One of the biggest questions in the upcoming election is what percentage of the 2008 “surge” voters are likely to turn out again this year. In particular, predictions about what young voters will do in November are being hotly debated.

As part of our ongoing work with their Youth Engagement Program, the Sierra Club turned to grassroots solutions for help in predicting how many college and university students were likely to turn out to vote in a half dozen states that had been identified as priorities for their civic engagement work.

This was a particularly intriguing assignment for us, because it involved a lot of data, lots of variables, and some forensics work which, maybe perversely, are like catnip to our targeting and analytics team.

In the most straightforward cases, we were able to easily put our hands on 2006 and 2008 campus precinct-level data in a particular state, and could apply a set of assumptions to that data in order to forecast turnout for 2010. In other cases, we only had state-level turnout data to work with, which meant we had to bring in student population data, examine campus precinct lines, and apply general assumptions about youth turnout to make our forecasts. In still other cases, campus precincts were difficult to even identify, and we had to match student populations to campus precincts by poring over maps and bringing in data from the VAN (Voter Activation Network). Perhaps the greatest challenge was Texas, where the precinct lines had been redrawn for the 2008 elections. Without any previous election turnout data available for these new precincts, we again had to piece everything together to make our forecasts.

Although this may sound like an incredibly pointy-headed exercise for organizers, it couldn’t be more important. Crunching these numbers and analyzing them to set turnout goals makes an enormous difference to clients like the Sierra Club. With this data, the Sierra Club has been able to set realistic goals and direct resources where they feel confident they’re most likely to get the greatest results.