dr. matthew wall, political campaigns: week6/7. a combination of two topics: 1) ground wars –...
TRANSCRIPT
Campaigns on the ground and online.
Dr. Matthew Wall, Political Campaigns: Week6/7
A combination of two topics:
1) Ground wars – direct political communication during political campaigns.
2) The ‘first wave’ of studies of parties’ and candidates’ use of the internet.
This week’s talk
Distinction between national-level ‘air war’ that takes place in national media and local-level ‘ground war’ conducted by individual candidates, supporters and party members in their area.
While the ‘air war’ element has become more and more central to political campaigns, ground wars remain a vital part of the process, and have been of considerable interest to scholars.
Ground wars
Ground Activities:
Local fundraising: Everything from raffles, to pub quizzes, to ‘church gate’ collections.
Postering, distribution of printed leaflets and other electoral hardware (including distribution of buttons, bumper stickers, and ‘yard signs’).
The ‘Canvass’: Door-to-door housecalls by the candidate and/or teams of volunteers.
A form of core vote research: What are the most important local problems? (Query cards)Which voters are most receptive? Which residents most likely to vote? Which individuals most likely to make a campaign contribution?Collection of contact details: addresses, phone numbers, emails of likely supporters to streamline future contact. Thus data collection and management is a key feature of effective local campaigning.
Ground wars
Activities:
Mobilization of support on election day:
‘Knocking up’ likely supporters (literally knocking on their doors and reminding them to vote, in some cases provision of transport to the polling centers).
Telephone and email bombs to lists of identified supporters. Research from the USA shows that personal housecalls are
considerably more effective for turnout than phonecalls, but they require far more human resources to conduct.
Also, making sure that likely supporters are registered to vote prior to election day.
Ground wars
Date HouseEstate Part Name Ph Number Email Address Query04/02/2009 21 Glenvale Alison Breen aoneill@hmc-i
p.comLighting on lane, Syringes on Green
04/02/2009 15 Glenvale Pavel Hoarcek skumill@hotm
ail.comRegistration Form
04/02/2009
Patricia Thompson trisheds.thom
Gaelscoil Eiscir Riada/ Dumping04/02/2009 11 Glenvale
Ann-Marie Stanley annastanley2
Lane, Green - Syringes/Junction with Foxboroough- Signage/ASB
04/02/2009 4 Glenvale Nicola Miller nmiller@glan
bia.ie
Dumping/Lighting on Lane/Junction with Foxborough - Signagae
04/02/2009 2 Glenvale
Rajkumar Sundara Raju rsraju@hotma
il.comDumping/Anti-Social Behaviour
04/02/2009 4 FoxboroughHall
Denisa Cervenicka Sedlakova end31082005
@yahoo.comRegistration Form
04/02/2009 12 FoxboroughHall
Thomas Fitzpatrick Lighting by Wynnard
Example of ground war materials: summary of issues collected by canvassers in an Irish local election campaign.
CANVASSER ETIQUETTE:
SMILE! BE POSITIVE! Put as much info as possible on QUERY CARDS – don’t forget the address! Don’t cut across in front of windows or across lawns Close gates when leaving
WHAT TO SAY:
Don’t firefight their problems, just listen and let them get it out USE the message track If they hate FF say “Sorry for disturbing you” and walk away ASK “Will you give Séin your number 1 vote?”
YOU SHOULD HAVE ON CLIPBOARD:
Tracking Sheet Register Message Track Query Cards Hello Card Sorry I Missed You Card Voter registration form/letter
Vote MOYNIHAN,
SHANENO. 1
OR ELSE please give him your HIGHEST
PREFERENCE
SHANE is from LUCAN:- Living here since 1991
- Attended Archbishop Ryan primary school
- Works in Penny Hill- Lives & commutes from Lucan
TRANSPORT:- Shane wants to
reorganise the bus routes so people get to
work quicker- The 25A is a cash cow and is safe from current
cuts
EDUCATION:- Shane will fight to secure
a secondary school for South Lucan
- His Voluntary Tuition programme will help in the
wake of education cuts
COMMUNITY SPIRIT- Shane's VTP will help regain the community spirit that an
expanded Lucan has lost- Shane is setting up a
community games organisation for Lucan and has helped set up residents
associations to foster commmunity spirit
LUCAN has no DIRECT LINK to GOVERNMENT:- Has been no FF councillor in Lucan
for 5 years- John Curran needs a FF councillor
- Shane will be able to fight for resources for Lucan and defend
against the coming cutbacks
‘Modernisation’ of politics from the mid 1950s onwards saw analysts more concerned with the national than the local.
Local campaigns were seen as part of the ‘ritual’ of politics, and largely as expressive, rather than instrumental.
This view was championed by British political scientists in Oxford, led by David Butler.
Argued that partisan trends/‘swings’ were largely uniform across constituencies.
An empty ritual or a political weapon?
However, from the early 1990s, several UK scholars have found evidence that local campaigning is a significant determinant of candidate and party performance.
Scholars have used a variety of methods to measure intensity of localized campaigns:
1) Voter surveys (frequency of reported contacts)2) Surveys of election agents (campaign organisers) on the number
of volunteers and extent of activities. 3) Local spending returns4) Combinations of several such items.
Have consistently found that candidates with strong local campaigns perform better, though this varies across parties to some extent (Conservatives appear to perform slightly less well in this regard).
An empty ritual or a political weapon?
Ideally, parties seek to campaign most intensively in constituencies that are electorally ‘marginal’: i.e. where the race is close.
Resources can be somewhat wasted in ‘safe’ seats, and are of little use in ‘no hope’ seats.
Research indicates more intense local campaigning (UK) in ‘marginal’ seats, though also reports ‘inertia’ effects: more resources than ideal in ‘safe’ seats.
Simply, parties have limited capacity to move supporters to preferred constituencies (though ‘bussing in’ of canvassers/volunteers is not unheard of).
Targeting local campaigns
Very high in countries with personalized systems (where candidates rather than parties win votes) in Ireland, the UK and the USA proportions of voters reporting personal campaign contact varies from 45% to 65% (with Ireland on the upper end).
Lower in countries with party lists – though
considerably higher in countries where lists are ‘open’ rather than closed.
E.g., Only 6% of voters reported personal contact in Spanish election study).
Significant variation in extent of ‘ground war’ activity.
Notable increase in involvement of central party in organization and roll out of localized campaigns.
Increasing supervision of local campaign materials and messaging.
Use of centralized telephone canvassing and polling to inform the local campaign.
In some cases, appointment of campaign agent by/from the central party, rather than local organization.
Towards nationally coordinated local campaigns?
From the mid 1990s onwards, the potential of the internet for political campaigning/activism was a source of popular and scholarly interest.
However, the process was gradual, having a campaign website was a minority phenomenon among candidates into the early 2000s.
Howard Dean’s (2004) use of internet to raise funds in USA primary showed potential – Obama 2008 arguably ‘mainstreamed’ online campaigning.
Online campaigns – the first phase
The internet in the period roughly from the mid 1990s to the mid 2000s provided different platforms and opportunities than the contemporary internet.
User-generated content played a far smaller role, with a small number of web site designers and a large number of consumers.
Hence, analysts in this period focused on the websites created by parties and candidates (as well as state institutions) as the key objects of interest.
Online campaigns – the first phase
Political takes on the internet Two grand hypotheses of the 1990s 1) Cyber-optimists: internet can dramatically enhance
participatory democracy – facilitates participatory communication patterns (as opposed to ‘mass’ communication technologies).
Internet technology could potentially facilitate greater citizen participation in democratic decision making and accountability – especially its facility to register political preferences of large numbers of citizens.
Relatively low cost of launching a website could create a more level playing field?
Cyber-pessimists 2) Cyber-pessimists: ‘Politics as usual’
(Margolis and Resnick, 2000) will prevail.
Resource imbalances offline will translate into the online sphere – larger parties, companies etc. will have both better online ‘products’ (due to access to expertise) and a greater online following (due to name recognition).
The ‘normalisation hypothesis’.
Looked at 3 principal questions:
1) Do party/candidate websites make use of ‘bottom up’ communication capacities of the internet?
2) What factors explain uptake of cyber-campaign by parties and candidates?
3) Is online campaig effective in terms of winning votes?
Practical research in the first phase
This question was investigated by content analysis of campaign websites.
Identified ‘information provision’ functions versus interactive functions.
Information provision functions related to the parties’ history, policies and candidates.
Early stage interactive functions included: online polls, discussion boards, facilities for new members to join online, candidate blogs that allow users to comment.
1) Do party/candidate websites make use of ‘bottom up’ communication capacities of the internet?
Empirical analyses found that party sites used a far greater number of ‘information provision’ tools than ‘interactive’ ones.
One scholar (Rachel Gibson) reviewed the findings of this literature as follows:
‘websites appear to be largely mechanisms for feeding information to activists and journalists and for symbolizing the ‘cutting edge’ credentials of parties, rather than providing any meaningful interaction with voters’.
1) Do party/candidate websites make use of ‘bottom up’ communication
capacities of the internet?
Researchers saw an opportunity to examine adoption of a new communication phenomenon in real time.
Research in this area tended to focus on the likelihood of individual candidates launching a campaign site (larger n for analysis).
One significant determinant was ‘demand’ candidates in regions with high levels of internet penetration were more likely to launch websites than those in low penetration areas.
2) What factors explain uptake of cyber-campaign by parties and candidates?
Party factors:
1) Resources – candidates from larger/better resourced parties were more likely to have webpages overall. Some argued that this was because central parties often paid for expertise in web design – most large parties developed a ‘site in a box’ template for their candidates.
2) Culture – some argued that new and far left
party candidates may be more likely to launch sites, little evidence that this was the case.
2) What factors explain uptake of cyber-campaign by parties and candidates?
Candidate factors: 1) Demographics – some evidence that same
demographic profiles who were more likely to use web were more likely to launch sites as candidates.
2) Competition – it was thought that candidates facing close races would be more likely to launch campaign sites. Little evidence that this was the case.
3) ‘Peer pressure’ candidates look to other competitors and launch sites to ‘keep up’ and not look out of date in their areas.
2) What factors explain uptake of cyber-campaign by parties and candidates?
3) Web campaign effectiveness
Not a promising scenario : Web campaigning accorded low priority by candidates, least consumed and trusted medium among voters.
Moreover, election surveys indicate that party/candidate sites are visited only by a small percentage (5-10%) of voters.
Never Always
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Newspapers 2 2 3 6 5 9 8 64
TV 7 7 7 11 10 8 7 41
Radio 14 4 5 5 6 10 6 49
Internet 69 7 4 3 3 3 2 5
% Frequencies of consultation of media for political news by Irish citizens.
Source: INES 2007.
However, several articles find evidence of online campaign effectiveness: D’Alessio (1997) US 1996; Gibson and MacAllister (2006, 2011) Australia 2004, 2007; Sudulich and Wall (2010) Ireland 2007.
Several explanations: Direct effects ‘two stage’ effect. indirect boost in offline media coverage
3) Web campaign effectiveness
Subject of next week’s lecture and one of this week’s presentations.
Movement from website only to mulilateral online campaigns on several platforms.
Increasing recognition of cyber campaigning as a mainstream activity in which vast majority of candidates participate.
Second phase web campaigning