Data Fields Descriptions

Homeowner – Matched by PDI to each county assessor file. This data is updated 1-12 times per year depending on the county.
Apartment Renters – Address with unit # and not matched to the county assessor file.
Mobile Home Resident – Based on PDI data and IDs acquired by your campaign.
P.O. Boxes – Identifies voters who receive their mail in a PO Box.
Dwelling w/Unit Number – Any residence address containing a unit number.
Gated - Based on IDs acquired by your campaign.
National Change of Address – Matched to the current NCOA File. This file is updated every 2-3 weeks.
Moved – This information is based on IDs acquired by your campaign.

Party Options

Outside of the two major parties of Democrat and Republican, PDI groups all the minor parties in into two groups Minor Party Liberal (MPL) or Minor Party Conservative (MPC) and then group all other nonpartisans into our “Independent” (IND) group. DTS/NPP specific registration can be selected separately because many clients insist on it, but I would strongly recommend that you use the more complete “Independent (IND/NPP)” option which includes the DTS as well as other unaffiliated, non-partisan and independent voters.

Our DEMplus, REPplus and OTHERplus groupings (described below) are the best way to identify all voters that align with the two major party because it places independent voters that have available data on past partisan behavior. In most cases it is often best to include all DEMplus OR MPL voters in a Dem/liberal bucket and all REPplus OR MPC in a Rep/conservative bucket, then all the remaining voters are simply non-partisan voters who are neither (DEMplus, REPplus, MPC or MPL).

*Our House Party Types described in the following section are based on these five standard party groupings: DEM, REP, IND, MPL and MPC.

Registered Voters – All voters in your account geography.
DemPlus – Includes all Democrats plus any non-Democrats or non-Republicans who have contributed to Democratic/progressive causes, requested a Democratic Party primary ballot or were formerly registered as a Democrat.
RepPlus – Includes all Republicans as well as non-Democrats or non-Republicans who have contributed to Republican/conservative causes, requested a Republican Party primary ballot or were formerly registered as a Republican.
Democrat (D) – Voter registered as Democrat.
Republican (R) – Voter registered as Republican.
Independent (Ind/NPP) (DS,YY,AI) – Non-partisan designations such as No Party Preference, Decline to State, unaffiliated Misc registrations and American Independent registrations.
Minor Party Liberal (MPL) (GR,NL,PF) – Left or liberal leaning minor parties, including Green, Peace & Freedom, and Natural Law Party registrations.
Minor Party Conservative (MPC) (LI,RM) – Right or conservative leaning minor parties, including Libertarian and Reform Party registrations
Green (GR) – Voter registered as Green.
Peace & Freedom (PF) – Voter registered as Peace and Freedom.
Natural Law (NL) – Voter registered as Natural Law.
Libertarian (LI) – Voter registered as Libertarian.
Reform (RM) – Voter registered as Reform
Decline to State (DS) – Only voters that checked the No Party Preference or Declined to State.
American Independent (AI) – Voter registered as American Independent. At least 75% of all American Independent voters registered with the party by mistake under the assumption they were registering as an “independent”.
Miscellaneous/Misc (YY) – Voters who are technically recognized as unaffiliated or no-party-preference because when they registered they did not to check a box and/or used the other option and wrote the name of an unrecognized party. The most common entries are “None”, “Independent”, “Other”, “NA” or “No”, plus hundreds entries, including a few parties trying to establish themselves and other entries that are obscene or complete nonsense, like the Pirate Party or Rock n Roll party.
Pure Dem Household – All voters in house are Democrats.
Single Dem Household – One voter in house, registered as Democrat.
2+ Pure Dem Household – Two or more voters in house, all Democrats.
Pure Rep Household – All voters in house are Republicans.
Single Rep Household – One voter in house, registered as Republican.
2+ Pure Rep Household – Two or more voters in house, all Republicans.
Pure Ind Household – All voters in house are Independents.
Single Ind Household – One voter in house, registered as one of the Independent parties.
2+ Pure Ind Household – Two or more voters in house, all Independents.
Pure MPC Household – All voters in house are Minor Party Conservative.
Pure MPL Household – All voters in house are Minor Party Liberal.
Dem in Household – At least one Democrat in house.
Rep in Household – At least one Republican in house.
Ind in Household – At least one Independent in house.
MPL in Household – At least one Minor Party Liberal (MPL) in house.
MPC in Household – At least one Minor Party Conservative (MPC) in house.
Mixed Dem/Rep – At least 1 Democrat and at least 1 Republican in house.
Mixed Dem/Ind – At least 1 Democrat and at least 1 Independent in house.
Mixed Dem/MPL – At least 1 Democrat and at least 1 MPL in house.
Mixed Rep/Ind – At least 1 Republican and at least 1 Independent in house.
Mixed Rep/MPC – At least 1 Republican and at least 1 MPC in house.
Was a Democrat – This option identifies voters who had previously been registered as a Democrat but are NOT currently registered as a Democrat.
Was a Republican – This option identifies voters who had previously been registered as a Republican but are NOT currently registered as a Republican.
Was a DTS / Other – This option identifies voters who had previously been registered as a Declined to State / Other Party and are currently registered as a Democrat or Republican.
Dem Ballot Request – This option restricts the vote history parameters to primary elections where a voter requested or voted with a Democratic Party ballot. The objective for this option is to identify party preference for non-Democrats. This option is already included as part of the DemPlus criteria.
Rep Ballot Request – This option restricts the vote history parameters to primary elections where a voter requested or voted with a Republican Party ballot. The objective for this option is to identify party preference for non-Republicans. This option is already included as part of the RepPlus criteria.
Non-Registered People - This option selects from a commercial sourced data listing of individual names and addresses who are not registered voters and are likely to be people age 18 plus. This data is only made available under special circumstances.
Likely Democrat (Non-CA) – Model of voters likely to be Democrats. This option is only use outside CA and in states without party on their voter file.
Likely Republican (Non-CA) – Model of voters likely to be Republicans. This option is only use outside CA and in states without party on their voter file.
Likely Party Unknown (Non-CA) – Voters who do not model as either likely Dems or Likely Reps or have no modeling score currently available. This option is only use outside CA and in states without party on their voter file.
Citizens (Non-CA)– All voters in house are Democrats.
Conservative (Non-CA) - Voter registered in other states with the Conservative Party.
Constitution (Non-CA) - Voter registered in other states with the Constitution Party.
Socialist (Non-CA) - Voter registered in other states with the Socialist Party.
Socialist Workers (Non-CA) - Voter registered in other states with the Socialist Worker Party.
Working Families (Non-CA) - Voter registered in other states with the Working Families Party.

Ethnicity

Individuals in PDI’s voter database are assigned a single descriptive code/value to identify their most likely ethnicity or race, using a combination of birthplace data, language ballot request data, PDI proprietary surname dictionaries, household make-up, geographic/census data and self-identification data from completed PDI California voter surveys. We do this to provide a simple and effective way to target various groups of voters by their most likely ethnic and racial identity with minimal risk of inaccurate identification. Using mutually exclusive codes, PDI customers can quickly create universes and lists that best reflects their desired ethnic criteria.

Some ethnic or racial groups that we identify are underrepresented in our data because we only try to include the most reliable matches. Some of ethnic groupings are mixed or multi-ethic groups that are best used in areas with ethnic enclaves or campaigns trying to maximize their outreach to a certain group can use those. For example, if you are in an area with a Korean population and you are trying to maximize target you may want to also use our “Korean” ethnic group, plus other options such as “Chinese / Korean”, “Chinese / Korean / Vietnamese” and “Asian Anglo”.

The “Ethnicity / Language” groups found Create Universes section of our program begin with more comprehensive groups such as Asian, African-American, Latino and “Not Af-Am Asian Latino” (AKA White/Unknown/Other), then work down to more specific tighter groupings. In other words, any voter marked as Latino, would also include those smaller groups of Spanish Speaker Probable as well as Spanish Language Preferred. So, you only need to select Latino which also captures the subgroup of voters that are in the Spanish Speaker Probable group. Selecting Spanish Speaker Probable also captures any voter that is in Spanish Language Preferred.

Latino (S/SS) – Likely Latino (includes all Spanish Preferred/Probable Speakers).
Asian (Eastern Asian Composite) – Likely Asian voters, including Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, Southeast Asian, Chinese/Korean, Chinese/Vietnamese, Chinese/Kor/Viet, or Misc. Asian born voters. (DOES NOT include East Indian, Pacific Islander or AsianAnglo).
African American (AFAM=Y / AS) – formulaically determined likely African American.
Not Asian, Latino or Af-Am – Excludes voters identified as Asian, Latino or African-American (AKA Unknown/White/Other).
Arabic (O/OO) – Identified as Likely Arabic from Middle Eastern nations.
Armenian (A/AR) – Identified as Likely Armenian.
East Indian (E/EE) – Likely East Indian (people with origins from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Pakistan/ AKA “South Asian”. It is NOT included in Asian Composite.
Greek (G/GG) – Likely Greek.
Italian (I/II) – Likely Italian.
Jewish (J/JJ) – Likely Jewish.
Jewish Probable (H/HH) – secondary/probable Jewish voter. Ideally used in selected situations/areas.
Pacific Islander (D/DD) – Likely Pacific Islander (AKA Polynesian). This is NOT included in Asian Composite.
Persian (B/BB) – Likely Persian.
Portuguese (P/PP) – Likely Portuguese.
Russian (R/RR) – Likely Russian.
AsianAnglo (M/MM) – Likely Asian or Anglo voters/surnames without any other distinguishing data. Ideally used in selected situations/areas (This is NOT included in Asian Composite).
Chinese (C/CC) – Likely Chinese (includes all Chinese Preferred/Probable Speakers).
Filipino (F/FF) – Likely Filipino (includes all Tagalog Preferred/Probable Speakers).
Japanese (N/NN) – Likely Japanese (includes all Japanese Preferred/Probable Speakers).
Korean (K/KK) – Likely Korean (includes all Korean Preferred/Probable Speakers).
Southeast Asian (L/LL) – Likely Cambodian, Loa, Hmong, or Thai.
Vietnamese (V/VV) – Likely Vietnamese (includes all Vietnamese Preferred/Probable Speakers).
Chinese / Korean (W/WW) – Surname that can be either Chinese or Korean without any other distinguishing data. Ideally used in selected situations/areas.
Chinese / Vietnamese (Z/ZZ) – Surname that can be either Chinese or Vietnamese without any other distinguishing data. Ideally used in selected situations/areas.
Chinese / Korean / Vietnamese (U/UU) – Surname that can be Chinese, Korean or Vietnamese without any other distinguishing data.
Misc Asian Born (T/TT) – Voters with birthplaces including Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Saipan, Singapore, as well as those with a generic “Asia” born birthplace.
Chinese Speaker Probable – Requested Chinese ballot language plus born in nation where said language is spoken (ie. Born in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan).
Korean Speaker Probable - Requested Korean ballot language plus born in Korea.
Spanish Speaker Probable - Requested Spanish ballot language plus born in nation where said language is spoken (ie. Born in Mexico, Columbia, Costa Rica, etc.)
Tagalog Speaker Probable - Requested Tagalog ballot language plus born in Philippines.
Vietnamese Speaker Probable - Requested Vietnamese ballot language plus born in born in Vietnam.
Chinese Ballot Language Preferred – Requested election info in Chinese.
Hindi Ballot Language Preferred – Requested election info in Hindi.
Japanese Ballot Language Preferred – Requested election info in Japanese.
Khmer Ballot Language Preferred – Requested election info in Khmer.
Korean Ballot Language Preferred – Requested election info in Korean
Spanish Ballot Language Preferred – Requested election info in Spanish.
Tagalog Ballot Language Preferred – Requested election info in Tagalog.
Thai Ballot Language Preferred – Requested election info in Thai.
Vietnamese Ballot Language Preferred – Requested election info in Vietnamese.
Other Ballot Language Preferred – Requested election info in an Other/unknown or unidentified language (Not English).
Foreign Born – Born outside the U.S.
U.S. Born – Born in the U.S.
Born in Latin America – Born in a Latin American country.
Born in Eastern Asia – Born in an East Asian country. See “Asian (Eastern Asian Composite)” description for ethnicities/countries included.
Born in Cuba – Born in Cuba.

Contact Voters With

All Phones – Includes a landline (home) phone number or wireless phone number (cell phone) with identified bad numbers removed.
Home Phone – Has landline (home) phone number. May or may not have a wireless phone number.
Mobile Phone – Has wireless phone number (cell phone). May or may not have a home phone number.
Home & Mobile Phone – Has both landline and wireless phone number.
Home Phone (No Mobile) – Has a landline phone number but does not have a wireless number.
Mobile Phone (No Home) – Has a wireless phone number but does not have a landline phone number.
Accessible (Non-Gated) Homes – This field is based on your campaign’s identification of walkable precincts classified in the Precinct Management page.
All Emails – Has email from the registrar voter file or commercial source.
Voter Files Email – Has email from the registrar voter file combined with proprietary emails acquired by your campaign. Commercial emails can be purchased and added to this option count.
Commercial Emails Only – Has commercial emails that are available for purchase from PDI. These emails are different from the registrar emails available in the system. Due to licensing fees, commercial emails are not part of your standard data package. Please contact your PDI account representative for more information on purchasing commercial emails.
Read Email – Verified Read of an email.
Clicked Email – Messages that received at least one click.
Unsubscribed Email – Unsubscribed after receiving a message.
Has Twitter - Has a Twitter account associated with their voter file.
Has Facebook - Has a Facebook account associated with their voter file.

Age

Age – The age of voters is based on their age as of December 31st of the current year. In other words, a voters age is based on the current year and the year they were born, regardless of the month or day they were born. So, everyone is a year older on January 1st. We use this method to provide more statistical stability as million of voters have a birthday each month.
Range of Age – Enter Date range. For greater than and less than parameters, users only need to enter one date. For example, Age => 45 can be entered by typing “45” in the From field. The To field can remain blank.
No Age – There are a number of voters without any date of birth or they have a date of birth that is not accurate when compared to their other registration data. No Age voters are mostly older/senior voters age 65+, because they usually have a registration date prior to 1980. No Age allows voters without an assigned age to be included in a count. Open-ended counts will automatically include “No Age” voters.

Gender

Gender or sex – A voter’s gender or sex is determined either by data provided by the voter when they registered to vote, or in most cases when this data is missing it is assigned using given name (first and middle name) data to determine a voters likely sex.
Female – Female voter.
Male – Male voter.
Unknown – Gender unknown. Voter has no sex data found or registration or has a name that cannot be used to determine their likely sex.
Male in HH – At least 1 male in house.
Female in HH – At least 1 female in house.
No Male in HH – No males in house.
No Female in HH – No females in house.

Reg Dates

Registered From - The earliest date an individual has last registered.
Registered To - The latest date an individual has last registered. You do not need to enter a To: date if you are just looking to capture any voters who have registered from or since a past date.
Registration Universes - Allows you to query for PDI predefined registration universes.
Active Registration Methods – Last registration methods that were pro-active. By showing that they are taking active steps to register they are signaling that it matters to them and we have seen higher turnout from these voters.
Passive Registration Methods - Last registration methods that were Passive or in reaction to a registration effort or system.

Comments

The Comments section allows you to query for voters with comments that contain specific words or phrases. If you would like to query for all voters with comments, activate the "Everyone With a Comment" check box.

Birthday Sends

The Birthday Sends section contains a drop-down menu that makes it easy to identify voters who will be celebrating a birthday in the next day, week, or month. This is mostly used to send birthday cards and emails.

Miscellaneous Information

The Miscellaneous Information section contains miscellaneous information for voters or households based on recorded flags for the default candidate/ballot measure question.

Lawn Sign
Lawn Sign (not delivered)
Volunteer (based on campaign ID)
Donor (Based on Campaign ID)
Is Dead (Based on government records and /or Campaign ID)

Birthplace

The Birthplace section contains information identifying a voter’s birthplace based on their voter registration application. You can query voters by state or country of origin.

House Party Type

The House Party Type field examines the party registration of an entire household and classifies by unique combination of party registration. Using the party profile of a voter’s household has been a well-established practice in political targeting for decades.

1 DEM (Democrat)
1 MPC* (Minor Party Conservative)
1 MPL* (Minor Party Liberal)
1 NP* (Non-Partisan)
1 REP (Republican)
2+ Pure DEM (2 or more voters in the household. All Democrats)
2+ MPC (2 or more voters in the household. All Minor Party Conservatives)
2+ MPL (2 or more voters in the household. All Minor Party Liberals)
2+ NP (2 or more voters in the household. All Non-Partisan)
2+ REP (2 or more voters in the household. All Republicans)
Dem & MPC
Dem & MPL & MPC
Dem & MPL
Dem & NP
Dem & NP & MPC
Dem & NP & MPL & MPC
Dem & NP & MPL
Dem & Rep & MPC
Dem & Rep & MPL & MPC
Dem & Rep & MPL
Dem & Rep & NP & MPC
Dem & Rep & NP & MPL
Dem & Rep & NP
Dem & Rep
MPL & MPC
NP & MPC
NP & MPL & MPC
NP & MPL
Rep & MPC
Rep & MPL & MPC
Rep & MPL
Rep & NP & MPC
Rep & NP & MPL & MPC
Rep & NP & MPL
Rep & NP * MPC (Minor Party Conservative) = Libertarian, Reform
MPL (Minor Party Liberal) = Peace & Freedom, Green, Natural Law * NP (Non-Partisan) = Decline to State, American Independent, Misc.

Geo-Demo Cluster

The Geo-Demo Cluster section contains geographic – demographic clustering information based on data at the census tract level. All voters in the same area or census tract are given the same value. It is ideally used for identifying who live in areas with a younger or older than average population, or for identifying the population density level of a voter’s neighborhood (urban, suburban or rural). If you are looking to identify voters who a particular age you should instead use the standard Age From and To options. The income clusters a very broad strokes, which merely assign the predominant income level to all voters in a census tract. While our Average Income field allows you to select specific average income level ranges and it is also based on the smaller census block group level.

Married /Parents /Other

Probable Military Veteran Household - Selects any known active military voters (ballot type), voters in areas identified as Military housing, or voters identified as Veterans, plus all household family members
Likely Parents - PDI Model of likely household with Children or likely Parents of school age children. See PDI Children model for different probability options.
Likely Married – Model of voters who are most likely to be married
Registered Domestic Partners
LGBT or Domestic Partner – Data identifying likely LGBT based on member data from some LGBT organizations, plus voters registered domestic partner data that mostly predates the legalization of same sex marriage.
Probable LGBT or Domestic Partner - Data identifying likely LGBT based on member data from some LGBT organizations, plus voters registered domestic partner, or any same sex households with just two registered voters with different last name within certain shared age ranges.

Number of Voters in a House

The Numbers of Voters in a House section allows users to select voters based on the total number of registered voters in the household.

Average Household Income

The Average Income allows users to select average annual income levels of an area. Average Income data is based on the average annual household or family income from the census block group level, specifically coming from ACS (American Community Survey) five-year rolling averages. It is the average of all households within the same area or census block group. This income data is typically going to be below actual or self-reported income levels, because of both how the Census/ACS income data is compiled as well as how some income earners can have the tendency to over or under report their income. There also some rules about how the highest incomes are reported that puts a cap or suppresses the actual amount. For example, the average income data as of 2022 in CA only displays a maximum household income of $250,001 and the minimum or lowest reported income of $2,498. This income data is most helpful as a way to separate or divide up a population into groups of high to low income earners or areas. Like 20% of voters are in higher income areas with an average income of over $150k, the bottom 20% happen to have an average income under $75k, and the other 60% (or everyone else in the middle range) has an income between $75k to $150k. These are just examples of ranges you may see.

Enter Criteria Below

The Freehand Query section provides a workspace for typing criteria directly into the Create Universes user interface. This type of criteria is considered independently or in combination with other criteria. This feature is a powerful tool for constructing complex queries and is intended for users with some previous experience writing queries in programs such as SQL or Excel. Once you become familiar with the codes and structure, this section is actually a faster and easier process for building queries.

An example of a freehand query would be “PermVBM & (Fem or Lat).” This criteria filters all Permanent Mail Ballot Voters who are either Female or Latino. “PermVBM”, “Fem”, and “Lat” are designated aliases that act as a simplified representation of the actual query code. In typical query language, you would create field parameters by first identifying the field name (example: Gender) and then one or more field values that meets your criteria (Example: Female). The full query would be Gender=Female. The Freehand Query section uses aliases such as “Fem“ to replace the real query “Gender=Female”.

These aliases are connected by operators such as “And”, “Or”, and “And Not” to calculate the intersection, expansion, and negation of alias values.

The use of parentheses is very important when your criteria includes both an “and” and “or” operator. In the criteria example we just used, the parentheses contained the (Fem or Lat) aliases. If the parentheses were placed differently, the qualified count of voters would be different.

One unique aspect of this feature is the ability to process counts by household. Queries beginning with “HH.1” will calculate all voters living in the same household as the qualified voter. Using “HH.2” will return all voters in households where 2 or more voters met the query criteria. If you write HH.1 (PVBM & Fem & Latino), the PDI will query all voters living with a Latina Perm Mail Ballot Voter.

For more information on using the freehand pseudo-code, contact your PDI account representative.

Type Codes

Type Codes are limited to Non-California data. It is only to be used in accounts with Catalist data from state’s outside of California.

Archival Match - The individual is found only on Catalist’s archived files, but not on the current file.
Cross-state Move - The voter was previously registered in another state, registering for the first time in the application state.
Date Change - The voter previously had a registration date from an earlier election cycle; re-registration has updated it to the current election cycle.
First Time Registrant - The voter is a brand new registrant, never seen before on any state’s voter file.
In-State Move Cross County - The voter was previously registered in another county, re-registering in the applicant county.
In-State Move In-County - The voter was previously registered at another address, re-registering at the new address.
No Change Registered - No change to the voter file record, i.e. unchanged re-registrants. This should only result in active voter registration.
No Change Unregistered - Unchanged unregistered individuals; has remained unregistered.
No Match - Not found on any Catalist file at any address.
Other Address Registered - The voter is registered at a different address than the application address.
Other Address Unregistered - The individual was found on Catalist’s unregistered persons file at a different address than the application address.
Other State Registered - The voter was registered in a different state than the application address.
Other State Unregistered - The individual is found on Catalist’s unregistered persons file in a different state than the application address.
Other - Other.
Status Change - The voter previously had a voter status of “inactive;” re-registration has updated it to “active.”

Election Results

The Election Results section contains information on how an area voted in a selected election for specific candidates based on vote percentage range. The following elections cycle are available.

2008 Statewide General Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2010 Statewide General Election (Governor, US Senate, CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2012 Statewide Primary Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2012 Statewide General Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2014 Statewide General Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2016 Statewide Primary Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2016 Statewide General Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2018 Statewide Primary Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2018 Statewide General Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2020 Statewide Primary Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2020 Statewide General Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2022 Statewide Primary Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)
2022 Statewide General Election (Presidential , CD, SD, AD, State Ballot Props)