What was the Democrat's strategy in Ohio, exactly?
As discussed by Toaster Talks in his excellent post about narrow casting in Ohio, the use of outsiders by ACT was an ill-advised strategy. Dean had tried similar tactics in Iowa and New Hampshire with equally disastrous results.
And after reading the 'Fighting for every last vote' article about Ohio, I was equally unconvinced by the Democrat's strategy, and their use of PDAs to assist them. However, the part of the CNN article that frustrated me most was the comment about tracking contact data:
Every aspect of the campaigns we have discussed so far comes down to one thing - reliable and accurate data. Whether it is the email list, fundraising list, direct mail list or the volunteer list - doing all of that requires the campaign to know where their supporters are and whether they intend to vote for you, donate to you or help you in some way.
There was a sense throughout the article that ACT and others misunderstood the point of new technology. It is a tool, to improve the way you do the basic jobs of voter contact, issue identification and GOTV. Yet instead, they failed to utilize the core strengths of the technology, hoping that voters would be impressed by videos on a PDA.
I think the voters would have been more impressed had a local volunteer come to their door, known who they were, captured their concerns and issues on a PDA and made sure that they received prompt and relevant follow up from the campaign. Oh, in fact, I know they would have been more impressed - that's what the GOP did, and that's why they voted for George W Bush.
And after reading the 'Fighting for every last vote' article about Ohio, I was equally unconvinced by the Democrat's strategy, and their use of PDAs to assist them. However, the part of the CNN article that frustrated me most was the comment about tracking contact data:
But others are worried whether outside operators who are being sent into urban neighborhoods will really connect with and galvanize a notoriously recalcitrant group of voters. Or even keep track of them: at several houses where Lindquist stopped that afternoon, the registered voter had moved without leaving a phone number or forwarding address.What is the point of showing people videos on your PDA, if you are not going to use the PDAs for what they are actually designed for - remote capture of data and synchronizing it back to a central database?! To be fair, maybe they did do that..I know the Republicans did. But if ACT and others were, it was not mentioned, not just in this article, but in the many I have read about PDAs as part of my research.
Every aspect of the campaigns we have discussed so far comes down to one thing - reliable and accurate data. Whether it is the email list, fundraising list, direct mail list or the volunteer list - doing all of that requires the campaign to know where their supporters are and whether they intend to vote for you, donate to you or help you in some way.
There was a sense throughout the article that ACT and others misunderstood the point of new technology. It is a tool, to improve the way you do the basic jobs of voter contact, issue identification and GOTV. Yet instead, they failed to utilize the core strengths of the technology, hoping that voters would be impressed by videos on a PDA.
I think the voters would have been more impressed had a local volunteer come to their door, known who they were, captured their concerns and issues on a PDA and made sure that they received prompt and relevant follow up from the campaign. Oh, in fact, I know they would have been more impressed - that's what the GOP did, and that's why they voted for George W Bush.
3 Comments:
Good point.
You're right. The bells and whistles of remote video technology are irrelevant to the real goals of GOTV, which are to identify and track, and push the buttons to turn out voters. If they wanted to get a video message across, it would have been more cost effective to buy air time.
You triggered another thought as it relates to ACT. Supposing that they effectively captured loads of voter data from their door-to-door canvassing, where does all of this data go? Is ACT going to be the GOTV arm of the Democratic Party in perpetuity? Presumably they cannot simply gift the data to any campaign or party because it would violate in-kind contribution limits. The transfer of official campaign and Party data to 527s would likewise be prohibited due to restrictions on coordination. How, then, do you go about rectifying this disjointedness?
Thanks for the compliment. I think the way the CNN article makes it sound, ACT was just trying to be flashy and impress voters into voting against Bush. Clearly, we all agree that this technique was not and should not be effective. I think the big difference between what ACT and the Republicans were doing was, as you point out, the lists off of which they were operating.
Perhaps Dems have a disadvantage in that their voters are moving more often -- especially because they were targeting areas that were hit hard by job losses. Still, part of the advantage of the new technology is that you have the power to rectify bad data as you go.
In the end, whether it was bad data or a bad strategy, ACT never should have been responsible for Kerry's GOTV efforts. I'd be interested to hear someone on the Ohio campaign explain the actual campaign's strategy.
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