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Managing Election Campaigns - Mar 2010
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- Understanding Elections - Discussion Mon, 2010-04-19 02:00
Understanding Elections - Discussion
Understanding Elections – Week 1
The focus of this course is not on the most important elections, but rather on managing the relatively low-interest variety – local elections – even when these involve an electorate in the hundreds of thousands of voters. For example, school board elections can be very important to the people affected by the decisions of school boards, but this group of parents, teachers, school employees, etc…, is invariably a small minority of the total electorate. This represents our first problem: those affected by an election are a small minority of the potential and actual electorate.
A second problem is that unless you live in a country where voting is required by law, only a portion of the potential voters actually vote. In the United States, typically fewer than half of the electorate votes in a given election, including elections for the president of the country.
A third problem is that the more people who actually vote, the more disadvantaged will be the campaign with fewer financial resources to produce campaign literature, to contact voters via mail, and even to contact voters via telephone.
Most local candidates do not even think about these problems, even though they shape the terrain. Our job, through this course, will be to use past voter history to project likely voter turnout, to figure out who those voters are, and to target the absolute minimum necessary to shift the voting enough to secure victory for our candidate. To do this, we will talk about aligning resources with our campaign activities. But the first key is to understand that we have to find out what is the minimum necessary.
Do you agree? What are the implications of this statement of the problem of local campaigns? If there are 100,000 voters and the turnout is likely to be 30%. How many voters would you have to contact? Why did you choose that number?
In the discussion, we'll try to untangle the issues involved.
Concering the first problem, I would say that only a small proportion of the electorate being affected very much depends on the elections, for school boards yes I would agree, living in Sweden I would say the most direct comparison is the Church elections, which many non active Church members can vote in. However, for local komunal elections the effect for the majority of voters is large. Sweden also has higher turnouts even in these elections than the UK or US does.
The third problem I would say is applicable, however, there becomes a point where a larger number of voters dilutes the effect of money. As a campaign moves away from 'retail politics' and towards a more mass communication the effect of money dilutes to a degree, then as the electorate gets even bigger and the cost of media thus re introducing the effect of money. These effects seem to be less important to me in the European context as most north European countries have systems of limited spending and state finance.
About contacting voters, I really have very little experience with this so am reaching into the dark for a number and going for 15000, as in a threshold system 50% is needed to get elected, but I have no idea how practical that is in reality.
I was surprised how easy it was to get voter information from previous elections. The county Registrar of Voters burned a CD with voter records for the last 5 elections while I waited. Now we have it for reference.
In general I agree with the problematic situationo of the elections. I'm writing from the mexican example. So I may say that the most local and bottom elections are those held for selecting the Presidentes Municipales, or County Mayors.
The mexican electoral laws doesn't establish the obligation of vote. But the electorate need to register and obtain it's electoral credential to do so. The most of the adult population has it's electoral credential mainly because it is recognized as and official ID.Althoug the mean of electoral participations is around 40 to 50% of the potential electorate.
Also in the latinamerican countries where the vote is obligatory, the abstention proportions raise higher numbers.
The campaing money comes mainly from public finance, and actually the acces to the media is regulated and is distributed by the national electoral organization (IFE). With these two elements the electoral system tries to regulate the influence of the money (public or private) in the electoral competition, but it's been really complicated to do so.
At the local level are two main strategies for electoral campaings to develop: 1) the door-to-door campaing headed by the candidate in the district or municipio (area smaller than a district), and 2) pamphlet, posters and local media usage. The first is considered more efective to conquer votes, but excesively costly, and the second reaches the mayority of the electorate but it has shown to be not so efective. At the end the local electoral campaings has been showing and equilibrium between these two strategies. But yes! those candidates with not enough finance resources have shown disadvantages in the electoral run.
Finally, the minimun vote for winning depends on the electoral formula (among others) at local level. In Mexico consist in simple mayority, so it reduces even more the minimum vote necessary to win the elections.
I believe the implications of the problems stated for the election obligate the campaing managers to maximize their efforts to know the electorate for focusing the strategies to obtain the vote, always keeping in mind the electoral rules and behavior of the electorate.
Is anything happening with the course? The topic sounds interesting and I would really like to learn more. Perhaps we could keep moving along with some direction, even if we don't do the 'homework'. The questions are a bit overwhelming for those of us who are just interested rather seriously studying election campaigning.
Just because we aren't posting, doesn't mean that we aren't interested. Quite the contrary... We really don't know enough to contribute to a meaningful conversation on the subject.
Hi Valerie,
I called it quits on this six-week session because I didn't generate any activity from the five listed participants. But I've been told there were bugs in the that kept announcements, etc... from reaching the participants, so I will try to make this a go in the next session, which should be May or June. For those who want to continue, some of the richest material has yet to be posted, such as real voter data (with names and phone numbers altered for privacy reasons) and demonstrations of how to analyze it, how it feeds into the campaign plan. I'm glad you're interested and I would encourage you to sign up again in the next session.
Thanks for the update.
I teach online courses and participate in others. It is very difficult
to get any discussion going with this small group, especially when it
is free.
Having to start off posting when there is likely to be a "right"
answer is a formidable challenge. A more casual, personal, low-stakes
question works well as an ice-breaker. Introducing yourself and
helping people to get to know you, the instructor would be
appreciated, too.
A friend is running for Congress in November so I really need to get
some pointers...
All the best
..Valerie
I agree with what Valerie says that the question was rather hard, I know my answer lacked a lot of detail. There was a general intro question as I remember but I couldn't find where to answer it so I think there are still some technical hitches to be worked out :)
I am new to P2PU and have interest in this course. I am experienced doing local ballot initiatives, have participated in many statewide efforts and have run for various political seats.
I am preparing to launch a borough initiative to take the municipal authorization to collect grocery taxes from the local cities within our borough. Normally, I fund these efforts out of pocket, but due to my local economics, I am unable to do so this time... so I'm working to bring other individuals and/or organizations into this effort.
I have interest in participating in this educational experience. Perhaps I'll join up in May or June, if there's interest in moving ahead with this course then.