Case Study: Randall Woodfin wins Birmingham mayoral race and mobilizes 11.5k first-time municipal voters with NationBuilder

Randall Woodfin beat a 7-year incumbent & became one of Birmingham's youngest mayors

Randall Woodfin, a thirty-year-old former school board president in Birmingham, Alabama, faced the challenge of unseating a seven-year incumbent and dramatically boosting turnout among young and first-time municipal voters. Working with NationBuilder, his campaign needed digital tools and organization to recruit, engage, and convert unlikely voters in a low-turnout municipal election.

NationBuilder provided Woodfin’s team with website and email communications, built-in action pages (petitions and pledge-to-vote), and hands-on training from Enterprise Account Manager Sorcha Rochford to manage finances and pull social media data, which the campaign paired with intensive face-to-face organizing. The result was a 19-point victory that made Woodfin the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century, with 11,500 first-time municipal voters mobilized (8,500 reached face-to-face) and about 5,000 new voters ages 18–35.

Randall Woodfin

Daniel Deriso

Field and Operations Director