Campaign playbooks · 26 cases · 139 countries · free
26 campaigns and movements, told by the people who organized them — and turned into missions, plans and checklists you can adapt to your country, with its apps and its laws.
How you learn here
- SeeThe story with numbers, a timeline and who did what.
- UnderstandThe method broken down into principles and a cycle that repeats.
- PracticeTools that produce something useful right now: messages, decisions, a plan you can track.
- AdaptYour country, your platforms, your laws. The coach turns the playbook into a plan of your own.
The playbooks
Every playbook follows the same structure, so you can compare and combine them. New cases go up as the research is finished.
Elections 13
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Brazil · 2026
Janonismo
10.9M
people in one channel, in 21 days
A WhatsApp channel with central command
One congressman, one channel and daily missions helped Lula overturn a 2.2-million-vote deficit.
Open the playbook -
New York · 2025
Mamdani
104,000
volunteers, 3 million doors
Organic video that turns into door-knocking shifts
A state assembly member polling at around 1% became mayor of New York with organic video, a mass field program and a single message: the cost of living.
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Senegal · 2024
Diomaye mooy Sonko
54.28%
in the first round, 10 days after leaving prison
Organizing that survives bans and blackouts
With its leader barred, the party dissolved and both men in jail, Pastef elected the stand-in in the first round.
Open the playbook -
Poland · 2023
The multi-campaign
74.38%
turnout, a record since 1989
Dozens of civic campaigns, one norm: vote
The energy of the 2020 protests turned into votes: turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds rose from 46% to around 69–71%, and PiS lost its majority.
Open the playbook -
Barcelona · 2015
Barcelona en Comú
30,000
signatures before deciding to run
A citizen platform that asks permission before it runs
A platform born from the movement against evictions won Barcelona's city hall 333 days after it went public.
Open the playbook -
United States · 2016–2020
Big Organizing
75M
calls made by volunteers in 2016
A central plan, the work handed to volunteers
A small team handed the Sanders campaign over to volunteers. It didn't win the nomination, but the model was copied far and wide.
Open the playbook -
United States · 2008
Obama 2008
13M
email addresses on the campaign's own list by the end
An owned platform feeding neighborhood teams
An owned digital platform recruited millions, and a community organizing method turned those people into teams that ran their own neighborhoods.
Open the playbook -
Sri Lanka · 2024
From the square to a majority
159 of 225
seats for the NPP on 14 Nov 2024, with 61.56% of the vote
Disciplined network, broad front, one message
Two years after the street toppled the Rajapaksas, a front that had polled 3% won the presidency and a two-thirds majority.
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Chile · 2021
A million doors
55.9%
of the vote for Boric in the runoff, 19 Dec 2021, with the highest turnout since voting became voluntary
Heat maps, self-run comandos, talk at the door
In four weeks, Gabriel Boric went from runner-up to president, with 2.8 million more votes and 1.25 million more voters.
Open the playbook -
New York · 2018
People vs. money
56.7%
against a 10-term party boss
Recruit the right candidate, widen who votes
A 28-year-old organizer, nominated by her brother on a recruitment website, won the primary against the chair of the House Democratic Caucus.
Open the playbook -
United Kingdom · 2017
Momentum
100,000
people used My Nearest Marginal
Send volunteers where the vote is decided
An activist group with a handful of staff trained, transported and mobilised volunteers for the marginal seats and helped Labour strip the Conservatives of their majority.
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New Zealand · 2017
Let's do this
24% → 36.9%
for Labour, from the last poll before the change to the vote
A leadership change becomes news, the news becomes action
Seven weeks before the election, Labour changed leader, rewrote its campaign in 72 hours, channelled a wave of donations and volunteers and reached government through a coalition, despite finishing second.
Open the playbook -
France · 2017
Listen, organize, shield
25,000
listening questionnaires from 300,000 doors, summer 2016
Door-to-door listening and a plan ready for the leak
A movement with no party began by listening to the country, told the press about it and survived a leak 44 hours before the vote.
Open the playbook
Movements and protests 8
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Serbia · 2026
The students win
52.5%
of the vote for the Student List, preliminary RIK count, Oct 25, 2026
Leaderless plenums, village by village, a monitor at every ballot box
Two years after a station canopy killed 16 people, students organized in assemblies defeated Vučić's party at the ballot box.
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Kenya · 2024
#Reject
Finance Bill 2024 8 days
from Occupy Parliament to the president's climbdown
Translate the bill, pressure those who vote, care for those who march
A generation with no leader, no party and no tribe forced Ruto to drop a bill carrying KSh 346bn in new taxes — and paid for it with dozens of lives.
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Nepal · 2025
The Discord assembly
160,000
members on the Youth Against Corruption server
An open server as public square, assembly and ballot box
After a social media ban and 76 deaths, young people debated on a Discord server who should govern until the elections.
Open the playbook -
South Korea · 2024–2025
The light stick revolution
123 days
from martial law to Yoon's removal
Arrive in minutes, return every Saturday, care from afar
Citizens rushed to the gates of parliament on the night of martial law and, with K-pop light sticks, a coalition of 1,700 organizations and food paid for by people who could not come, kept the streets full until the Constitutional Court removed the president.
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Bangladesh · 2024
The 36th of July
36 days
from 1 July to Hasina's fall on 5 August 2024
Replaceable leaders, dated programmes, an offline plan
A protest against civil-service quotas became, under gunfire and an internet blackout, the uprising that ended Sheikh Hasina's 15 years in power.
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Georgia · 2024–2026
Till the end, every night
500+ days
of daily protest in Tbilisi, as counted in Jun 2026
Open groups, marches by profession, fines paid together
Leaderless and with no win in sight, pro-European Georgians have held the space outside parliament every night since 28 November 2024.
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Taiwan · 2014
Sunflowers and g0v
500K
on the streets on 30 Mar 2014, per organizers (police: 116K)
Stream everything, open the tools, deliberate
Students occupied parliament for 24 days, civic hackers streamed it all, and the method became public deliberation.
Open the playbook -
Global (began in Sweden) · 2018–2019
Climate strike
4M+
people in the streets on 20 Sep 2019, according to the organizers
A repeatable ritual, local groups and organized press
One student sitting with a sign outside the Swedish parliament became, within 13 months, a strike in 150 countries.
Open the playbook
Referendums and causes 3
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Ireland · 2018
Together for Yes
66.4%
voted Yes to repeal the Eighth Amendment
Listening to the concerned centre, door to door
Three feminist organizations formed a coalition, talked about care instead of conflict and won a referendum that looked impossible by almost two to one.
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Ireland · 2015
Yes Equality
62.07%
voted Yes to civil marriage equality
Real stories and the press as a daily operation
Three organizations that had fought for years ran one campaign, put real families in the media and made Ireland the first country to approve marriage equality by popular vote.
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United Kingdom · 2019–2026
Led By Donkeys
£499k
from 16,492 donors by Nov 2019
Their own words, billboard-sized
Four friends pasted an old tweet on a billboard, the photo went viral and the public paid for more than 330 billboards.
Open the playbook
Government communication 2
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Ukraine · 2022
We are here
9
foreign parliaments in 17 days (8–24 Mar 2022)
Daily presence and a tailored ask for every audience
With the country invaded, a former-actor president, a small writing team and a 31-year-old digital minister turned short videos and public asks into sanctions, equipment and donations.
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Taiwan · 2018–2021
Humour over rumour
2 h
maximum time to answer a trending rumour
Two images, very short text, out within 2 hours
After a rumour that ended in tragedy, Taiwan set up rapid-response teams that debunked with memes inside the same news cycle, alongside independent fact-checkers.
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The other side
Case studies of far-right and authoritarian digital campaigns. They are not models: they show how these campaigns worked, separate what can be learned from what must never be copied, and help you prepare a response.
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Brazil · 2018
The WhatsApp machine
8 s
of free election airtime on TV, against Alckmin's 5 min 32 s
Pyramids of WhatsApp groups instead of TV
With almost no TV, Bolsonaro won on the back of WhatsApp groups and a network of disinformation and paid mass messaging that Brazil's electoral court found unlawful.
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Argentina · 2023
From TV studio to feed
19.9M
TikTok views for Milei, against 162K for Sergio Massa, according to the consultancy Ad Hoc (cited in Sept 2023)
TV clips multiplied by fan creators
A TV-talk-show economist became a clip phenomenon on TikTok and YouTube and won the 19 November 2023 runoff with 55.65%.
Open the playbook -
United States · 2024
The podcast route
56%
of men aged 18 to 29 voted for Trump, versus 42% for Harris (AP VoteCast, CIRCLE analysis)
Long talks on non-political shows, then the clips
Trump's campaign swapped much of its traditional interviews for comedy, sports and gaming podcasts and streams, and won young men while Harris carried the overall youth vote.
Open the playbook -
Romania · 2024–2025
The candidate who came from the feed
22.94%
for Georgescu in the first round on 24 Nov 2024 — an election annulled by the Constitutional Court 12 days later
Telegram, unlabelled influencers and mass accounts
A candidate with almost no party and no declared spending came first on the back of a TikTok surge; the Constitutional Court annulled the election and he was barred from the rerun.
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Germany · 2021–2025
First in the feed
37.4%
of party recommendations in young people's feeds were AfD content, though the party made 21.5% of uploads (Univ. of Potsdam/Bertelsmann, 2025)
Arrive early, short clips and many accounts reposting
The AfD occupied TikTok years before the other parties and came second in the 2025 federal election, with 20.8% overall and 21% among 18- to 24-year-olds.
Open the playbook
Made for your country
The channel that worked in Brazil ran on WhatsApp. In your country it might be Telegram, Viber, LINE or another app. Pick your country and the toolkits swap in the tools people use there, along with the legal points to check.
Side by side
Theory of victory, audience, channel, street, result and proof of effect for every case, in one table.
Compare the playbooksThe coach
Answer eight questions about your campaign and get a plan built on the playbooks, adapted to your country and your resources.
Talk to the coachWhose side we're on
This is a progressive project. We study the methods rigorously, we say what didn't work, and we teach nothing that pretends to be real people: no fake accounts, no disinformation, no innuendo. Ethics is part of the method — and it's what makes a network last.