Interesting article in the LA Times, telling you to pay attention to the Republicans’ GOTV man-behind-the-curtain, Karl Rove. (Note to reporters: how about cutting the crap with gooey terms like “virtuoso performance”? How about Just The Facts, Ma’am?) You may have heard about Rove’s famed pyramid-scheme approach to voter contact; the microtargeting of voters; the “72-hour plan”; the shameless use of executive-branch officials to promote locally-focussed pork-type projects. (“Hey, didn’t you use to be Mike Brown?”)
All that is fine and well for the GOP, and it may win them some extra votes and even some extra seats. But compare this to the approach favored by Deval Patrick’s campaign manager John Walsh. Walsh’s standard line is that the way to win gubernatorial races is the same as winning city councillor or State Rep: shoe leather and word-of-mouth.
And guess what? Patrick’s campaign has so far crushed every obstacle in its path, from the caucuses in February through the September primary. Now Patrick’s up by roughly 25 points in the polls. As Tufts prof Jeffrey Berry pointed out last week on WBUR, Patrick’s lead has been pretty consistent over the last month, with the exception of one possibly outlying poll that showed Healey within 13 points.
Now, it is hard to know exactly to what to attribute this resiliency. Certainly Patrick’s charisma and the general Zeitgeist for change has something to do with it. But perhaps Walsh’s insistence on a word-of-mouth approach partly explains why people seem to be reluctant to ditch Patrick, even in the face of extremely tough negative advertising and even his own stumbles. The one-on-one emphasis values quality of voter contact over quantity, but without compromising either.
In other words, one conversation about a candidate with someone you trust is worth any amount of TV ads ingested. The negative stuff just bounces off if you’ve already been predisposed to like a candidate. If your best pal just loves Deval, you’re probably not going to believe that he’s going to free all the rapists.
This is totally unscientific, but I’ll bet campaign smart-guys would say that you could rank quality of voter contact by the following kinds of relationships, from more influential to less:
- Parents/family (most fundamental values are instilled by parents, and I would bet most folks vote like their parents)
- close friends
- work colleagues
- neighbors
- other influential community leaders: ministers, union stewards, etc.
- canvassing
- phone-bank
- radio ads
- TV ads
- campaign literature drop
etc. Folks with more campaign experience than I can correct this list, and of course there is wide quality variation within each type. But it seems wise to try to move folks up the quality-of-contact ladder, as it were, as well as maximize absolute coverage.
In short, if Patrick’s lead holds up (and no, I’m not taking anything for granted), people all over the country are going to want to know exactly what the hell happened here. Much of that attention would naturally fall upon the candidate himself, but John Walsh & Co. would also be in-demand and newly expensive. Certainly Howard Dean’s ongoing 50-State Strategy would have opportunities to export such expertise.
PS: It also strikes me that liberals and progressives need a method and a vocabulary for developing the relationships we already have. That sounds terribly manipulative, but after all, most people view their politics as extensions of their own values. Today’s article in the New York Times discusses a supposedly increasing prickliness between folks of differing political views. Is there a way to address Big Political Issues without pissing off Uncle Bill? But that’s a post for another day.
Only thing I’d change is that I think TV ads are more personal than radio ads, but that might just be me.
All politics is local. Howard Dean understood this long before John Walsh & Co. came along. There is nothing unique and different about this approach. It’s just that somewhere along the line, Dems forgot that politics is about the voters, not about the candidate. Deval Patrick got it from day one. He had the skills and the understanding. He listened and continues to listen.
Would you care to take a stab at the quantitative value of these methods of voter contact?
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p> 100 * Parents/family 70 * close friends 35 * work colleagues 25 * TV debates 20 * community leaders 15 * TV news and interviews 15 * neighbors 10 * canvassing 8 * TV ads 4 * phone-bank 2 * radio ads 1 * literature drop
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Newspaper stories? Or do we, on the internets, just pretend that they have no influence?
90 * Parents/family 100* close friends 50 * work colleagues 20 * TV debates 60 * community leaders 15 * TV news and interviews 20 * neighbors 5-50 * canvassing -10-20 * TV ads 4-20 * phone-bank 2 * radio ads 1 * literature drop
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I think that parents for many people will be less then friends. Choose your friends, not your family.
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I also think that some things are pretty variable. TV ads, as we have seen, can actually be a negative. (For my Dad, for example, Healy’s ads moved him from “eh I’ll vote Patrick I guess” to “Wow, that girl is low, I’ll definately vote Patrick.”) Canvassing can be really good, but it can also be useless, depending on the skill of the canvasser. Same thing for phonebanks.
is the one item you missed.
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For me, a real conversation and listening to the candidate answer other people’s questions has solidified my support.
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In Vermont, where I now vote, I went to meet Scudder Parker, running for Governor, because he spoke intelligently in a newspaper interview about alternative energy and I wanted to check him out.
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We had a real conversation about wind turbines – and when I heard his stump speech I was impressed. Then he came around the room and my friend asked him some very specific questions about future programs. He answered well and then said, reluctantly, that right now he has to focus on getting out his message for the next several weeks – he couldn’t think about January yet.
That honesty goes a long way with me. I’ll ignore and discount a lot of ‘news’ that doesn’t jive with my personal assessment. I’ve contributed money and time to his campaign, which is unusual – I’ve stayed on the sidelines for years.
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I think this is true for Deval Patrick too – he’s connected in person with a huge number of Massachusetts voters.
Lots of people disagree with their parents about politics. Even more people disagree with their more distant relatives. Your family will still be your family no matter how large your political differences are. Friends tend to have more in common with respect to politics, so people are more likely to listen to their friends.
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Neighbors and work colleagues are probably about equally influential overall. It varies a lot from person to person (and depends mostly on how much these groups overlap with the friends group). Many people don’t want to discuss politics at work because they don’t want to fight with people they will have to work with. Neighbors at least live near each other and can basically count on being affected by many government decisions in the same way.