Technology that Wins Elections
By Matt Lewis Posted in User Blogs — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Recently, I attended a conference on the use of technology in politics. Or, in short, bloggers talking to bloggers about how great blogging is...Most of the speakers were liberals. And while I believe in the maxim: "Know thy enemy as thy self," I couldn't get past the fact that I was listening to "experts" who had just been out-manuevered by Republicans.
True, Democrats get a lot of press for their use of technology. But Republicans use technology to win elections. It occurs to me that this phenomenon has to do with the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats (in short, our worldview is different). Here's my theory:
Democrats view technology as a game. They like to put a lot of effort into blogging and hope to be able to, "create an internet community." Republicans (who by nature are outcome-based and serious) tend to use technolgy (like micro-targeting) to identify, persuade, and turn-out voters on Election Day.
The normally annoying Susan Estrich has just published a column that seems to corroborate my position:
At the time Dean pulled out of the race in 2004, his much-vaunted website was getting one-tenth as many hits as George Bush's. Even more important, the Bush team, under the leadership of then-Rove deputy Ken Mehlman, was embarked on a sophisticated technological project that allowed it to communicate with voters in key states and key groups the same way Amazon does with regular purchasers: Understanding more than name, address and serial number, Amazon knows what I like, and what my family likes, and what other people like me like, so that when they write to me, they know how to sell to me. So did Bush.
On the Sunday before the election, Karl Rove was in a position to squeeze out every single Bush voter he needed, a capacity Democrats couldn't match.
I hope the Dems keep on talking to the converted and let the business of identifying, persuading, and turning-out voters to us...
You know what, you're absolutely right. These "technology in politics" conferences really are just bloggers talking to bloggers about how important they are. Every independent analysis of blogs shows that they're pretty fun but largely useless and ineffective in the real political world. Thankfully no one at RedState.org, as best as I can tell, has claimed that it was responsible for Bush's re-election or anything else. I can only imagine what blogs and bloggers would have taken singular credit for a Bush defeat/Kerry victory.
There's only a certain degree of technology that can really help win elections. I don't think blogs, in the sense that I mean unaccountable people posting articles and then other people commenting on them, are one of those things that actually helps win elections.
The Internet-based technology that is useful in winning elections seems to be:
- online volunteer control panels (like call lists, for example - teamvolunteer.com is an example)
- conference calls
- mailing lists
- campaign updates (this is where blogs are somewhat useful)
- fundraising/small-amount contributions
Politics is still more about what you're able to do on television and with actual voters, not the party activists you can get riled up online. Let's not even begin to consider the fact that most Americans don't decide on their votes by bloggers screaming at them, calling them backwards racist retards if they don't vote for Candidate A.
I consider Dean's theory of insulting red state voters to try to get them to come over to his party to be on a very similar level as to the "political activism" of most bloggers.
- I don't think blogs, in the sense that I mean unaccountable people posting articles and then other people commenting on them, are one of those things that actually helps win elections
I would agree with that as a general principle, in the sense of that being the way to plan, if you are planning a campaign.
However, every campaign has surprises, and it would be wrong to say that blogs cannot produce a surprise that effects the election. I think we saw one in 2004, where CBS' ham-fisted attempt to mortally wound Bush blew up in their faces. Blogs played a huge role in that episode. Did that "win" or "lose" the election? Who knows. But it was clearly CBS' intent that they cause Bush to lose, or at least take a serious hit.
Some years ago, Biden was caught plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock. In the age of blogs, any politician who tries anything like that is a fool.
So although blogs may not occupy a significant role in any one campaign, they do serve the useful function of the keeping the other players honest.
Or outright lying about the other candidate, making it virtually impossible to tell truth from political exaggeration and lies.
One effect that I think is important: most bloggers (and those who read blogs) are "influentials."* They are the 5% of the country who influence their friends and family on issues and voting. These are prime targets parties and issue oriented campaigners.
Also, I think local bloggers can have an effect. Specifically the SD Politics guys probably helped Thune win. He may have done it anyway, but they provided an alternative to the pro-Daschle SD newspaper. Further, their converage made the newspaper temper its unabashed pro-Daschle message and address certain issues that they had avoided before (specifically the Daschle says X in DC and Y in SD). It may have been enough to flip that narrow election in a small state.
*This statistic is from a large blogger survey done last year although I didn't look for the link... I'm feeling lazy.
That's a good point. In states without a lot of media saturation and diversity of available opinion and information, blogs can make a big difference. But in a national election, for example, I think they're overrated.
It is my observation (from the inside) that a lot of electronic campaigning is being run by retreads from the direct-marketing world who think that "merge/purge" is the height of technological sophistication.
These people think in terms of 'lists,' not individuals, and demographics even when better data is available. Tell them you have 30,000 names of people who self-identified as "yuppies" on the Sharper Image web site, and they'll you they don't need it because they have 25-to-45's in metropolitan zip codes.
Let's just hope the Democrats keep hiring those folks.