At a local election campaign in Edinburgh, the team helped identify those likely to vote for our candidate. Supporters were motivated by leaflets directed exclusively at those likely to vote for us, and encouraged to get out and vote on polling day. The average turnout for a council election was about 30 percent, but we wanted all of our supporters to vote, so we sent cars throughout the day to whisk them to the polling stations and back, some still in their carpet slippers.
One supporter, who lived on the 4th floor of a tenement block, apologized for not voting because he'd been bed-ridden for 30 years, he told us. Undeterred, our team offered to take him to the polls, and six burly students manhandled his mattress down several flights of stairs and into the back of a 4 by 4. They drove him to the polling station and carried him inside, mattress and all, and took him back after he'd voted.
He told us that was the most exciting thing he'd done in 30 years, and was ecstatic to leave his home for the first time in decades. He must have been pleased next day to read that the candidate he'd voted for had gained an unexpected victory that he'd helped to achieve.