Forward Majority Helped Flip Four House Seats in Virginia With Grow Progress
On November 4th, 2025, Democrats swept Virginia’s state elections—an effort Forward Majority, who are innovating how the progressive movement crafts, tests, and delivers messaging, began long before Election Night.
Their success didn’t come from guesswork. It came from rigor.
Through Grow Progress’s Rapid Message Tests, Forward Majority built a systematic, iterative testing framework that transformed raw ideas into refined, evidence-backed campaign messages and ultimately helped power one of the most significant statewide victories in recent memory.
Early in the cycle, research revealed that the economy was not only a necessary issue to engage, but the top concern for voters in the districts they were targeting. Forward Majority deliberately explored a wide range of economic message angles, both positive and contrast-driven, to understand how voters responded across topics, tone, framing, and narrative structure. Those insights allowed the team to refine and deploy economic messages that consistently performed on par with more traditional Democratic messaging, while directly speaking to what voters said mattered most to them.
Key Takeaways From This Study
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A Smarter, More Disciplined Testing Framework
Forward Majority approaches message development with the precision of a research lab.
Many independent expenditure programs tend to lean heavily on traditional polling or intuition, but the team at Forward Majority begins by combining qualitative insights from early-stage candidate and district research with quantitative data. This approach helps to surface issues that are genuinely salient within the communities being targeted, often highlighting concerns that may not immediately rise to the top through assumptions made by political insiders alone. This hybrid foundation helps them identify shared values and emerging issue trends across key voter segments. Grounding it this way ensures that testing starts from a place rooted in lived, relevant context and not just conventional political wisdom.
From there, they cast a wide net of text-based messages (typically 15–20 versions) to explore tone, framing, and narrative structure. Using Grow Progress’s testing tools, they measure what actually persuades, not just what sounds good in an echo chamber.
“We start with a very broad net in terms of the messages we want to test. We try a lot of different language across a wide range of issues, then narrow it down based on what actually works, fixing the language and testing those messages against each other”.
— Brian Herman, Creative Director at Forward Majority
If the November 2025 election for Virginia State House Delegate were held today, who would you vote for?
Chart 1: Percentage point movement toward named Democrat on Vote Choice compared to opposition message alone
From Text to Video: Refining What Works
Once early testing reveals clear front-runners, Forward Majority moves quickly from text to video, producing variations in-house to maintain both speed and control over quality. Their process is intentionally lean: Rather than endlessly iterating, they refine what works and discard what doesn’t. Every round also includes opposition message testing, ensuring their messages hold up in competitive conditions and not just in isolation.
If the November 2025 election for Virginia State House Delegate were held today, who would you vote for?
Chart 2: Vote Choice percentage of named Democrat compared to opposition message alone
Making the Call When Results Are Close
When results fall within the statistical margin of error, Forward Majority doesn’t default to gut instinct. Instead, they apply a structured evaluation framework to understand how messages perform across multiple vote choice scenarios. This includes factors like: examining vote share in three-way ballot tests, comparing Democratic and Republican performance to identify which messages win a plurality of support, and analyzing forced two-way vote results to assess whether a message can secure majority backing. Just as importantly, they look for the absence of backlash, ensuring that messages are persuasive without alienating key audiences.
These signals are then considered alongside the broader context of the election itself: the specific legislative district, existing message gaps, and the overall media environment voters are navigating. The goal isn’t to replace judgment, but to ensure that decisions are grounded in high quality information drawn from both rigorous testing and real-world conditions.
“What really came through in both the quantitative and qualitative research was how much anxiety people feel about economic security and stability. Messages that acknowledged that anxiety and offered a clear, values-driven plan consistently resonated.”
What Sets Forward Majority Apart
Forward Majority’s process is distinguished not just by their structure, but by their broader approach to testing.
They resist the urge to overindex on subgroups, recognizing that small sample sizes can sometimes distort results. Instead, they focus on what persuades broadly and measurably.
We asked Brian what advice he’d give to folks wanting to establish good research and testing habits from the start. Some of the more salient points raised were:
- A Student’s Mindset: Always assume you don’t know everything and be willing to challenge conventional assumptions
- Resist Projecting Perspective: Instead of being beholden to one’s own point of view, be willing to test whether that point of view is right for the people you’re trying to talk to
- Language Matters: The words you choose matter to the people you’re talking to, a big part of why starting by trying many different text variations can prove useful
Turning Insights Into Impact
In Virginia during this election cycle, Forward Majority’s disciplined, data-driven approach helped shape messages that resonated deeply with voters — contributing to sweeping Democratic wins across the state.
This success highlights the power of integrating research, creativity, and analytics into one continuous cycle of learning. It’s a model that’s redefining what’s possible for progressive organizations nationwide, and certainly a model worthy of serious consideration as candidates and organizations look to keep November’s momentum going strong into the 2026 midterms.
The Only Experiment That Fails Is The One You Don’t Launch
The messages you test today could make the difference in tomorrow’s margin of victory. If you’re ready to find the one that gets you to “50+1”, get in touch and let’s start building your winning strategy. To be one of the campaign pros who sees these insights before your opponent does, subscribe to our newsletter and get the latest delivered directly to your inbox.
