Abstract
In order to run election campaigns effectively, campaign managers have to appreciate how the democratic system in question functions. Different deliberative democracies are governed by specific rules that impact optimal campaign strategies and voter relevance. If a democracy is proportional, all voters are equally relevant, and each voter is as important as the next. However, in constituency-based democracies, boroughs and states can be safe or contested, causing some voters to be more impactful than others. This chapter discusses how campaigns can use campaign frameworks to quantify voter relevance in order to optimise campaign spending and efficiency.
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Notes
- 1.
Electoral disenfranchisement is a serious human rights issue. However, as this book squarely deals with how data-driven campaigns can game elections, that question is beyond the scope of the current book.
- 2.
Often, to introduce checks and balances, representative systems will have multiple chambers (such as The Senate and the House of Representatives in the USA).
- 3.
There are benefits and drawbacks of proportional and representative systems. For the purpose of this book, it suffices to note that the system engenders different campaign strategies, as the electoral impact of a particular voter differs between systems.
- 4.
District 5 is imaginatively connected via an empty highway (like Illinois’ 4th district).
- 5.
- 6.
Weirdly (and somewhat undemocratically), in 39 of the 50 states, the power to draw districts is squarely with the state legislative that is in power at the moment of redistricting. That is, they draw the boundary lines for their own upcoming elections and can gerrymander for political advantages.
- 7.
Goals may be politically motivated (supress opposing party), democratically motivated (increase competition), demographically motivated (representative spread of income and age), and so forth. In some states, specific motivations are illegal (e.g. in the USA, it is illegal to draw ethnically motivated district boundaries, but it is legal to draw politically motivated boundaries).
- 8.
These features, persuasive as they may be, share similarities with dual-process heuristics in that they are outcome-oriented ad hoc observations of cognitive phenomena (e.g. the big-five personality traits discussed in Chap. 7. Similar to heuristics and biases, they represent a supremely useful set of observations, which would be strengthened given a process-based model of individual differences.
- 9.
Naturally, the more parties compete in an election, the smaller the margins for error become. Thus, between two parties, people on the far left and far right will most likely support Democrats and Republicans, respectively. However, in a system with nine parties, people on the far left have a choice between the two most left-leaning parties. Thus, when you increase the amount of parties, you increase the number of voters into play compared with two-party systems.
- 10.
Voter suppression is illegal in most democracies. However, it is perfectly legal to disseminate literature that opines that voting is a fool’s game and send this to people you suppose will support your opponent. Other voter suppression tactics such as requiring identification cards on Election Day are means to the same end.
- 11.
For figures for the USA, see the Center for Responsive Politics report. For figures for the UK, see Dallison (2017).
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Madsen, J.K. (2019). Voter Relevance and Campaign Phases. In: The Psychology of Micro-Targeted Election Campaigns. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22145-4_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22145-4_6
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