George W Bush's successful targeting of 'core' supporters in America's 2004 election was the most powerful illustration of the importance of 'getting out the vote' in the modern era.
In 2004 George W Bush won a remarkable election victory. More Americans voted for Bush-Cheney than for any other presidential ticket in history. Conventional wisdom taught that high turnouts always favoured Democrats. How did the Bush campaign turn that conventional wisdom on its head?
The Bush campaign’s Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman understood four main things:
- The conventional media cannot be relied upon to communicate the Republican message;
- Target voters can be identified (like never before) by modern marketing tools;
- Recommendation from trusted third parties can be decisive in influencing voting behaviour;
- Key voting groups need to be motivated by tailored policies.
All of these lessons are relevant to British politics.
Bypassing the old media
America’s old media - like Britain’s ‘red corner’ BBC – is hostile to conservatism.
Karl Rove (the man Bush credited with being ‘The Architect’ of his victory) believes that Fox News, blogs, talk radio and other components of the conservative infrastructure break the liberal-left’s media monopoly.
The Republicans also built up a database of six million email accounts. These contacts were kept up-to-date with campaign news and by careful profiling were given targeted messages as the election intensified. Evangelical voters were sent one set of email messages, for example, and sportsmen another set. Addressees in the catchment area of a local radio station were ‘pinged’ when that station was hosting an election-related phone-in.
This strategy is hard work. Millions are reached whenever CBS or CNN says something. A blog, newsletter or local radio station only reaches tens, hundreds or, maybe, thousands of voters. But these ‘reaches’ tot up in a close election and they are often influential, activist voters. Much of this work went unnoticed by political observers who never left the Washington Beltway. Michael Howard had its dog-whistle politics. America’s 2004 election had its dog whistle media.
Identifying target voters
Republicans purchased mountains of consumer data as part of their drive to identify target voters. Levels of income, viewing habits, magazine subscriptions and a whole range of other ‘flags’ were used to identify voters likely to be hostile or sympathetic. Volvo owners were found to be overwhelming Democrat-supporting. In contrast, subscribers to ‘Christianity Today’ magazine were likely to be Republican.
Tory co-chairman Liam Fox employed the same ‘Voter Vault’ technology in the 2005 campaign. The UK Data Protection Act makes US-style targeting illegal but ‘Voter Vault’ helped the Tories to target direct mail, phone canvassing and other scarce resources on those most likely to vote Conservative.
Winning third party endorsements
After the cliffhanger 2000 campaign when Al Gore’s superior GOTV operation eliminated Bush’s opinion poll advantage, the Republicans studied how to improve their own voter mobilisation effort. Strategist Ken Mehlman concluded that “the most important thing in political communications is "personal contact from a credible source." You are more likely to be persuaded to vote ‘the right way’ by someone you trust. A churchgoer is most likely to be persuaded by a churchleader (a credible, third party source) and more likely still if approached by a fellow churchgoer (personal contact).
The strength of the Bush-Cheney campaign was its ability to motivate hundreds of thousands of activists “with skin in the game”. US political analyst, Michael Barone wrote:
“Presidential campaigns from 1968 up through 2000 spent most of their time, money, and psychic energy on devising television ads to appeal to undecided and weakly committed voters. Bush-Cheney '04 spent unprecedented amounts of time, money, and psychic energy on networking - making connections with voters - through advertising, to be sure, but also through personal contact. The Democrats' turnout drive depended on paid workers persuading strangers to get out and vote. The Republicans' turnout drive depended on volunteers persuading people with whom they had something in common to get out and vote.”
The weakness of Britain’s conservative coalition means that it has inadequate troop numbers to drive a personalised turnout campaign.
Tailoring policies
It is no use identifying target voters if you cannot energise them. The Republicans used commitments against gay marriage and against partial-birth abortion to drive religious conservatives to the polls.
Britain’s Tories have used ‘core vote’ policy stances on immigration and crime to do the same.
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For more information on the issues explored in this definition read American Politics In The Networking Era by Michael Barone and Bush's Well-Mapped Road to Victory by Rich Lowry.
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