Minnesota Representative Dave Lislegard

The Challenge: Trump Excites the Opposition. With President Trump explicitly targeting Representative Dave Lislegard’s voters in the “Iron Range,” Rep. Lislegard faced a tough re-election in 2020. We worked closely with Rep. Lislegard and his campaign to craft a video script that was authentic to the voters in his district.

Our Solution: Cross-Channel Targeting to Encourage Crossover Voting. Foundation Blue Media travelled to Rep. Lislegard’s remote rural district to film him at a well-known scenic overlook. Upon completion of the video, Foundation Blue Media targeted the video on pre-roll while simultaneously running similar static programmatic display ads and Facebook posts to white, working class voters to help ensure that, even if they voted for Trump, they would move back to the Democratic side to vote for Rep. Lislegard in the State House race.

The Result: The video was a hit. Over half of the pre-roll impressions were watched in their entirety and the Facebook posts were shared widely throughout the district. And on November 3, Rep. Lislegard won re-election by a margin of 54.5% – 45.3%, making Rep. Lislegard one of the few Democratic state legislative bright spots in the entire Iron Range section of Minnesota. For reference, President Donald Trump won the district by a margin of 51.1% – 46.6%.

In the adjacent district that did digital in-house, the incumbent Democrat won by only 34 votes with a similar Trump-Biden margin than that of the Lislegard district.