• Federal races had a 63% participation rate with 10 of the 16 candidates participating.
•  The Connecticut General Assembly races had a 32% participation rate with 108 of the 334 candidates participating.
• With a 35% participation rate, candidates for the Connecticut Senate were slightly more likely to participate than candidates for the Connecticut House, at 31% participation.  

Candidate participation also varied by VOTE411 Region.  Fifty four percent of Region 2 candidates – Lower Fairfield County- participated; the next highest participation rate was found in Region 1 – Northwest CT – at 33%.  

Nationally, the median candidate response rate was 51%.  

We believe the significantly higher participation rate in VOTE411 for Region 2 is largely attributable to the fact that there are 12 local Leagues in the Region. This is more than any other VOTE411 region.  We think the presence and ongoing activity of local Leagues in Lower Fairfield County produce a positive “League effect” that helps to predispose candidates to participate in VOTE411.  This speaks to the deep importance of local Leagues and League action in local communities, and it reminds us that even as we have segued to using a national online Voter Guide platform, its success is predicated upon robust activity of local Leagues.  

Did your Legislative Representatives participate in VOTE411?

We have created a database to show the winning General Assembly candidates and whether they participated in VOTE411. We need to improve VOTE411 name recognition.  Think about how you can integrate your member’s participation in VOTE411 as you interact with them throughout the Assembly term. 

2024 VOTE411 Responses of CGA Winners - Senate

2024 VOTE411 Responses of CGA Winners - House

Connecticut VOTE411 User Statistics

In Connecticut overall, VOTE411 was accessed by 58,935 people in 112 of Connecticut’s 169 towns.  In addition, 3,804 users could not be attributed to towns.  When these users are added, the total is 62,739.   In 57 of Connecticut’s towns there were no known users of VOTE411.²

We have summarized selected user statistics by VOTE411 region.  Region 4 – towns in the Greater Hartford and Greater New Haven areas – had the most VOTE411 users (21,072), followed by Region 2 – Lower Fairfield County (14,928).  This information can be further disaggregated by local League and is available by request as an Excel spreadsheet.  

VOTE411 Implementation Team process 

We met our goal of launching VOTE411 in early October, well before the start of Early Voting.  We obtained candidate email addresses predominantly from the State Elections Enforcement Commission’s (SEEC) candidate filing database which is a matter of public record.  Because of this we had very few candidate email bounce backs. We were successful in developing a data driven methodology for implementing VOTE411 in districts that span multiple towns.  We successfully teamed with local Leagues on key tasks like developing questions and encouraging candidates to respond. 

Subsequent to the election, we continue to hear from Leagues about VOTE411 implementation decisions.  For example, we as regional administrators agreed to have a singular publishing or “go live” date (Oct 1) when races were made visible to all those accessing the VOTE411 website.   League members have requested that instead we publish races as soon as candidates are invited via email to participate.  They point out that some candidates respond right away, and their responses should not be withheld from the public for any amount of time. 

We appreciate all feedback and invite you to send in your thoughts and implementation requests.  

Areas of improvement

As can be seen from both candidate response rate and user statistics, there is significant room for improvement in both these key elements of VOTE411.  Connecticut candidates must be more responsive to the voters and more voters must be made aware of VOTE411 as a method of learning candidates’ views on key issues.  

In order to maximize usage of VOTE411, the VOTE411 effort must be expanded beyond the tasks of implementation to include targeted publicity and concomitant fundraising.  Additionally, we need the local Leagues to raise consciousness about VOTE411.  For this, we urge all local Leagues to be promoting and integrating VOTE411 into activities whenever possible. For example directing folks to VOTE411 as a resource for voting information and voter registration.  When we meet with candidates, ask them to participate in the VOTE411 Voter Guide when invited. If they choose not to participate, we should seek to understand why. To achieve this, League leaders themselves must familiarize themselves with the VOTE411 system and what it offers.   The VOTE411 Implementation Team, who themselves are League members, stands ready to help.  

Looking ahead to the 2025 municipal elections

Fortunately, all four VOTE411 Administrators have committed to their roles for the 2025 municipal elections (thank you!).  However, we know already that obtaining candidate email addresses will prove much more difficult as SEEC does not provide an online database of candidates for municipal elections.  (As mentioned above, the candidate email address is crucial since the VOTE411 system uses that information to invite candidates to participate in VOTE411.)  We will be calling on our local League partners to help us reach out to Town Clerks who are the source of SEEC filing forms in municipal elections.  

We also have a clearer picture of the scope of municipal elections thanks to Joan Twiggs who restructured the 2023 List of Nominees provided in pdf format by the Secretary of State’s office into an Excel spreadsheet that can be sorted and summarized using features of Excel.  These 2023 numbers provide an estimate of the scope; in 2023 there were just under 940 offices and just about 5,720 candidates for those offices throughout Connecticut.  

In other words, we already know that the municipal elections will be a heavier lift.  

Final thoughts

With everyone’s diligent efforts, we had a commendable 2024 VOTE411 election cycle.  We are looking to improve in the 2025 municipal election cycle.  Your VOTE411 Implementation Team could use your help – especially in reaching out to Town Clerks for candidate SEEC forms they file with the Town Clerk which includes an email address.  We need help building and deploying publicity campaigns.  To reach out to learn more, to offer your help, to offer suggestions or for any other reason, you can reach us at Vote411 [at] lwvct.org ().  We look forward to hearing from you.

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Footnotes:

2.  User statistics are provided to VOTE411 teams by the National LWVEF VOTE411 team.  The national team identifies and operationalizes key concepts they wish to track over time.  For example, the concept of “user” is operationalized by the IP address of the computer accessing the VOTE411 system.  The concept of “key event” is operationalized by the national staff and includes events such as entering a home address, completing the registration process and other events the user can complete within the VOTE411 system.