Political campaign
A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making progress within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, by which representatives are chosen or referendums are decided. In modern politics, the most high-profile political campaigns are focused on general elections and candidates for head of state or head of government, often a president or prime minister.
Campaign message
The message of the campaign contains the ideas that the candidate wants to share with the voters.It is to get those who agree with their ideas to support them when running for a political position.
The message often consists of several talking points about policy issues.
The points summarize the main ideas of the campaign and are repeated frequently in order to create a lasting impression with the voters. In many elections, the opposition party will try to get the candidate "off message" by bringing up policy or personal questions that are not related to the talking points. Most campaigns prefer to keep the message broad in order to attract the most potential voters. A message that is too narrow can alienate voters or slow the candidate down with explaining details.
For example, in the 2008 American presidential election John McCain originally used a message that focused on his patriotism and political experience: "Country First"; later the message was changed to shift attention to his role as "The Original Maverick" within the political establishment. Barack Obama ran on a consistent, simple message of "change" throughout his campaign.
According to a 2024 study, political practitioners in the United States poorly predict what kind of messaging is persuasive to the public. The study found that practitioners performed barely better than chance at predicting persuasive effects; practitioners performed about as well as laypeople in predicting persuasive effects; and that practitioners' experience, expertise, information environment, and demographics did affect their accuracy.
Campaign finance
Fundraising techniques include having the candidate call or meet with large donors, sending direct mail pleas to small donors, and courting interest groups who could end up spending millions on the race if it is significant to their interests. Funds can also funnel through something called a Political Action Committees which the Supreme Court allowed in Citizens United v. FEC.Organization
In a modern political campaign, the campaign organization will have a coherent structure of personnel in the same manner as any business of similar size. The difference is it is a group paid employees and unpaid volunteers. Campaigns are run by campaign managers, political consultants, and activist or volunteers.Campaign manager
A campaign manager's primary duty is to ensure marketing campaigns achieve their objectives. They work with the marketing manager to create, execute and monitor the performance of campaigns and provide all the resources required to meet sales targets. Campaign managers lead the way in fundraising, advertising, polling, and getting out to vote. They are the face of the campaign behind the candidate.Political consultants
Political consultants advise campaigns on virtually all of their activities, from research to field strategy. Consultants conduct candidate research, voter research, and opposition research for their clients. Their primary focus is mass media and controlling the image.Activists
In the context of political campaigns, activists are "foot soldiers" loyal to a campaign's cause. As supporters, they promote the campaign as volunteer activists. Such volunteers and interns may take part in activities such as canvassing door-to-door and making phone calls on behalf of the campaigns.Techniques
A campaign team must consider how to communicate the message of the campaign, recruit volunteers, and raise money. Campaign advertising draws on techniques from commercial advertising and propaganda, also entertainment and public relations, a mixture dubbed politainment. The avenues available to political campaigns when distributing their messages is limited by the law, available resources, and the imagination of the campaigns' participants. These techniques are often combined into a formal strategy known as the campaign plan. The plan takes account of a campaign's goal, message, target audience, and resources available. The campaign will typically seek to identify supporters at the same time as getting its message across.The modern, open campaign method was pioneered by Aaron Burr during the American presidential election of 1800.
Another modern campaign method by political scientist Joel Bradshaw points out four key propositions for developing a successful campaign strategy. "First, in any election the electorate can be divided into three groups: the candidate's base, the opponent's base, and the undecided. Second, past election results, data from registered voter lists, and survey research make it possible to determine which people fall into each of these three groups. Third, it is neither possible nor necessary to get the support of all people. Fourth, and last, once a campaign has identified how to win, it can act to create the circumstances to bring about this victory. In order to succeed, campaigns should direct campaign resources – money, time, and message – to key groups of potential voters and nowhere else."
Campaign communication
Election campaign communication refers to party-controlled communication, e.g. campaign advertising, and party-uncontrolled communication, e.g. media coverage of elections. It is the strategy used to sway public opinion and gather support for a candidate.Campaign advertising
Campaign advertising is the use of paid media to influence the decisions made for and by groups. The ads are designed by political consultants and the campaign's staff as it is part of their role. The use of campaign advertising varies around the world. In the United States its a free market but in some countries like Ireland its forbidden to advertise campaigns.Media management
Media management refers to the ability of a political campaign to control the message that it broadcasts to the public. The forms of media used in political campaigns can be classified into two distinct categories: "paid media" or "earned media". There are times where some campaigns get little attention, but the ones that do get highlighted for the effectiveness and dramatic events. In the book Campaigns and Elections by author John Sides, it says, "For those that do get attention, media coverage often emphasizes what is new, dramatic, or scandalous. Unlike the candidates themselves, the news media or at least those outlets that strive for objectivity are not seeking to manipulate citizens into voting for their particular candidates.".Paid media refers to any media attention that is directly generated from spending. This form of media is commonly found through political advertisements and organized events. An advantage of paid media is that it allows political campaigns to tailor the messages they show the public and control when the public sees them. Campaigns often prioritize spending in contested regions and increase their paid media expenses as an election approaches. Electoral campaigns often conclude with a "closing argument ad", an advertisement that summarizes the campaign's core themes and explains the candidate's vision for the future. In the 2020 US presidential election, Joe Biden's "Rising" ad starts with him saying "we're in a battle for the soul of this nation" and a worker in Donald Trump's Pennsylvania ad stated "that will be the end of my job and thousands of others" if Trump lost.
Earned media describes free media coverage, often from news stories or social media posts. Unlike paid media, earned media does not incur an expense to the campaign. Earned media does not imply that the political campaign is mentioned in a positive manner. Political campaigns may often receive earned media from gaffes or scandals. In the 2016 United States Presidential Election, a majority of the media coverage surrounding Hillary Clinton was focused on her scandals, with the most prevalent topics being topics related to her emails.
Experts say that effective media management is an essential component of a successful political campaign. Studies show that candidates with higher media attention tend to have greater success in elections. Each form of media can influence the other. Paid media may raise the newsworthiness of an event which could lead to an increase in earned media. Campaigns may also spend money to emphasize stories circulating through media networks. Research suggests that neither form of media is inherently superior. A 2009 study found that media coverage was not significantly more effective than paid advertisements.
Demonstrations
Modern technology and the internet
The internet is now a core element of modern political campaigns. Communication technologies such as e-mail, websites, and podcasts for various forms of activism enable faster communications by citizen movements and deliver a message to a large audience. These Internet technologies are used for cause-related fundraising, lobbying, volunteering, community building, and organizing. Individual political candidates are also using the internet to promote their election campaign. In a study of Norwegian election campaigns, politicians reported they used social media for marketing and for dialogue with voters. Facebook was the primary platform for marketing and Twitter was used for more continuous dialogue.Signifying the importance of internet political campaigning, Barack Obama's presidential campaign relied heavily on social media, Search Engine Optimization and new media channels to engage voters, recruit campaign volunteers, and raise campaign funds. The campaign brought the spotlight on the importance of using internet in new-age political campaigning by utilizing various forms of social media and new media to reach new target populations. The campaign's social website, my.BarackObama.com, utilized a low cost and efficient method of mobilizing voters and increasing participation among various voter populations. This new media was incredibly successful at reaching the younger population while helping all populations organize and promote action. In the book Campaigns and Elections author John sides also speaks upon this on page 235 and says, "Online communities can still promote involvement in campaigns: large experiments on Facebook found that users who saw that their Facebook friends had reported voting were themselves a bit more likely to turn out to vote. But there is also evidence that offering token public support for a cause on Facebook or Twitter may make one less likely to be involved in offline campaign activities".
Now, online election campaign information can be shared in a rich information format through campaign landing pages, integrating Google's rich snippets, structured data, social media open graphs, and husting support file formats for YouTube like .sbv,, and. High proficiency and effective algorithmic integration will be the core factor in the framework. This technology integration helps campaign information reach a wide audience in split-seconds. This was successfully tested and implemented in the 2015 Aruvikkara election and the 2020 Kerala elections. Marcus Giavanni, social media consultant, blockchain developer and second place opponent in the 2015 Denver mayoral election, was first to file for the 2019 election. Marcus Giavanni used advanced algorithms, artificial intelligence, and voice indexing predictions to box in campaigns.