Will copying Obama’s campaign tactics work in Ireland or not? Mulley does a pretty good job bringing together the reasons why the answer is no if you think that the tactics merely involved lots of bells and whistles courtesy of the Facebook.
Here’s the one stat you need to know to understand why Obama schooled McCain:
30 million
versus
68 million.
30 million: number of voters contacted by the McCain campaign.
68 million: number of voters contacted by the Obama campaign.
All the interweb bells & whistles were just ways to make that level of voter contact possible.
Does voter contact matter? Any tallyman for the Soldiers worth his salt can tell you the answer to that. But if you’re unconvinced, ponder this — the Washington Post reported the weekend before the election that more than HALF of all Virginia voters (not voted Dem since 1964) had been contacted by the Obama campaign, roughly mirroring Obama’s performance in voter contact nationwide.
But here’s the REAL killer stat: among Virginia voters contacted in person, phone, email or text message by the Obama campaign - but NOT the McCain campaign - those voters favoured Obama by 75% to 22%.
Obama won Virgina with a margin of 232,000 votes - or roughly 7%.
So, Tubridy et al - and you’re welcome for giving your site some free exposure at Leviathan last week (and in a few presentations since) - you’d be better off focusing less on riffing on the Obama font (Gotham, in case you care) and more on the ground game. Then, even if you - like Tubridy - are the the whitest guy on the planet, you too can be about change. Yes we can, baby.
Sphere: Related Content
7 responses so far ↓
1 Piaras Kelly // Nov 11, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Key thing to note is the content of the Obama campaign. If Viagra was running in the US elections, surely it would have won the election as the number of voters it contacted (an number of times it contacted them) would have dwarfed that of the McCain and Obama campaigns.
2 Piaras Kelly // Nov 11, 2008 at 10:47 pm
That comment reads a little weird, making the point that you have to consider the message also.
3 Longman Oz // Nov 12, 2008 at 6:43 am
I thought that the REAL killer stat was Obama raising $400 million to McCain’s $170 million.
Oddly enough…
4 Richard // Nov 12, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Piaras - I do think the message is important, because it motivates volunteers (freeing up paid staff for organising); the technology is vital because it superempowers the volunteers (allowing volunteers to contact targeted voters, aggregating geographically dispersed volunteers into a phonebanking operation), allows for superefficient fundraising, and extends reach; and of course the money. But all of them ultimately drive the most basic kind of voter outreach - which is the only effective driver of electoral success. Media and message can do only so much. If someone like me asks me to vote, I get a text message to vote early or on polling day reminding me where my nearest polling station is and the hours it’s open, that is a far more reliable determinant than any other factor. Which is why I believe it is decisive. All the other factors enable it. They are necessary but not sufficient.
5 Dan Sullivan // Nov 14, 2008 at 12:52 am
Richard, I think the point is that none of the above are sufficient but all are necessary. The Dems had to lose in 2004 running someone who was definitely mainstream in order to be prepared to go with Obama. Had Dean run and lost in ‘04, Obama would not have had this shot.
6 Obama - Why Content Is More Important Than Statistics at Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland // Nov 17, 2008 at 8:40 am
[...] Viagra would have won the US general election given how many spam emails people receive about it I disagree with Richard Delevan’s view that the key statistic to look at from Obama campaign is the number of voters contacted compared to [...]
7 Fintan Brady // Nov 22, 2008 at 3:10 am
Yeah, it’s the message definitely Richard, not really the number of times the people were contacted. In an Irish context, as someone who used to do a lot of work in past years - pre 97 - knocking on doors as a FF CDC agent, the tech thing is pretty irrelevant here. The low housing density allows for a good Cllr to know most of his constituents, who he will in turn canvass for his TDs, even in areas where there’s a lot of apartments. The face to face thing is far more preferred, and historically expected, here. And as for Obama’s tech messages targetting the right people, even that’s debatable in the success of it’s application — beyond raw data we still know little. So far, we only know he won. We shouldn’t look at the data that suits our own flimsy specialities and selectively choose to claim that is is more relevant than it really is. If there’s a single message about the effectiveness of the Obama campaign, it’s raise money and spend spend spend.
Leave a Comment