A few
final thoughts about the 2012 Presidential election:
The New York Times’ Adam Liptak reported that in
the razor-thin 1960 presidential election, John
F. Kennedy campaigned in 49 states, while Richard M. Nixon visited all 50.
But in 2012, another very close contest, the candidates campaigned in only 10 states after the political conventions.
Liptak says that there were towns in Ohio that received more attention than the
entire West Coast.
This
strategy, used by both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney, is the result of micro-targeting of undecideds and
persuadable voters in the swing states. Micro-targeting is the result
of the convergence of three trends:
- The
demographic shifts that are making us a more diverse nation
- The
development of proven psychographic techniques that can be used to compel
undecideds and independents to vote
- The
expanded utility of technology and data mining tools
Scholars
will write books on how psychographic techniques and data mining contributed to
Mr. Obama’s success.
The Obama
campaign used ‘microlistening”
to make every vote count. Microlistening is a term coined by Tim O’Reilly CEO
of O’Reilly Media when he met with Obama campaign officials and heard what they
were trying to do. They parsed constituent concerns in fine detail. If analyzed
correctly; this work is more valuable than any poll. This data was then consolidated
in the campaign’s Dreamcatcher
database.
Another
campaign program Narwhal,
linked once completely separate repositories of information so that every fact
gathered about a voter was available to every arm of the campaign. Such
information-sharing would allow the person who crafts an email about
contraception to send it only to women with whom canvassers have personally
discussed reproductive views or whom data-mining has pinpointed as likely to be
friendly to Obama’s views on the issue.
But let’s focus on the politics of demographics. The demographic shifts mean the country is
now dominated by solidly Democratic states on the coasts and solidly Republican states in the interior and in most of the South. In a close election, all of these states are completely out of reach
for one candidate or the other.
Since it
is the Electoral College votes that really matter and since 41 states
allocate their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, a candidate
confident of winning or sure of losing a bare majority of a state’s popular
vote has no reason to spend resources
or time there.
This was
taken to its logical conclusion in the current election: The swing state battleground
became comically small. Just three states; Florida, Ohio and Virginia accounted
for almost two-thirds of the recent
campaign appearances by the presidential candidates and their running mates.
These three
states represent just 12.5% of the nation’s population.
Four years
ago, the presidential candidates and their supporters bought television
advertising in about 100 of the 210 media markets, said Elizabeth Wilner of Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, but this year,
the battlefield shrank by about one-third.
All
of the money raised by the campaigns and their limited market focus led to using
carpet bombing advertising strategies by both campaigns. As The Economist reports, Borrell Associates, a research
firm, thinks that $7.4 billion was
spent on television and radio advertising tied to all races in this year’s
election.
According
to the Wesleyan Media Project, that expenditure produced almost 50% more ads than in 2008 in the presidential
race.
Nobody loves
‘Citizens United’ more than big media.
Moreover,
as the map below shows, Mitt Romney and his allies outspent Barack Obama and
friends in the key swing states by $65 million. Mr.
Romney also held more events in them: 148 events by Mr. Romney to 95
events by Mr. Obama.
Source:
The Economist
Mr. Obama then won 11
out of 12 swing states on this map. His strategy and execution were strong.
The
campaign by the guy who touted his business experience got a poor return (votes) on his
investment both per ad and per visit.
Not to mention losing.
But the GOP doesn’t do demographics, it does types. It sharply defines
them and then establishes purity tests for inclusion. It’s not enough to be
pro-life; you have say rape is God’s will…
But they didn’t lose simply because of demographics; they are committed to
an ideology that leads them to forget they are maintaining a few unreasonable
positions:
Has a GOP-led
congress ever passed a law banning abortion? Once elected, they haven’t even tried.
Their natural
demographic is middle aged whites and those people known as corporations.
Finally, here is an
obvious case of Havanese voter fraud uncovered by the Wrongologist:
