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Managing Election Campaigns
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- Concluding the class Tue, 2010-11-23 00:49
- Week Six: Get Out the Vote (GOTV) Sun, 2010-10-31 03:49
- Week Four-Five: Candidate Statements, Direct Mail, Campaign Organization Fri, 2010-10-22 06:46
- Week One: Understanding the problem Fri, 2010-10-22 06:15
- Miscellaneous Thu, 2010-10-21 16:20
Miscellaneous
Go back to: General discussion
This forum is the right place for general commentary that does not fit neatly into the syllabus topics. For example, I'm sure many are watching the current election cycle. The global crisis of 2008 has created new opportunities and problems for parties, candidates, and the voting public. Since the course focuses on the elements of campaign management, you may want to post relevant comments about the current campaign cycle here, rather than try to sandwich it under finances, or volunteers, or database management, etc...
Stealth candidates and Christine O'Donnell
Much of the commentary about Christine O'Donnell has centered around the fact that she wasn't given a shot at winning, including by polling companies, who are presumed to hold themselves to a more objective standard. Of course, Ms. O'Donnell cannot be truly called a "stealth" candidate. She was more of a perennial candidate and faces accusations by her former campaign manager that she actually lives off campaign contributions.
Nevertheless,there are some elements here to watch:
1. Voters often will not admit to polling companies their preference for a candidate who is in some way "off."
2. Ground campaigns are not terribly visible - except to voters. Good door-to-door campaigning using volunteers is often persuasive and can be very inexpensive as well. As we will see later, door-to-door campaigns only go to perhaps one in every four doors. And the good ones care far more about contact at the door than leaving flyers.
3. Traditionally visible means of campaigning - television ads, handing out flyers, campaign posters in windows and lawns - include some of the least effective tactics.
So, it is possible to fly under the radar. Of course, O'Donnell was a media hound who lived for the lights of television cameras. However, in local campaigns, not alerting your opposition to your growing strength, can be a tool when you are outgunned financially.
A caveat: I am not advocating running stealth campaigns, but there are particular situations in which it is both imposed on a campaign and can be a plus.
The most interesting thing about the O'Donnell campaign was her shoe-string budget. According to opensecrets.org, she raised about $375,000 (as of August 25th) compared to the more than $3 million raised by Mike Castle.[1] Now, that amount of money can go a longer way in Delaware than most places given its size, but it is still a remarkably low number. Volunteer effort must have been a big factor in her victory. I would be interested in knowing more about how she was able to mobilize and organize so many people. There is very little media coverage of this angle, perhaps because those efforts are so diffuse.
One of the (free) weapons that may have helped Mrs. O'Donnell was the fact that she is physically attractive. To my, admittedly biased, eyes the past few presidential elections were won by the most sexually appealing candidate. This isn't something that can be gained by hard work and good campaign management, but it seems like a serious factor. In a close competition between two plausible candidates it could tip the scales.
[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary.php?id=DES2&cycle=2010
There were only 57K voters in the Delaware Republican primary.Doing the math, if an election were trending 60-40 against her with the normal 30,000 voters, she only needed 6000 voters extra to come to the polls to squeeze out the election and that margin can come from any number of efforts. When 57,500 voted, it meant that her campaign swamped the Castle campaign. The Republican Right tends to be very adept at ground campaigns, and no doubt the Palin endorsement this year played a role (even though I think candidates exaggerate the role of endorsements.
And, you're right, they had $7/voter to spend in this cycle. That's a huge amount. I've never had the much money to play with!
Doing the math: Now is that $7/voter times 57,000/57,500 or multiplied by what? Or are you telling the class that you have never had $7.00 to play with, ever? (I saved my lunch money and have $7.00 set aside, just in case).
Again, doing the math, are you saying that there were 30,000 voters in the Delaware Republican Primary, with a grand overall total of 57,500 voters? As a reporter/publisher, I like to be certain of the facts and want to grow in knowledge in this class.
Just let me know about the seven bucks, I do save my lunch money for those who are missing the finer things in life.
Yes, we're definitely talking about $7 per voter, so if there were 50,000 voters, that would be $350,000 to play with. So, while I have sometimes had $7 in my pocket, I have never had $350,000.
The 30,000 was the projected "normal" amount of voters. When 57,500 people vote, then there are 27,500 marginal voters who were turned out by the special circumstances of this campaign and this election cycle. So my point was that there is a natural division when people see two candidates on the ballot. The major ones will split the votes, so even a 60-40 vote is a landslide. So I did a "what-if?" and said that if only the usual voters voted, Castle might have had an 18,000 - 12,000 vote victory over O'Donnell. So O'Donnell, to win, only had to find 6001 O'Donnell voters - people who otherwise wouldn't have voted. With 27,500 additional voters, she was able to turn a likely 60-40 disadvantage into a landslide victory (for her).
in relation to the resent political tea party ruckus, would one look at the attention as a political move to disrupt the way political campaigns are run from using large groups to coming from the roots where most of the frustrations actually are?
as with the french revolution in which the peasants of the middle income populous got wiser and wanted more balance in the way resources were distributed.
hard not to draw similarities.
not enough work available for many and they have expensive lifestyles that can no longer sustain the lives of those who provide them the employment in the critical parts of their lives.
-sanitation
-food
-education
-mineral resources, etc
i am curious what people think about the tea party folk are they real or just a political outfit group looking for attention on the things that would most cause attention to effect a distraction of constructive awareness?
WHy haven't entities like Ron Paul or the Green Parties, even the Pirate Parties of the European parliament-made progress yet? or will their time come soon?
reading up on snippets about ppl's thoughts....
are they more effective and disrupting a meaningful vote or easier at being used as scaptgoats for an improperly planned campaign to push for a one-sided ideal.
Out-of-State Billionaire Oil Barons Pour Seven Figures into California's Climate-Killing Prop 23 | News & Politics | AlterNet http://bit.ly/cCcnvu
what happened to monitoring funding for campaigns to avoid corporate attacks? whose left to protect the nations/states?
"The California [Human]-Civil Code, Section 22.2, provides that the “common law of England, so far as it is not repugnant to or inconsistent with the Constitution for the United States, or the Constitution of laws of this State, is the rule of decision in all the courts of this State.
Why Have Laws? Why have Governments?
At the most basic level, is there any reason to have laws and governments other than to provide an enforcement means for Common Law -- to some extent, the Golden Rule? I.e. who really cares what you do so long as you do not cause harm to others (including doing harm to their property), and keep your agreements?
Granted, there are people who may want you to believe as they do, act in a manner consistent with their beliefs and desires, and otherwise submit to their authority in all or most all matters of consequence. In other words, there are people who want slaves in one form or another -- but who likely do not wish to become slaves themselves.
The enlightened view is to tolerate the varied pursuits of happiness employed by others (so long as they do not cause injury to still others), rejoice in the diversity of human creativity in following their oftentimes strange or perplexing dreams, and recognize the fundamental stability of a society which sees chaos, even Anarchy and/or Revolution, as opportunity, liberty, and freedom of choice.
Under these circumstances, the only function of law and government is to provide equality of freedom, Justice, and Liberty on a consistent basis.
Statutory Law, on the other hand, is inevitably: 1) Not based on principle, and 2) attempts to administer a bastardization of the Golden Rule, i.e. “Dem wid de gold makes de rules.” It often fails to protect the average citizen, but instead is designed to limit the freedom of others to the advantage of a select few. Statutory Law, more than anything else, has as its agenda, the imposition of one group’s opinions upon the lives of countless others.
A potential has always existed that Statutory Law could be used to identify commonality in given situations, and thus serve as an aid in administering Common Law. Unfortunately, this has not been the rule (pardon the pun).
The phrase, Victimless Crimes, actually constitutes an oxymoron -- much like “jumbo shrimp”, “military intelligence”, and “honest politician”. They are two words which contradict one another. How can there be a crime if there is no victim? How, in fact, can one be accused, if there is no accuser who has been harmed? " - Common Law http://bit.ly/bzrnZ4
Wow. That was an interesting post. I'm going to try to reframe the question about the Tea Party in the following manner:
How are insurgent candidates able to defeat incumbents when incumbents enjoy advantages in fundraising, personal recognition, etc... We were just talking about the O'Donnell campaign that was outspent by the incumbent (despite having sources of funding including those you mention above).
Let me make it a more general question so you can see where I am heading: if party representation is somewhat evenly split (even if 60-40 in many areas or between multiple parties in other countries), what explains the ability to "tilt" an election in your candidate's favor?
Like-ability, being able to connect with voters but more importantly being perceived as an answer to their problems. Voters are tired of being feed campaign promises and politicians not delivering when elected to office. The country is still suffering from foreclosures and lack of employment opportunities. I think most voters believe electing new members will fix the problem.
I have a general question: Are there going to be any lectures or reading materials assigned to spur discussion on the topics of the week?
Did you look in course materials? There should be a syllabus with a weekly outline. I have some documentation, such as precinct maps, etc. and will post more as we move on. In terms of formal readings, it is going to rely more on first-hand documentation and my postings on things like voter data.
I deliberately left week one to discuss general issues. But tomorrow I'll have a new post to kick off week two. I'm using forums to set up the discussion areas, but you should be reviewing the syllabus and in the appropriate week, downloading the files.
Good question.
the influencing seems simple enough, advertising on tv, radio excerpts on promises for the secotrs of the economy that are iin the worst state at that time...
mostly the short sighted goals. by some occasionally throw in some new ideas for programs to try and impliment that ppl take an interest in for a whole but don't do well. generate work though. aka Pork projects in bills (us politics)....
if the two houses of governance can edit a bill then they should be under the same roof when it is being discussed. why pay to solve the same problem twice? give the other states a place to complain about each others subsidies as they happen so i can start downloading a C-Span podcast of budget debates :-)
i'd like to see citizens made responsible for their own laws.
its too easy to shift responsibility for action to other ppl to have an easy scapegoat each time nothing gets done.
the price we pay for cheap responsibility is bought in taxes.
The worst part is that after the hard work of getting elected they seem to get swept up in all the schedules of getting so busy travelling when they can take Skype calls for most of their meetings. They don't even need to leave home to do most of t heir work if they really want.
I hate the idea of giving them allowances all the time on top of their salaries. and goodness knows what other gifts they get from funding/donations.
who was getting mocked for living on funding?
i think stuff like that would probably appeal more now to net-citizens, knowing they can contact their reps so easily on issues directly instead of the silly write a hand-written letter madness. (or make an appointment! lol, how fat's your wallet?)
better still electorate communities could all set up a new social platform for their communication with registered candidates for those who want that option as an official contact route 2 their Rep. easier to track requests and feedback.
Tracking even one bill is a nightmare having them online on a chat board where comments and amendments could be made would be more useful.
Politicians have become so expensive to remove & they don't even discuss most of their changes in policy and request enough active feedback on their performance?
how effective are the polls anyway at rating effectiveness of the candidates' campaigns?
You've raised a lot of good points. My goal in this course is to teach the techniques for building a grassroots campaign, particularly at the local level where the barriers are lower.
I'm covering polling later, but polls are of two types: "push-polling" in which there is a disguised campaign message, like "If you heard that the incumbent had voted twice to raise his salary in four years, would you be more or less likely to vote for him. Did you know that Joe So-and-so raised his salary twice in the last four years?" Compare that to this question, "If a candidate had voted to raise his own salary, would that make you more or less likely to vote for him (or not change your opinion at all)?" The use of the second, more objectively phrased question is better if your campaign actually is trying to decide on message. The first kind, aside from the dubious ethics, is an intent to sway the voter on the phone - it is a form of voter contact. (Full disclosure: I only did polling of the second, more objective kind. Really!)
Also, I used a trivial example for the question, but it could be whether a voter favors higher funding for schools, or other more serious policy questions.
interesting. reasoning with voters, hope they are keeping up with the news too. polling should b an interesting topic.
Not surprisingly.... in a slip of representation/leadership... House puts oceans, coasts under UN management?// Senate vote needed 2 seal the deal? http://bit.ly/c1t9DI | ....what for? safer ocean management after BP? smells fishy! so easily caught up in sensationalism to pay attention to the details of bills they are signing!
funny how the bill was dead till the oil spill took place. what i don't get is why it should be the UN & not a federal regulatory agency like the EPA.
Is the encumbent responsible for the EPA?
I believe that it is often that case that events, actions and failure on part of government administration is pushed onto other legal entities. Therefore, the problem does not appear to be of coming from a ministry but from another entity (such as local councils, specially designated authorities) in spite of the government actually founding and funding these entities and policies.