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Get More Bang For Your Billion
According to a Washington Post analysis, the “GOP Got More Bang For Its Billion.” In the most expensive presidential contest in the nation’s history, John F. Kerry and his Democratic supporters nearly matched President Bush and the Republicans, who outspent them by just $60 million, $1.14 billion to $1.08 billion.
Not long ago, I stated that blogs now have the ability to shape the news. That is, they have the ability to cause changes in how stories are reported and thus can change the direction of stories. Then, I was misconstrued as saying that the blogs had done all of the legwork in causing a Bush presidency. That wasn’t what I meant. They played a role in his election by fending off the most vicious attack against him.
This Washington Post article tells why President Bush won re-election. In a word, it was “strategery.” From the moment he took office in 2000, he started planning his re-election bid. And it is perhaps most important to note that he did so by thinking outside of the box. Notice the big difference between his emphasis and that of others:
In 2001, Dowd said that “we made some of the basic strategic assumptions about what we thought the election would look like.”
One fundamental calculation was that 93 percent of the voting-age public was already committed or predisposed toward the Democratic or Republican candidate, leaving 7 percent undecided.
Another calculation was that throughout the Bush presidency, “most voters looked at Bush in very black-and-white terms. They either loved and respected him, or they didn’t like him,” Dowd said. Those voters were unlikely to change their views before Election Day 2004.
That prompted Republicans to jettison their practice of investing 75 to 90 percent of campaign money on undecided voters. Instead, half the money went into motivating and mobilizing people already inclined to vote for Bush, but who were either unregistered or who often failed to vote — “soft” Republicans.
Another huge difference came in targetted media:
[T]he RNC began investing in extensive voter research. One of the most striking findings, according to Republican consultants, was the ineffectiveness of traditional phone banks and direct mail that targeted voters in overwhelmingly Republican precincts. The problem: Only 15 percent of all GOP voters lived in precincts that voted Republican by 65 percent or more. Worse, an even smaller percentage of “soft” Republicans, the 2004 target constituency, lived in such precincts.
The RNC decided to cast a wider net for voters. But to work, Dowd’s motivation and mobilization strategy needed expensive, high-tech micro targeting to cherry-pick prospective Republicans who lived in majority Democratic neighborhoods.
Republican firms, including TargetPoint Consultants and National Media Inc., delved into commercial databases that pinpointed consumer buying patterns and television-watching habits to unearth such information as Coors beer and bourbon drinkers skewing Republican, brandy and cognac drinkers tilting Democratic; college football TV viewers were more Republican than those who watch professional football; viewers of Fox News were overwhelmingly committed to vote for Bush; homes with telephone caller ID tended to be Republican; people interested in gambling, fashion and theater tended to be Democratic.
Surveys of people on these consumer data lists were then used to determine “anger points” (late-term abortion, trial lawyer fees, estate taxes) that coincided with the Bush agenda for as many as 32 categories of voters, each identifiable by income, magazine subscriptions, favorite television shows and other “flags.” Merging this data, in turn, enabled those running direct mail, precinct walking and phone bank programs to target each voter with a tailored message.
“You used to get a tape-recorded voice of Ronald Reagan telling you how important it was to vote. That was our get-out-the-vote effort,” said Alex Gage, of TargetPoint. Now, he said, calls can be targeted to specific constituencies so that, for example, a “right to life voter” could get a call warning that “if you don’t come out and vote, the number of abortions next year is going to go up. ”
Dowd estimated that, in part through the work of TargetPoint and other research, the Bush campaign and the RNC were able to “quadruple the number” of Republican voters who could be targeted through direct mail, phone banks and knocking on doors.
Now, I was a member of the old school, I guess. I thought that you get votes by knocking on doors, mailing some campaign literature, and working phone banks. It turns out I was mostly wrong. You have to not only get out and find the people, you have to make sure that your message is closely aligned with their own core issues. Talking about fiscal conservatism isn’t very effective when the person you’re talking to cares far more about 2nd Amendment protections. And here, really, is where the Bush campaign really shined. They were able to spend the money they had on targetting voters by sending literature dealing with their core issues instead of shotgunning everything and hoping something struck home.
The telling set of figures that show how effective this strategy was come from here:
Overall, Kerry, the DNC and the Democratic 527s spent $344 million on ads, while Bush and the GOP counterparts spent about $289 million, much of which was disbursed in the final three months. Arguably, Republicans got more bang for their bucks.
Notice those numbers. In the last three months of the campaign, Sen. Kerry outspent President Bush by $55 million. What was happening while that occurred? The debates, for one thing. Remember those debates in which everyone said that the President did so poorly? During that period of time, Senator Kerry, MoveOn.org, America Coming Together, and others were outspending President Bush and the Swift Boat veterans in media buys. This was a time period in which, as a result of that extra cash, Senator Kerry should have been able to mop up. But he didn’t.
The reason why he didn’t was two fold. First, as we already noted, more time and effort were put into getting out the existing “soft” Republican voter. The second reason was that the President’s media efforts went into exploiting the knowledge gleaned from the targeting efforts where they made better use of information available to the candidates. Senator Kerry shotgunned his message out there hoping something, somewhere would stick to something, somehow. President Bush’s campaign carefully considered what they were doing and how to best exploit what they learned.
The big lesson to be learned from all of this is that individual voters expect to be individually motivated. President Bush understood this. And now you do, too.
MickC @ December 30, 2004