The 2020 election cycle is in full swing and has been for months. You can’t turn on the news without seeing something about the 2020 presidential campaign, but for most races around the country, things are just getting started.
Over the coming months, thousands of individuals will register to run for state and local races that could impact the direction of our country for years to come.
One of the first decisions a campaign must make is to build a website. Many candidates have a friend or major supporter that will build the site pro bono, while others need to find professional services to help get started.
As experts of WordPress who build many sites for candidates, we wanted to provide a list of our top campaign and election WordPress themes for political candidates.
Nominee
This popular theme is touted as the best selling Political theme on themeforest.net. It has a 4.94 (out of 5) rating from 35 reviews on the site with more than 1500 sales. The theme is popular for a good reason: it has everything you need to build a site, including:
- 7 homepage options
- 4 interior layout options
- 100% responsive
- WPML Supported
- Event management
- Prebuilt pages for biography, video gallery, manifesto, and volunteering
- Built-in, custom, donation system
- Build custom pages with WP Bakery, visual builder
What sets this theme apart from others on themeforest.net are the beautiful designs. With seven pre-designed homepage options, this theme has something for everyone. The theme is only $59, though does require someone with the skills to setup the theme and design eye to custom how it looks.
Candidate
Candidate is another popular WordPress theme on themeforest.net. It comes with a lot of the same features as Nominee with one major difference: not only is it meant to be used for candidate sites, but also churches and nonprofits. This makes the site more flexible to be used across multiple purposes, but also can be bloated for campaigns that don’t need a lot of the extra features that a nonprofit might. This theme includes:
- 4 homepage layouts for candidates, plus 16 additional layouts for nonprofits
- Multiple slider plugins
- Build custom pages with WP Bakery, visual builder
- Crowdfundraising system included
- Donation widget that can be embedded throughout the site (you can customize the amounts and collect donations through PayPal)
- Documentation and PSDs included
If you’re comfortable building pages in WP Bakery then this is a great theme for the price of $59. However, if you’re looking for more pre-built layouts or more plug-and-play features, then this is not the theme for you.
Campaign – Your Political WordPress Theme
This theme was designed for conversions by placing the sign-up form front and center when visitors come to your site. It is a little more rigid than other themes, but also doesn’t provide the bloat of a WPBakery builder and other features that might not be necessary for each candidate. The theme includes:
- One click demo install
- Swap out the main promo image
- Settings to disable Animations and Lightbox, custom colors and background
- 600+ Google fonts
- WooCommerce Ready
- The Events Calendar Ready
- Seamless Donations Ready
- The Newsletter Ready
- Translation Ready
For only $39, if you need a quick and easy campaign site with little fuss, this is a great route.
Oxygen
Visual Builders are all the rage now. Even WordPress has rolled out the Gutenberg builder to allow anyone — not just developers — the ability to easily create complex page layouts. The Oxygen Builder reimagines how you think of WordPress and takes away the need for a theme. All of your work is done in the straightforward builder, letting you create a robust site in hours. The builder does come with some prebuilt layouts, but also makes it simple to create a custom layout that will set you apart from other candidates.
You will need to install other plugins to help complete your site, like a form building tool (Gravity Forms), donation processing (ActBlue or NGP VAN), SEO (Yoast SEO), and others. At $99 for an unlimited license, this is a great resource that will let you create a fresh site each election cycle and even build your site once elected.