Voter Data & Ground Team

How to Tag Voters: A Guide for Campaign Karyakartas (Volunteers)

An electoral roll is a static list. What turns it into something a campaign can actually use is Karyakartas tagging voters as they interact with them — a five-second action on a phone that compounds into your campaign's most valuable dataset. Here's how to do it well.

Why tagging matters more than most Karyakartas realise

Every tag a Karyakarta adds means the next conversation with that voter — whether it's another Karyakarta, a phone call, or a WhatsApp message — starts from where the last one left off, instead of from zero. Untagged voters get generic outreach. Tagged voters get outreach that matches where they actually stand.

Common tags and when to use them

Tag	When to use it
Supporter	The voter has clearly expressed support for your candidate or party
Opponent	The voter has clearly expressed support for a rival candidate
Undecided	The voter hasn't committed either way, or is weighing options
Champion	A supporter who actively influences others — a local leader, a well-connected neighbour
Key voter	Someone whose vote or influence matters disproportionately in that booth
Needs call / Booth President	Custom tags your campaign defines for its own workflow

Best practices for Karyakartas

• Tag immediately after the conversation, not at the end of the day. Details fade fast, and same-day tagging keeps the data current for anyone acting on it that evening.
• Update, don't just add. If a voter's position has genuinely changed since the last visit, update the tag rather than leaving conflicting history.
• Add a note when the tag alone doesn't tell the full story. "Undecided — leaning our way after road repair conversation" is more useful to the next Karyakarta than "Undecided" alone.
• Correct contact details while you're there. A wrong phone number sits unnoticed until someone tries to reach that voter and fails — fixing it on the spot avoids that.

What tagging makes possible

Once voters are tagged, a campaign can message everyone with a specific tag at once — a WhatsApp update to all "Champions," an SMS reminder to all "Undecided" voters, a call list of everyone tagged "Needs call" — with zero wasted outreach to people it doesn't apply to. Tagging also powers birthday and anniversary outreach: the platform can surface every voter with an occasion that week, so contact stays personal at scale rather than feeling like a mass broadcast.

Want this set up for your ground team? Get in touch here.