The Story
Left Ahead: Robo-calls and Smear Campaigns
David Gordon may be tired of hearing about the Virginia elections, but I certainly am not. The post-election lull means for me the longest period of anticipation before the next election.
I’ll do what I usually do, then, to keep myself occupied: try to think about what caused the last election to turn out the way it did. I don’t yet understand what happened last Tuesday; it’s been a while since Democrats have won so, frankly, I’m baffled.
I spent the last five days of the election in Harrisonburg, working for Lowell Fulk, a candidate for the House of Delegates in the 26th district. I wrote earlier about Fulk. He is one of the most decent, honorable and humble men I’ve had the pleasure to work for. His family, his coworkers and I all had to watch his name be dragged through the mud by the campaign of his opponent. He lost.
While in Harrisonburg, I listened to a local call-in show to try and get a feel for the election. Citizens expressed their dismay over two factors: negative campaigning and robo-calls (the pre-recorded calls you receive from politicians).
Negative campaigning became a great issue in this last election cycle: Kilgore’s campaign may have ended the day one of his commercials invoked Hitler, while one campaign commercial in New Jersey went so far as to include the ex-wife of the opponent. The attack ads against Fulk virtually accused him of bringing illegal immigrants to Harrisonburg himself and then forcing them to have lots of gay marriages and abortions.
Robo-calls, as an issue, didn’t have the same statewide effect as did the negative ads this election, but they infuriated voters in Harrisonburg. In the campaign office, we were angered when we found out that the Kilgore campaign was making robo-calls to known Democrats, with a person whose voice was similar to Tim Kaine, telling them that Russ Potts was the real progressive in the race. I don’t know if these calls were ever made, but they did send out literature in a similar vein.
I don’t want to defend the use of either negative ads or robo-calls, but I have talked to so many people who have been incensed by the pervasion of such tactics that I have decided to at least try and explain them.
Swing voters are an elusive species. Timid by nature, they must be approached with caution. Campaigners are careful to win swing voter support in methods that only acquaint them with the candidate; among these are mail pieces, yard signs, bumper stickers, and canvassing. The assumption is that swing voters have no long-term memory, so you want to increase the number of times they see your candidate’s name before they get to the polling station.
Known supporters and opposition are quite another story. The harder you beat them over the head with your campaign, the better. Negative advertising broadsides these voters like nothing else. It has two primary effects, to increase the animosity and energy of your supporters against the candidate, in order to increase their turnout, and to demoralize the opposition, to decrease their turnout. On both counts it has proven tremendously effective.
Robo-calls employ a slightly different stratagem. Since your goal as a campaign manager is to bring as many of your supporters to the polls on election day, and you know that the average person doesn’t know what they’re going to eat for dinner each night, you need a technique that will remind as many voters as possible. Unfortunately, at this point in the election you’re running low on funds â€" maybe you spent too much accusing your opponent of beating up children at the park.
Robo-calls are an excellent way to spend your remaining cash on hand; a robo-call costs around six cents per house, while mailings cost ten times that. When the order of magnitude of your voters is above ten thousand, sixty cents might put you in debt. Of course, you always have to cross your fingers and hope that you don’t turn off more voters than the number of people you remind to vote.
That concludes our little discussion on campaign tactics. I’ll still mulling over why exactly the Democrats were victorious this election â€" it’s never as simple as analysts make it seem â€" but for now, another election cycle has come and gone. I myself will turn to 2006: I really hope someone challenges Jo Ann Davis.
Dennis Kihm is a staff columnist for the DSJ. His views do not necessarily represent those of the entire staff.