Political campaigns

EDDM vs. a voter list for a city race: a worked example

Every door is cheaper per piece. A voter list wastes nothing. We priced both for one real town, Davie in Broward County, to show which costs less per voter you actually want, and how to use both.

Published Fri, Oct 23, 2026

• EDDM
• Voter lists
• Costs
• Postage
• Florida
• Broward County
• Vote by mail

A city council candidate with a mail budget has two ways to reach the town. Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) puts a piece in every mailbox on the postal routes you pick. A voter list mails only the registered voters you choose. This guide prices both for one real town, using our own price tables, so you can see where each one wins. For the three ways to reach homes in general, start with Direct Mail 101.

The town: Davie

Davie is a town of about 72,324 registered voters in Broward County: 25,252 Democrats, 21,129 Republicans, 23,879 with no party affiliation and 2,064 in minor parties, as of October 1, 2026 (Broward SOE, Eligible Voters by District). Its four council districts run from 15,360 to 20,719 voters each. Davie's town election is on the ballot with the November 3, 2026 general election (Broward SOE).

Davie is also a good test because no ZIP code in it is Davie-only. Our route research found 58 carrier routes that sit mostly inside the town, holding about 39,906 residential addresses, with an estimated 5 to 10% of them outside the line. Our guide to city limits vs. ZIP codes explains why.

Option A: every door

For a sample, we priced 13 Davie carrier routes across ZIP codes 33314, 33324 and 33328 on October 6, 2026. The counts come from the USPS route data, the same numbers the USPS EDDM tool shows.

• Residential only: 9,623 addresses.
• With businesses: 10,560. For a campaign, leave businesses out.

Priced with us on a 6.5" × 9" EDDM postcard:

Print and mail prep covers printing, bundling, mail prep, route slips and USPS drop-off. Postage is the USPS retail rate (Notice 123), and you pay it only on the 9,623 addresses on the routes. The other 377 cards in the run are printed and not mailed. Ask us to ship them to you, and they become handouts for a canvass or a booth.

What you get: one piece in every home on those streets. What you don't get is any choice of who. The piece goes to Democrats, Republicans, independents, non-voters and people who can't vote in Davie at all.

Option B: only the voters you pick

Here you start with the voter file. In Broward, the county's voter list costs "$20.00 flat-rate" per search (Broward SOE price list). The file carries each voter's party, precinct and ten years of voting history (state file layout), so you can cut it to:

• one party, or one party plus voters with no party
• one council district, by the precincts inside it
• likely voters, the people who voted in most recent elections

Our guide to Florida voter lists covers where to ask and what's in the file.

Say your cut comes to 10,000 households after cleanup, one piece per home. That number is ours, for the arithmetic.

List postage is billed at the actual USPS rate after presort, usually 29¢–40¢ per piece, and only on the pieces that mail (list-mail pricing).

Per piece, the list costs more. Every one of those pieces reaches someone you chose.

Cost per voter reached

The number that matters is what each option costs per home you actually want. EDDM's 48¢ a home is spread across everyone on the route, so divide it by the share of those homes that hold your voters. The list's 57¢ to 68¢ needs no adjustment.

That gives a break-even. When fewer than about 70% of the homes on your routes hold a voter you want, the list costs less per voter home. Above about 84%, EDDM does. In between, it depends on how densely your list sorts at the post office.

Now apply it to Davie. Voters share homes, so we estimate households with two planning assumptions of our own: about 2 registered voters per voter household, and about 1.3 voters of the same party per household. Both are estimates until a real list is pulled and householded. Against the 39,906 homes on the mostly-Davie routes:

The list costs 57¢ to 68¢ per wanted home in every row, because it mails only those homes. The pattern is the useful part. For a message to one party, fewer than half the homes on the routes hold your voters, and the list wins clearly. For a message to every voter in town, most homes hold one, and EDDM comes out about even or a little ahead, with no list to request and clean. A likely-voter cut makes the gap wider in the list's favor, because it drops more homes.

The list totals above use our 10,000-piece tier as a yardstick. A town-wide list of 16,000 to 36,000 homes falls in larger tiers, and we quote a run between two tiers at its exact size.

When each one wins

EDDM wins when the whole town is your audience. Name recognition early in a race, a first piece that introduces you, a message for every household whatever its party. It also wins on simplicity: pick routes, approve the artwork, and it goes.

A voter list wins when you want certain voters. A partisan message, a single council district, likely voters, or anyone who hasn't voted yet. It stays inside the town line, too, which routes never quite do.

Using both

You don't have to choose one. Here is how we suggest combining them, built on the Florida calendar.

1. One EDDM piece, early. Land it before mail ballots go out, which in Florida happens between the 40th and the 33rd day before the election (s. 101.62(3)(b)). For the November 3, 2026 general election that window was September 24, 2026 to October 1, 2026. Every home hears your name once.
2. A list piece before early voting. Early voting must start by the 10th day before an election with state or federal races on the ballot (s. 101.657). Mail your target voters ahead of it.
3. A final list piece that skips people who already voted. Opposed candidates can get their county's daily vote-by-mail file, and anyone whose ballot is back can come off the list. Our guide to vote-by-mail data explains how.

USPS doesn't guarantee a delivery date for this mail (DMM 243.3.1.1), so plan each drop as a window with room to spare. The Florida campaign mail calendar counts back from your election date.

Or let us do it

You can do every part of this yourself: the routes in the USPS tool, the list from your county, the math above. If you would rather hand it off, send us your town and your race. We'll price your routes and a voter list side by side, with the counts and postage confirmed before anything prints. See EDDM pricing and voter list mail, or contact us. Picking routes yourself? Our guide to choosing EDDM routes walks through the tool.

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