbook works with the tools you already have. When you're ready to run it all in one place, Organizer by Murmuration brings identification, outreach, and measurement together—powered by Atlas, our trustworthy civic data infrastructure—so community organizations of every size can close the turnout gap and build lasting power.
With Organizer, you can:
- Reach the right people using Atlas data and Community Builder to segment your list and focus on the voters most likely to fall into the gap.
- Send well-timed reminders with the Email tool and Landing Pages, so the right information reaches each voter at the right moment.
- Run your re-engagement push with Scripts, Phone Banking, Canvassing, and the Email tool to help every voter lock in the when, where, and how they’ll cast their ballots.
- Prioritize with turnout scores, including a Midterm General Turnout model, so your limited volunteer hours go exactly where they'll move the needle.
Discover How to Increase Voter Turnout in 2026
The last mile is where turnout is won. Download “The Last Mile to the Ballot Box” and get everything you need to help the people you've reached make it to the polls this November.