Part 10 of our 10-part series: “21st Century Campaigning”
Those who are highly engaged in the political realm hear a lot about the prospects of “New Media” everyday. But what role does New Media really have in politics? More importantly, how can New Media be used effectively by campaigns and politicians?
When people think of New Media, they often associate it with social networking - Facebook, Twitter, etc. - but in fact it encompasses much more than that. Resources such as YouTube, social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, etc.) and the blogosphere are some of the other important tools in the New Media hype. And all of these tools are becoming more and more important in politics.
For example, as newspapers fall by the wayside, campaigns are increasing their outreach to bloggers. As we noted in Part 6 of this series, campaigns can engage these citizen journalists by sending them interesting YouTube videos, news clips, and other online materials regarding the race. It helps build a relationship with friendly bloggers and that can help get your name and message out there the way you want it to.
Yet, much of the New Media world requires navigation on the part of the user. In other words, if a voter is not interested in the campaign, they’re not going to subscribe to an email list, become a fan on Facebook, or a follower on Twitter.
So why are these tools still important?
There is one important group of voters that are still going to follow the campaign with these tools - supporters. Keeping supporters engaged is a highly important function of any campaign. Without engaged supporters, a campaign is unable to raise money or find volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls.
That means campaigns have to keep supporters interested and active in the daily developments of the race.
Let’s use Twitter as an example. As we mentioned in our own Twitter study last month, the effectiveness of such outreach comes down to what we call the “Twitter talent.” A major part of it is passing the “‘Who Cares?’ Test” - you have to post something relevant that your followers will be interested in.
So we decided to do an analysis of the New Media strategies of the two main campaigns of the Virginia Gubernatorial race going on right now between Democrat Criegh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell.
Deeds has some Tweets and Facebook updates that supporters can use. He mostly uses the social networking tools to update supporters on where he’ll be speaking each day. Occasionally, he also throws in less useful updates.
Take these three Tweets (in chronological order) on August 1st:
“Today is Jerry Garcia's birthday. We turn to Workingman's Dead”
“At FedEx in hot anticipation of Sir Paul. Surrounded by good friends”
“Still waiting. @jbtaylor I like it all but I'm partial to the Revolver-Rubber Soul period for the Fab Four”
And in the past two weeks, he has only posted one link outside of Twitter. On Facebook, his posts have been more relevant - he regularly posts videos, events, and news bits that will encourage supporters. Yet his outreach to them on Facebook is still a little weak - he has less than 10,000 supporters while McDonnell has over 16,000. He also has just more than half as many followers on Twitter as McDonnell.
In fact, McDonnell uses Facebook just as well - constantly linking to his website on updates, informing supporters about upcoming events, and posting even more videos and positive news stories as Deeds. On Twitter, McDonnell constantly links to videos, pictures, news stories, and other websites that will be of use to supporters - engaging them so they will be encouraged to help his campaign.
Obviously, it would be irresponsible to credit McDonnell’s lead on Deeds solely with his dominant social networking strategy, but it certainly helps.
Another favorite New Media tool has been YouTube. Although we were quick to criticize this video for its inaccuracies, it certainly served its purpose well - it engaged and encouraged like-minded Recovery Act opponents.
Of course, using New Media as effectively as it can be used takes a lot of work. Campaigns that actually have a New Media coordinator - whose sole responsibility is social networking, engaging bloggers, posting on sites such as YouTube and Flickr, social bookmarking, etc. - can have a tremendous advantage in fundraising, volunteer support, and even message delivery.
Yet there is still a danger to such a strategy.
Back in June we mentioned how a few GOP operatives and activists were stepping over the line with some of their Tweets. For example, Mike Green of the GOP firm Starboard Communications tweeted “JUST HEARD THAT OBAMA IS GOING TO IMPOSE A 40% TAX ON ASPIRIN BECAUSE IT’S WHITE AND IT WORKS.”
He later apologized - using two tweets to do so.
And nobody has been scrutinized for their use of New Media by the traditional media sources than Sarah Palin. Just last week she talked about an Obama “death panel” euthanizing her baby with Down Syndrome on a Facebook status update.
The point is that politicians wouldn’t (in most cases) say those sorts of things to rally supporters in a speech - because that too would be picked up by the mainstream media - so they shouldn’t try to engage supporters with such rhetoric in the social networking realm either.
And that’s another reason to have a special New Media coordinator rather than a candidate updating their New Media tools themselves - message discipline.
Like so many other advancements in campaign politics, just because the technology is changing doesn’t mean the basic principles are.
Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed “21st Century Campaigning” - it was certainly a pleasure to give our predictions and analysis of the changes happening in the political campaign world. Soon we’ll be starting a new series that should be fun: “Politics in the Movies”
Part 9 of our 10-part series: 21st "Century Campaigning"
Get-Out-the-Vote (or GOTV) operations have changed dramatically in the last ten years, and – chances are – they’ll change even more in the next ten.
GOTV has always existed in some form or another throughout American electoral history. But modern GOTV methods really began to take shape across the pond. In the United Kingdom’s 1945 general election, Labour Party MP Ian Mikardo and his campaign developed a system in which the Reading constituency he represented was canvassed for Voter ID. The campaign then generated lists of supporters called “Reading sheets” for volunteers to remind to vote on Election Day.
The Reading System also began a GOTV tactic known in the U.S. as “poll watching” – in which campaign workers watch to make sure that voters identified as supporters have made it to the polls already and can be crossed off the list. If not, they get reminded to vote again.
In the United States, national GOTV operations really started to be noticed by the media following the 2000 general election. It was a year where the vote between Al Gore and George W. Bush was so close that getting supporters to the polls could make all the difference in many states.
That fact prompted the GOP to make important strides in the way GOTV was to be done in the future. They developed a new system they labeled “the 72-Hour Program” for the 2002 midterm elections.
From a 2003 Washington Post article on the new program’s implementation:
The 72-Hour Project was born of necessity after the 2000 election, when Republicans discovered that Democrats had done a better job of getting their voters to the polls in one of the tightest presidential races in history.
With prodding from White House senior adviser Karl C. Rove, White House political director Ken Mehlman and RNC Deputy Chairman Jack Oliver, the party undertook a top-to-bottom review of its get-out-the-vote operation, poured more than $1 million into more than 50 experiments to test how best to reach out to voters and then methodically set about implementing their findings in the midterm campaigns.
It paid off. In the subsequent 2002 and 2004 elections the GOP significantly drove up turnout among the Republican-friendly Evangelical community and scored some important victories for their party.
Still, the efficacy of such extensive GOTV programs is of considerable debate. Yale University has devoted an entire website to research done on the effectiveness of GOTV operations.
And Democratic strategist Mark Mellman argues that putting such weight on GOTV really only makes a difference when a race comes down to a couple thousand votes or so.
“Experiments on turnout by [famed political scientists] Alan Gerber and Donald Green suggest that the most effective means of increasing turnout raise it by less than 10 percent — and that’s for people who get canvassed in person. None of this is to suggest that GOTV efforts are not valuable. When 2000 or 200 votes decide an election there is no question that GOTV efforts can make all the difference in the world. But again, that is simply not the case that is being argued by GOP operatives.
Can’t micro-targeting help them achieve spectacular successes? Anyone who has ever modeled data knows there is much more salesmanship than science in Republican claims about these efforts. Our firm and others on the Democratic side have been using these models for half a dozen years or more and we know they can make our efforts much more efficient; expand our GOTV and persuasion universes; and provide message guidance. So when races are otherwise marginal, the lift models provide can make all the difference between winning and losing. But no model is going to turn what would otherwise be a 5-point loss into a victory.”
With this idea in mind, how will campaigns adjust their GOTV strategy so it only counts if a race is going to be close? How will they plan such an important operation ahead of time if they don’t even know if it will be worth it?
And if these questions don’t make campaigns rethink how they do GOTV, maybe some recent trends will.
As we mentioned in our post on Monday, early voting might change a lot of campaign strategy in the next few elections. In fact, when polls showed then-Senator Barack Obama with a substantial edge among early voters, we commented on the importance behind the Obama campaign’s efforts.
“The real advantage of having supporters vote early is that the campaign can focus more time and energy on supporters that vote less frequently (because they are less politically engaged) in the final 72 hours.
So have early voting laws made October a month long GOTV period? It would certainly appear so, as this tactic is sure to be used in presidential campaigns to come.”
But if campaigns are going to devote time and energy to such a “Get-Out-the-Early-Vote” operation, what will that look like? Will they rely on more time-effective methods to convince folks who were already going to vote for them to do it early – methods such as email, robo-calls, text-messages, and direct mail? Or will they actually redirect volunteers from important Voter ID operations to make calls and canvass these supporters?
Ultimately, these aren’t questions that can be answered yet with any certainty – but they are questions that campaigns will have to answer for themselves in the next ten years.
The only thing that is certain is that GOTV will continue to evolve and is likely to look much different in 2020 from what it looked like in 2008.
Part 8 of our 10-part series: “21st Century Campaigning”
Have you ever received a phone call from a political campaign asking you to name the man or woman you’re supporting in an upcoming election? Have you ever worked on or volunteered for a campaign and had to make such a call?
If the answer is “yes” you’ve no doubt wondered why. After all, one’s vote is traditionally thought of as a private decision - a guarantee of the blind ballot. Yet campaigns have a very good reason to ID voters. In fact, they have three very good reasons for doing so.
1) Knowing Where You Are
Ideally, a campaign will identify over half of the electorate (in a two-way race) as strongly supporting their candidate. If this can be achieved, you know you’re going to win even before Election Day. If you have no idea how many voters are supporting you, chances are that means you’re going to lose.
Watching the polls is helpful to get a rough idea of your support - but it is not 100% accurate. Additionally, you cannot track each individual voter. That means that come time for the Get-Out-the-Vote operation (or GOTV) you won’t know exactly who to remind to vote.
2) Laying a Foundation for Your Party
Politics doesn’t stop after one election - it doesn’t stop at all. When you can identify which politicians a particular voter is supporting you can get a good idea of how they will vote in the future. Only a small fraction of the electorate are truly “swing” voters - most will vote for candidates in one particular party the great majority of the time.
By identifying these voters the party can determine how likely they are to support future candidates. This helps these future campaigns plan how they allocate their resources. If a particular voter is identified as a strong Democrat or Republican there is no point in sending them a piece of mail, giving them a phone call, or sending volunteers to their house to try to persuade them. If they’re identified as a swing voter, they are certain to get more contact with the campaign.
Additionally, precincts that have over 65% of the electorate identified as strongly Democratic (in the case of Democratic campaigns) will be covered tooth-and-nail come GOTV time. Every house in such precincts will be hit before the polls close on Election Day. This tactic is designed to drive as much support to the polls as humanly possible for the party.
3) Solidifying Their Support
One of the most significant phenomena in politics is how voters will commit to supporting a particular candidate once they’ve said they support him or her. By neglecting a Voter ID program, a campaign risks losing voters that lean toward its candidate before Election Day. By calling or canvassing these voters and getting them to say out-loud that they support your candidate, they become much more likely to follow through when they head to the polls.
Where’s the evidence?
In 2008, President Obama won his bid for the White House because his campaign rigorously tracked where they were in swing states, used the Democratic Party’s existing infrastructure and information to plan the optimal use of resources, and convinced voters that leaned towards his candidacy to follow through by voting for him. In the end, the Obama campaign had contacted about 37% more voters than the McCain campaign, and Voter ID is by far the most important tactic in voter contact
But 2008 was important for another reason - namely the use of Voter ID in early voting trends. Early voting increased significantly last year, and it had a major impact on how the rest of the campaign was run. By identifying which voters had already submitted a ballot, campaigns were able to devote more time and energy to those who were waiting until the end.
That means saving time by not trying to persuade early voters to support your candidates or reminding them to head to the polls on Election Day. With the saved time, the campaigns were able to focus on voters known to be undecided going into the last few days of the race.
Early voting is becoming more and more popular, and it will be interesting to watch as it continues in the future. Needless to say, campaigns prefer early voting because early voters probably weren’t persuadable to begin with, and it allows the campaign to be more efficient in its outreach activities.
This trend certainly appears to be the most important aspect of future Voter ID operations.
Part 7 of our 10-part series: “21st Century Campaigning”
You’ll often hear politicians claim that they don’t pay attention to the polls - especially politicians who are behind in them. But that notion is typically just political rhetoric. Even if the candidate is ignoring the polls, his or her campaign staff and consultants do not.
Campaigning is both an art and a science: there are aspects that require inherent political savvy, talent, and creativity, and then there are aspects that need to be measured empirically - a necessity for winning a race. Polling is in the latter category. Watching and even taking polls helps a campaign track where they are and where they need to go.
But aren’t polls often inaccurate?
No poll is perfect, but political scientists and junkies as well as campaigners do a lot to figure out which polls are best to look at.
Nate Silver - the author of the popular blog FiveThirtyEight.com - is one such political junkie. During the 2008 presidential campaign he was able to determine Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s chances of winning by using a very in-depth system of poll analysis.
As he found in April last year, not only do all polls suffer the normal sampling error (usually below 4%) but also from what he calls a “Pollster-Introduced Error” (or “PIE”) - an error of poor methodology. For example, how a question is asked can lead a respondent to say something different than they would if the question was put to them another way. In fact, there is an entire science behind that concept.
Another problem that arises is who is asking the question. For example, a poll by Fox News is likely to demonstrate a conservative politician or stance being more popular than, say, a New York Times survey would. This is because a pollster that identifies himself as being with Fox News is more likely to have a liberal voter hang-up on him, whereas a New York Times pollster would be more likely to have a conservative voter hang-up on him.
Similarly, a campaign’s internal surveys are likely to be more skewed towards their particular candidate than an independent poll would. Even when the campaign outsources the job to a polling firm - which they almost always do - the poll is likely to suffer from a larger PIE than an external survey.
Still, internal polls are important because they can be used to gather data that an independent survey might not. Smaller races (in fact, most anything smaller than a targeted Senate race) are particularly dependent on these additional data because independent pollsters do not pay as much attention to their races.
Aren’t those internal surveys just “push-polls” though?
A campaign will track polls carefully to see how they’re doing - an important way to empirically determine whether their strategy is working or not. But in order to figure out what strategy needs to be employed in the first place - specifically the candidate’s message - a survey will be taken early-on in the campaign to test the waters of the electorate.
These “message-testing” surveys are very different from “push-polls” because they are meant to legitimately plan a campaign message, platform, and image of the candidate. Push-polls are intended to directly influence the opinion of the respondent under the disguise as a message-testing survey.
The American Association for Public Opinion Research explains how a respondent can tell the difference:
Identifying Advocacy Calls Made Under the Guise of Research
Political telemarketing calls, when disguised as research, may sometimes be difficult to differentiate from a legitimate survey. Here are characteristics that will usually indicate to a respondent that the call is not a legitimate survey.
-One or only a few questions are asked, all about a single candidate or a single issue.
-The questions are uniformly strongly negative (or sometimes uniformly positive) descriptions of the candidate or issue.
-The organization conducting the calls is not named, or a phony name is used.
-Evasive answers are given in response to requests for more information about the survey.
In addition, the following characteristics will indicate to journalists, reporters, and survey professionals that a telephone call is not a legitimate survey.
-The number of people called is very large, sometimes many thousands.
-The calls are not based on a random sample.
-It is difficult to find out which organization conducted the interviews.
[Identifying]…Message Testing
… One way to tell is that message-testing surveys exhibit the characteristics of a legitimate survey, such as:
-At the beginning of the call, the interviewer clearly identifies the call center actually making the calls. (However, legitimate political polling firms will often choose not to identify the client who is sponsoring the research, be it a candidate or a political party, since that could bias the survey results.)
-The interview contains more than a few questions.
-The questions usually ask about more than one candidate or mention both sides of an issue.
-Questions, usually near the end of the interview, ask respondents to report demographic characteristics such as age, education level, and party identification.
-The survey is based on a random sample of voters.
-The number of respondents falls within the range of legitimate surveys, typically between 400 and 1500 interviews.
In 1996, citing the increasing practice of push-polling, the American Association of Political Consultants publicly condemned the tactic and required its members to abstain from it under the AAPC’s Code of Ethics.
But the concept of push-polling really became famous in 2000 during the GOP presidential primaries. Karl Rove encouraged the Bush campaign to wage a push-poll against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in South Carolina. The pollsters asked respondents if they were aware that - among other negative and untrue things - McCain was the father of an illegitimate black child. The incident was so appalling and became so famous that little of the practice has been seen since.
So how is the 21st Century changing the effect of polling on campaigns?
While modern opinion polls have been around since George Gallup tracked the 1936 re-election of FDR, in the last few years they have become increasingly significant with the rise of bloggers.
One such blog is RealClearPolitics.com, which in 2000 began compiling polls of the close presidential contest between Gov. George W. Bush (R-TX) and Vice President Al Gore (D-TN). As time passed they would update the outlook of the election with the RCP Poll Average. It was a helpful way for the average political junkie to look at where the candidates were at without worrying too much about the number differences between multiple surveys.
Next in that tradition was FiveThirtyEight.com. Founded in 2008 by Silver - a former baseball statistician - it was able to track where the candidates were at even better. 538 was able to analyze the polls by weighing them, tracking them by state, and using complicated math that the typical American (and even most folks in campaign politics) wouldn’t understand. With the internet providing the opportunity for this blog, millions of Americans were able to see Silver’s rolling predictions.
So on Election Day, when - according to Silver - McCain had roughly a 1% chance of winning, it was really no surprise that Obama could declare victory that night. In fact, it was such a long-shot for McCain to win that the 538-reading Obama supporter had nothing to worry about.
And that’s exactly the point.
Campaigns have had to tell their supporters for years not to pay attention to the polls. If their supporters are taking polls seriously, it means that they’ll either figure their candidate has it in the bag (if he/she is ahead) or that their candidate doesn’t have a chance.
Similarly, in 2004, many criticized the national news media for releasing exit polls mid-way through Election Day. Sen. John Kerry was ahead in the presidential election according to the exit polls, and that may have encouraged Bush supporters to get to their polling-places before they closed and for Kerry supporters to not bother.
Luckily for Obama in 2008, most of his supporters were pretty skeptical of the polls as well as 538’s findings. Not only did they make sure to vote, but they continued the campaign’s GOTV activities like the election could come down to one vote.
But with 538’s analysis being so sophisticated and so incredibly accurate, such blogs pose a real problem for campaign workers. With the information so readily accessible in the internet age, it can go a long way towards influencing supporters. If your candidate’s scientifically-measured chances of winning are so high (or conversely, so low) then why bother volunteering or giving money?
That will be the challenge for campaigns in the future.
“21st Century Campaigning” returns Friday with Voter ID!
Part 6 of our 10-part series: “21st Century Campaigning”
In 2005 a dramatic development took place in the history of news service. Garrett Graff, a 23-year-old blogger for Media Bistro’s “Fishbowl DC” was granted a daily pass to be part of the White House Press Corps. One White House spokesman admitted that he had never heard of a blogger being given such a prominent place in the media world before.
As we all know, the past five to ten years has been tough on the newspaper industry. Even before Graff entered the White House for press conferences, newspaper readership was declining with the growing popularity of the internet.
In December last year, the Pew Research Center found that - for the first time - more Americans were getting their news from the internet than newspapers. Young people were driving this transition, with 59% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 reading news online - an incredible 25% jump since September 2007.
What does this mean for political campaigns?
Little in the blogosphere is such a popular topic as politics (heck, you’re reading a political blog right now). And as blogs continue to grow in relevance, many PR firms - as well as campaigns - are beginning to rethink how they reach out to information providers.
From an article on MediaShift, which tracks the online news revolution:
[Adam] Ritchie [who works in brand promotion] explained that in the old PR world, the agency would simply place the news in traditional outlets and be done with it. But with the new model, once you've placed the story, you've opened a new phase of work -- and that's when the social media part begins. You then take that news story from a trusted outlet and begin trying to spread it into the blogosphere and social news sites, drawing more eyeballs to it than the publication's typical audience.
But how do they approach these bloggers and social media users? Almost everyone I spoke to for this piece immediately agreed that most bloggers think very differently than traditional journalists; they tend to shy away from the old methods that PR people have in the past used to engage reporters. Ritchie said that he hasn't sent out a press release in years, going so far as to say, "I don't believe in press releases."
"A lot of blogs will pick up a press release, and it's true that press releases have found new life among indie bloggers that are hungry for content," he said. "But quality writers for quality blogs aren't going to regurgitate a press release, and you're not winning in the long run by sending the press release to small and independent bloggers because you're not building personal relationships by carpet bombing them. We want to be on a personal basis with them, and sending them a press release isn't going to accomplish much for the next time you want to approach them."
Ritchie said that he sends a personal note with a "buffet of options" for the blogger -- whether it's a YouTube clip, a mainstream press article, or even an original scoop -- so that he or she can choose how to engage the story.
Christine Perkett, president and founder of PerkettPR, said that bloggers often differ from journalists in that they aren't writing about these subjects as a full-time job, meaning they will approach the story differently than would a reporter…
…One thing that PR professionals have found within social media is a tendency for badly run campaigns to backfire. If a journalist receives a bad pitch or poorly targeted press release, he'll often just ignore it. But it's not uncommon for a blogger to publish the press release or email on his blog, ridiculing the person or agency that sent it to him.
While campaigns should adopt similar strategies and precautions, it is important to remember that the blogosphere is still in its early years, and changes are still to come in the realm of citizen journalism. As another article from MediaShift points out “[There has been a] trend in recent years of newspapers trying to team up with local bloggers.”
Los Angeles Times blog editor Tony Pierce says:
"For the most part, this whole citizen journalism concept is fine for about three or four people per town, but that's about it," he said. "And most of those people are not journalists for a reason. Either they're crappy writers or they're crazy, which makes for sometimes interesting blog posts, but is that something that a major newspaper would link to?
… I love blogs more than any other person -- but I'll be the first to tell you that most of them are crappy. Which isn't to say that individual posts can't be great, and I think that's where newspapers should focus."
Such a system of online newspaper sources linking to local-oriented blog posts is tricky - it’s uncharted waters for campaigns to navigate effectively. But some clues as to how to develop a clever strategy can be seen in the way campaigning is done now.
According to political scientist Brian Schaffner, “One reason that citizens turn to the local news more often [than national news] is that they tend to be interested in news that directly affects their lives.” Referring to a 2002 Pew study that found local television news to still be the most popular form of media consumption (and a 2008 Pew study finds it continues to be) Schaffner argues that campaigns are smart to target local communities in speeches and message because it gets more airtime on local news than national news and is more relevant to voters.
“Campaign events often have significance to local communities that would be lost on national news outlets. For example, during the second debate of the 2000 presidential campaign, George Bush and Al Gore briefly discussed the tragic school shootings that occurred in 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado. This discussion was almost completely ignored by the national news programs, but each television station…in Denver discussed that portion of the debate on their news programs…the news was much more important for citizens in Denver who were still dealing with the repercussions of the tragedy.”
As blogs become more and more focused on local issues with the help of the professional news industry, campaigns can use the same tactics of message on local issues and win coverage.
Beyond this, campaigns are already reaching out to bloggers in personalized ways to get positive coverage and a leg up in the online news age - another one of the lasting legacies of Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign. And more innovations for 21st Century PR are sure to come as campaigns evolve and Americans leave the ink print behind.
Come back Tuesday for Part 7: 21st Century Polling!
Part 5 of our 10-part series: “21st Century Campaigning”
The presidential race in 2008 saw some of the most effective campaign ads ever seen on television. They incorporated most of the important developments in political advertising of the past 50 years - and even went a step or two further.
The Evolution of Political TV Ads
1952 - The Birth of Campaign TV Spots
In Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first ad - “Ike for President” - the WWII General’s campaign began the new tactic of television spots for a political campaign.
1964 - Hitting the Heart
Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, television ads were mostly fairly boring and certainly not too controversial. Then President Lyndon Johnson’s campaign produced “Daisy” - the Pandora’s Box of (truly) negative ads. It was so controversial that it only played once, but the impact it had on campaign ads to follow has never gone away.
1968 - The Daisy Effect Lives On
Former Vice President Nixon spots this similar - thought certainly not as vivid - negative ad, attacking the Democrats for their handling of the Vietnam War.
1976 - Targeting by Media Market
In his first Presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter produced a region-specific ad to drive votes in the American South. This attention to particular audiences in particular media markets served as a precursor to the later micro-targeting techniques of Karl Rove and others.
1980 - Making Ads “Issue-Based”
Believe it or not, political ads are more substantive than they’ve ever been before. In fact, only about two-thirds of campaign ads in the 1950s were issue-based rather than “image-based” - compared to about 85% issue-based and 15% image-based by 2004.
Here, in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 “Podium” ad, we see the development of flashy, short and simple campaign ads that still stay issue-based.
1984 - Making Ads Memorable
The most effective campaign TV spots are those that voters can’t help but remember. In this re-election ad, “Prouder, Stronger, Better” (better known as the “Morning in America” ad) Reagan’s campaign produced a masterpiece.
It has all the great images - patriotic symbols, young children, senior citizens, workers, dogs, even a wedding - all of which (some for still uncertain reasons) are brilliant and highly effective for campaign ads. All the while it maintains an issue-based message of economic improvement.
1988 - Divide and Conquer
In George H.W. Bush’s first campaign, Lee Atwater became the first political consultant to be a household name. Although the Bush campaign itself didn’t run it, Atwater was the man behind the infamous “Willy Horton” ad, as well as the equally well-known “Revolving Door” spot.
The tactics were innovative for two reasons. First, they were more negative than ever before. While that should have hurt the Bush campaign (which it did to an extent) it made the campaign’s message look more factual than the rosy pictures presented by Reagan and Carter in the ads above. Second, they used the divisive issue of crime in a way that they could bring in more mainstream Americans than they risked to lose. Never before had the “50% + 1” strategy been so evident.
1992 - Campaigns Decide to “Prove It”
Bill Clinton’s campaign might not have invented this idea, but they used it extremely well: citing your sources. They made it commonplace to back-up claims with quotes (or at least a source and date) from respected newspapers.
1996 - The Contrast Ad
It had been seen before, but again, not to this extent. In his re-election campaign, President Clinton continually framed his arguments in a way that compared himself to his opponent - all the while sounding fair and fact-driven - and casting his opponent as untrustworthy by making his image grainy as well as black and white.
Beyond the images and citations, they typically stayed specific to one issue at a time and could easily be targeted towards specific demographics (in the case below, mothers and young voters).
2008 - Putting it All Together
It’s not difficult to see for yourself how these developments influenced campaign ads in the 2008 election.
Adapting to Change
Campaigns have traditionally spent time, money, and effort producing political ads as a way to introduce a candidate’s message to otherwise uninterested voters - those who don’t pay much attention to the news or the political community. It serves a powerful purpose to bring that message into the home, connecting with these voters in an intimate and personal way.
But like most tactics, the technological developments of the 21st Century are forcing campaigns to rethink how and why they do political TV ads. One problem is what New York Times writer Stuart Elliot calls “The TiVo Challenge.”
"Most of the people who are watching ads online are political junkies who've already made up their minds," says Tobe Berkowitz, a communications professor at Boston University. "The reason the candidates still buy a lot of TV ads is that it reaches people who don't pay a lot of attention to the campaign."
But that doesn't mean the Internet and other new technologies aren't changing the rules of the game. One challenge for the 2008 campaigns is how to deal with technology like TiVo that allows viewers to skip the commercials.
"Private-sector companies can do product-placement; candidates can't do that," says Dan Schnur, a professor of political science and communications at the University of Southern California. "You're not going to see Barack Obama fighting terrorists with Jack Bauer. You're not going to see John McCain on So You Think You Can Dance."
These challenges may signal the end of TV's long dominance in campaign advertising. "I think this might be the last big presidential cycle where you see these huge amounts of money spent on television," Berkowitz says. "In another four years, who knows what it will be."
According to some, not only is the dominance of TV ads at risk in campaign politics, but their entire existence is as well.
As Chuck Todd wrote of the “lessons learned” in the 2008 campaign:
“TV ads are overrated: had it not been for the sheer saturation of the television airwaves Obama’s financial advantage allowed him, 2008 might have been known as the year the 30 second TV ad died. It’s becoming more and more difficult for political TV ads to be ‘sticky,’ so good as to be remembered by voters for a period of time…Campaigns need to diversify their attempts at branding beyond the 30 second spot unless they truly have unlimited resources, like Obama.”
If you’re a political junkie, however, don’t worry - we don’t think the 30 second political ad is going to be extinct any time soon. The reason is simple: supporters would think it disastrous to their candidate’s chances of winning.
Throughout this series, we’ve mentioned how little beats voter-to-voter contact in spreading a campaign’s message and winning support. That means candidates have to rely on volunteers to make phone calls and canvass neighborhoods, as well as hopeful donors to finance it all. And just like the disappearance of yard signs would scare a campaign’s donors and volunteers, so would the disappearance of TV spots in a national, statewide, or even congressional election.
So campaigns may need to begin a new strategy of utilizing television ads for a new purpose: encouraging their supporters.
What’s to Come in Political TV Advertising
One prediction is that more campaign ads will be produced, but perhaps seen less on television. With the online age, more and more ads will be emailed, blogged, and seen on YouTube than TV. It will be a more cost effective way to communicate with supporters that expect to see an operational campaign producing ads.
Additionally, ads will become higher-quality and more rapidly produced. Their relevance will be short lived, created for the purpose of encouraging supporters who are living in the day-to-day news of the race.
Take these two ads that addressed concerns from the final debate in the 2008 presidential election - namely, the connection between Sen. John McCain and President George W. Bush. If you remember, McCain landed a memorable line: “Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.” McCain’s ad also addressed the “spreading the wealth around” quote which he raised in the debate when discussing Joe the Plumber.
As we said in a post the day these ads were released (the day immediately following the debate), “You know that technology is pretty incredible when you can watch a debate that ends at 9:30 PM and see brand-new post-debate presidential campaign ads by 9:30 AM the next day.” Clearly, there is a real purpose behind that strategy.
Finally, we saw in 2008 a possible preview of a dramatic innovation of campaign ads in years to come. In late October, just before GOTV operations began, the Obama campaign released a thirty-minute ad known as the Obama Infomercial. It cost them $3 million to air it on seven major networks, all at 8:00 PM.
As many noted at the time, apathetic voters could easily change the channel - making the efficacy of the ad questionable. Even Jim Margolis, Mr. Obama’s senior advertising strategist, said “Many people have 150 channels; they’ve got plenty of other choices.”
But the infomercial probably wasn’t for the average voter as much as it was for the supporter. Obama had an army of donors and volunteers - millions of them - who all tuned-in to watch the much-talked-about infomercial and become extra-motivated before signing up to knock on doors and make calls for Get-Out-the-Vote weekend.
And if the public financing of elections dissipates - as we suspect it will - and you can raise upwards of $1 billion, then why not put $3 million into an infomercial to boost your volunteer program and increase voter outreach?
So, in presidential elections at least, expect campaigns to target supporters more and more with their TV ads; expect these ads to be more and more congruent with the life of the campaign; and expect political TV advertising to continue - and to evolve even more.
Part 4 of our 10-part series: “21st Century Campaigning”
The internet has changed much of the way we work, retrieve information, and live our daily lives. In politics, the internet has changed the game in ways of transparency, public forum, and campaign outreach. In time, it may even be where we go to vote.
So far, however, the internet has had its greatest impact on one aspect of political campaigns in particular: fundraising.
Around the year 2000, candidates began maintaining websites regularly. By 2002, it was estimated that over half of Americans had internet access in their homes. And in 2004, the internet made its first big dent in American politics - it turned an unknown former governor from the tiny state of Vermont into a household name and political giant.
Howard Dean revolutionized the way campaigns were done - for both Democrats and Republicans - with his bid in the 2004 presidential race. In about a year he built a national network of activists and, with them, raised an astounding amount of money (tens of millions of dollars) from thousands of modest contributions.
Today the most important page of a campaign website is the “Contribution” section. The reason is simple: the average voter doesn’t go to a candidate’s website to make their decision (although many pundits and analysts suggest that’s beginning to change) but the average donor will contribute online.
And the typical campaign website won’t open with a candidate introduction or positions on the issues - it opens with a screen inviting the reader to sign up for email updates. Those email updates will occasionally be used to inform voters of upcoming events or the candidate’s positions, but the vast majority of the time they will be soliciting contributions - a move right out of the Dean playbook.
It also allows for campaigns to re-solicit from prior contributors - (usually) the most likely group of people to give again. In December we noted that even the Obama transition team used the campaign email list to get donations for the Inaugural celebrations.
Obama actually took the progress Dean had made one step further - he raised so much from small donations that he didn’t need to rely on lobbyists, PACs, or public financing. Sen. McCain’s presidential campaign account received only 54% of it cash from individual donors, compared to a whopping 88% of Obama’s campaign finances. And with online fundraising, they raised amounts that were previously unimaginable - more than $1 billion between them.
The result: public financing of presidential elections is bound to fade away. It may have even seen its last days in 2008, barring any new reform from Congress.
Many think it is unfortunate that public financing may (for all practical purposes) go extinct, but only time can tell. In January, Sherwin Hughes made quite an analogy between Obama’s fundraising mastery and a poker game:
“I liken right-wing conservative donors to gamblers. These poker players, drunk on their own hubris and wealth, are sitting down to a game of presidential stud, hold 'em or betting on horses at the track. The max buy-in is a cool $2,300…
…Those hands would ultimately be trumped. Millions of ordinary people sat down at that high stakes presidential poker game. The same people who haven't been invited to play for the last 8 years, and arguably the last 200, seated themselves with confidence at this exclusive backroom game. They pooled their $5 and $10 chips, raised, re-raised and splashed the pot. The cards were dealt face up and revealed a beautiful royal flush which consisted of the face cards of disenfranchised Americans, war veterans, and jobless individuals.”
Again, another implication of the internet in politics is the greater extent of transparency. Not only are campaign finance reports readily available at the Federal Election Commission’s online database, but OpenSecrets.org and similar websites as well.
Candidates may be less likely to raise money from special interests with these resources available to voters. Obama himself refused to accept contributions from lobbyists, and has pushed the Democratic Party to adapt the same principle.
Nobody likes how expensive campaigns are becoming, but it all comes down to the internet - it’s fundamentally changed the way political campaigns raise money. In the end, it might even make campaign finance better.
Part 3 of our 10-part series: “21st Century Campaigning”
It doesn’t take a political scientist to know that there are big differences between larger and smaller races. From the bigger turnout to saturated ad markets, large statewide and national campaigns completely overshadow local ones.
But despite the lack of attention from the voters and media, there are some real pluses to running a smaller campaign.
For one thing, a candidate in a small race can literally talk to every single voter before the election - sometimes more than once! Nothing is as effective as a face-to-face connection between a voter and a candidate. Larger campaigns cannot do that because it just isn’t practical - there are too many people! So they turn to TV and radio ads, direct mail, and robo-calls out of necessity.
It all began when progressive reforms to dismantle political machines took effect in the 20th Century. As it happened, campaigns began to shift from being party-centered to candidate-centered. The result was that the traditional mass volunteer base that the parties relied on diminished, leaving candidate-centered campaigns with less man-power.
So began what Professor J. Cherie Strachan refers to as the “professionalization” of elections: larger campaigns began to rely more and more on modern forms of communication (radio, television, and later internet) and other sophisticated marketing tactics. Meanwhile, smaller campaigns could continue the traditional way of campaigning because they never required a lot of man-power in the first place.
Except that this appears to be changing. More and more often, smaller campaigns are beginning to employ the same sophisticated tactics as the larger ones - targeted direct mail, radio ads, polls, and even TV spots. A survey Strachan conducted of mayoral candidates nationally found that 88% used one or more of these tactics for their campaigns.
Why are they doing this when they can just meet the voters personally?
In her book, High-Tech Grass Roots, Strachan says
“One of the best predictors of whether an innovation will be adopted is the perceived relative advantage it provides over the idea it supersedes…In this case, local government candidates would consider using sophisticated tactics when lower initial cost and the improved ability to target desired voters enhanced their perceptions of the relative advantage that such tactics could provide.”
It’s not just a perceived advantage - it’s real. Knocking on doors is time-consuming for a candidate. When you can narrow down voters by their likeliness to vote (and more importantly, their likeliness to vote for you) with a voter file, you can save a considerable amount of time meeting them.
Then, rather than going back to their house 3 or 4 times throughout the campaign, you can send them a mail piece addressing their specific political concerns and maybe meet them in person only twice.
And when you’re able to raise the money, a poll can go a long way towards solidifying your message and overcoming your opponent. TV or radio ads, if you can afford them, can help foster an image of your legitimacy as a politician.
And looking like the guys on the national stage is becoming easier (and in many cases, cheaper) than ever. Campaign websites are easy for interested voters to access while email and social networking services like Facebook and Twitter can keep your supporters up-to-date on fundraisers, field events, and more.
So long as these “professional” tactics are supplemented with the most effective campaign tactic - meeting voters in person - small race candidates should be encouraged to use them.
Ultimately, the methods pursued will come down to cost-benefit analysis (“how much money can I raise?” “what can I get with that money?” “how many votes would doing those things actually get me?”) and no two campaigns are exactly the same. However, smaller campaigns across the country are all beginning to look more and more like the bigger ones in terms of strategy and tactics - and in order to run for a smaller seat it’s becoming a greater necessity too.
Part 2 of our 10-part series: “21st Century Campaigning”
According to author and political strategist Joe Garecht, there are five reasons for campaigns to use phone banks: as a follow-up for the campaign’s direct mail; for identifying which voters are committed to which candidate; getting out the vote; fundraising calls; and to get out your rapid response to the opponent’s attacks.
While all of these are important reasons to have a phone bank, the most obvious reason is simple: persuasion. Although the process requires either a lot of money or a lot of volunteers, phone banking can be one of the most effective forms of persuasion because it involves direct, two-way contact between the campaign and the voter. This is especially true when it’s done by volunteers.
Of course, little beats door-to-door canvassing, but in rural areas where it’s hard to get around or urban areas which consist of inaccessible apartment buildings, calling the voters is your best option.
In fact, an emphasis on voter contact went a long way towards President Obama’s impressive victory last year. As we found when examining the exit polls last year, the Obama campaign made as much as 37% more voter contact than McCain’s team did.
Yet with the technological revolution of the past two decades, the way campaigns communicate with voters on the phone is changing.
But how?
As you probably know, with the rise of cell phones, many Americans no longer bother keeping land lines. For a while – and even today in some states – finding cell numbers for phone banks was difficult and the databases campaigns used were incomplete.
But with new voters (who are largely behind the decline of land lines) come new voter registration forms complete with cell numbers that literally – by law – can stick with a person for life if he or she so chooses. Campaigns that register voters can collect these numbers and enter them into the party’s database. Hence, this particular problem is slowly fading away.
Then there was the problem of the call itself. As Campaigns and Elections wrote in 2002, it makes sense to call a voter on their cell phone “only if you want voters angry because your campaign wasted their air time and cost them money.”
Luckily the so-called “invisible hand of the free market” has been taking care of that problem – more and more cell phone companies have stopped charging their customers for incoming calls.
What the tech-age has done to phone banking is made it easier for campaigns – sort of.
In 2006, an article posted on the website for Democratic strategists Paul and Marty Stone (who specialize in phone communications) described the way campaigns can now do phone banks:
Campaigners for Patrick Murphy were staring the May 16 Democratic primary in the teeth. In 48 hours, voters in Pennsylvania's 8th District would go to the polls. There were plenty of volunteers to make get-out-the-vote calls, but not enough phones.
It was May 14, and a Murphy staffer took a suitcase into the basement of a campaign volunteer's home in Bucks County. He unzipped the bag and pulled out a dozen telephones, plugged them into a computer, and within five minutes, the group began using the Internet to call local voters.
There were no expensive phone line deposits to pay the local telephone company. No waiting for the telephone company installer or promises he would be there between 8 a.m. and noon or 1 and 5 p.m. two weeks down the road, when it would be too late.
A handful of volunteers and staffers made 2,000 get-out-the-vote calls in two days, and Murphy won with nearly two-thirds of the vote against his Democratic challenger.
Of course, Marty Stone himself stresses that when campaigns can, they should stick to traditional land lines because internet phones and mobiles just don’t deliver the same quality. But in high-pressure situations or for rural towns that can’t get the same staff attention as the bigger cities, the internet lines and cell phones can be a great way to streamline scarce campaign resources.
And then there is the way the Obama campaign made new innovations to an old concept. Not only did they start getting volunteers in mass from states like California calling voters in states like Ohio, but they also figured out ways to get activists that otherwise couldn’t volunteer to make calls from home.
If you're an expat like Charley James, an American living in Toronto, Canada, who wants to volunteer for a favorite candidate, a virtual phone bank is the way to go.
James contacted the Obama campaign by signing up online. When he has a few free hours after work, he logs in, receives a list of names, a script and a report form and starts calling the all-important Ohio voters. He calls undecided and likely voters and registered Democrats.
He emails his report into the campaign and from there, other data entry volunteers --- either online or at an Obama office --- merge the information into the Obama 'Mother Brain' that scrubs voter data --- updating and cleaning up their voter information database crucial for the Election Day GOTV efforts and setting the stage for the next campaign cycle.
The use of technology like mass texting and online phone banks has been key to Sen. Obama's startling wins during the primary against better-known rivals, who also employed digital-tech outreach but not as efficiently or effectively.
Of course, some campaigns will continue to avoid such innovations, and for valid reasons. As political scientists Donald Green and Alan Gerber observed in their 2004 book, Get Out the Vote!:
“In principle, you can coordinate a phone bank in a decentralized manner, with callers working from home. Although less expensive, this type of arrangement creates potentially serious supervisory problems. Even if the callers are doing their work, you cannot monitor whether they are staying “on message” and conveying the proper tone. For this reason, most campaigns prefer to have phone bank volunteers make their calls from a central location.”
Yet with campaigns being as competitive as ever, their operatives are going to continue to walk a fine line between the traditional safeties of sound quality and centralized volunteers and the 21st Century realities of fast-paced, high-pressure operations that require a block of decentralized supporters.
According to political scientist and campaigns expert Bob Roberts, future campaigns will require flexibility – making use of multiple techniques to get to voters rather than relying on the traditional standbys. "That's the dilemma all campaigns are facing now," he says.
And he’s exactly right.
Come back Friday for Part 3 of the series - Small vs. Large Campaigns.
Part 1 of our 10-part series: “21st Century Campaigning”
Since the beginning of American elections, there has been a presence of campaign images displayed to support a particular candidate or party. While it’s difficult to say for sure, modern yard signs may have been used as far back as the 1920s or earlier.
Yet in all this time there has been relatively little research done (with a few notable exceptions from pioneering grad students) on the effect yard signs have on a campaign's success.
Conventional wisdom - for many, at least - is that yard signs help build a candidate’s name recognition. They also, in theory, help a voter make a decision based on who’s lawn the yard sign is posted on (for example, if it is a conservative neighbor who has posted the sign, and the voter is conservative as well, he would likely feel comfortable voting for the candidate advertised in his neighbor’s yard).
This may be quite accurate for local races. The smaller the race, the greater the impact the sign might have. But for state and federal races, yard signs really don’t persuade many people. They’re actually very ineffective in those terms.
If you don’t believe it, ask yourself when was the last time you made a voting decision based off a yard sign. You probably never did.
And with yard signs being more expensive than canvassing, phone calls, and direct mail, it’s not likely that campaigns are going to rely on such “conventional wisdom” without doing a little cost analysis first. (e.g. How much money do we have? What can we spend it on to get the most number of votes per person?)
Ultimately yard signs - under most circumstances - just aren’t cost effective for these purposes.
Except campaigns still use yard signs.
If they can’t persuade voters, what reasons do campaigns have to use them?
There are a few different theories to answer that question.
One recent study by Costas Panagopoulos of Fordham University finds that posting street signs which remind people to vote actually pushes higher voter turnout. This is something of an extension of an earlier study (Henson, 1977) that explored the relationship between yard signs and turnout in Omaha.
If higher prevalence of yard signs means higher turnout, then certainly the GOTV relevance would be a driving factor for campaigns to consider.
Except there’s no guarantee that higher turnout means more voters supporting your campaign. The liberal who occasionally forgets to vote may be reminded by a sign for a GOP candidate, or a conservative might remember thanks to a Democrat’s sign.
Some studies - as well as our own experiences - also find that yard signs can be very important for new candidates because their prevalence demonstrates the campaign’s ability to organize - something very important for their credibility.
Political campaigns might also be encouraged to produce yard signs because they’re so well grounded in American elections. In fact, a 1997 study (Kenny and McBurnett) says that in addition to television ads and other modern forms of campaigning, candidates will produce yard signs, bumper stickers, etc. because they also “let tradition guide them”.
But it’s not tradition for the sake of tradition is it?
Probably not. The truth is the prevalence of your yard signs vs. that of your opponent’s does have a meaningful impact. That’s because activists (the volunteers and donors) are very supportive of this tradition. If your campaign has fewer signs, they’ll be more discouraged about your prospects for victory, thus they’ll be less motivated to walk neighborhoods, make calls, or give money.
Additionally, the larger the campaign, the more some activists will want your sign in his or her yard - to the point that they’re willing to cover the cost. This was seen most recently in the 2008 presidential election when neither the Obama nor McCain campaigns were quite so willing to give out a lot of yard signs for free.
In fact, the Obama campaign went so far as to charge $5 for a sign, and people got them anyway - and in huge numbers. Obama was a particularly inspiring candidate and the laws of supply and demand allowed his campaign to charge for a product that would otherwise be completely free. Simply put, he was so inspiring that there was actually a demand for his yard signs - a demand you could put a price tag on…literally.
So just because a yard sign isn’t going to directly effect a voter’s decision (especially in the technology age of the most impressive television ads, web design, and mailers ever seen) they still hold a great importance. Sure, political professionals are adapting to new methods of campaigning, but the old ones still have value.
And that’s a good thing. For the political individual, yard signs are fun to put up on the lawn, and it would be a shame to see them go away.
It just wouldn’t be autumn in an even-number-year without them.
Now that July has come, WAYLA is introducing its third series, “21st Century Campaigning!”
Every few days we’ll bring you a new post as part of this ten-part series on campaign tactics and methods that drive a successful election effort. The topics will include…
Phone Banks
Small vs. Large Races
Fundraising
Campaign Ads
Public Relations
Polling
Voter ID
Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV)
New Media Strategies
In the age of “on-demand” where the consumer - or for our purposes, the voter - has more control of what he/she sees than ever, how do campaigns convince Americans to vote for them? With campaign finance reform, how can they still raise money? With the decline of landline telephones and newspapers, how are political professionals transitioning from conventional campaigns to 21st Century ones?
These will be the tough questions we ask throughout the series. We'll look at the histories of these different campaign strategies and dive in to how American politics is adapting to the ever-changing world.
