On the face of it, 2014 looks like it was a pretty good year for libraries at the ballot box: some 148 libraries reporting for this tally won and 42 lost. About 78% of libraries passed funding, bonds, or authority measures in 2014. Over 1.7 million Americans voted yes for their libraries. Only 22% lost. While unfortunate, it doesn't seem tragic or perilous. But at EveryLibrary, we're worried about the 1.1 million Americans who voted no this year. Nonetheless, we'd like to figure out why winners win and losers lose, in order to help ensure that there are more of the former and fewer of the latter in the future. At EveryLibrary, we hear stories from both winning and losing campaigns that try to make sense of an election, that try to put a frame around voter behavior. The winning campaigns must have played all their cards right; the losing campaigns must have missed something. What elusive but critical error did the losers make? It's probably just a matter of tinkering with the campaign and running it again. They'll get there eventually. In any given year, somewhere between 65% and 80% campaigns succeed.
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