Media Fund undertakes voting experiment

WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- Last year, the Media Fund was a free-spending titan among the independent groups trying to get Democrat John Kerry elected president.
This year, it's back to the old drawing board: A dramatically scaled-back Media Fund hopes to use the Virginia governor's race as a laboratory in a kind of a research-and-development campaign for liberals.
According to Democratic sources, the group plans to use a variety of voter-contact activities in an experiment to divine which combination of methods and issue appeals is most effective in turning out "low propensity" voters in Northern Virginia.
From the Media Fund's perspective, a low-propensity voter probably would vote Democratic -- if he or she bothered to vote at all. These voters turned out in the presidential race last year but are less likely to vote in an off-year election without prodding.
As a progressive group, the Media Fund of course favors Democratic nominee Timothy Kaine over Republican Jerry Kilgore. But the effort is not aimed principally at influencing this race, according to one Democratic source familiar with the Media Fund's activities. The idea is to accrue knowledge that might prove useful for Democrats in other races around the country in 2006 and 2008.