Almost no one changes their mind in elections; Almost everything that goes on in elections is
(1) motivating people who have already made up their mind to go vote or
(2) theater to convince the least-attentive least-well-informed voters.
Raising the level of discourse of the theater is probably not going to have a significant effect; the theater is targeted at the people least interested in how much sense things make.
Source: I worked for the DNC during the 2012 cycle.
Seems reasonable for general elections but what about primaries? A lot of people changed their mind about Rick Perry after his debate performances in the 2012 republican primaries. If better debates during the primaries produced better candidates from both parties, that seems like it would be a win.
I think it was more a perception of a general lack of competence on the part of Perry during the debate then either one of those things.
People aren’t just voting on the issue, at least not for president; trying to find someone who will intelligently and competently run a large bureaucracy and make decisions about new issues and foreign affairs on the fly is probably just as important. If someone seems like they’re not competent enough to do the job properly, then that seems like a rational reason to vote against them.
(Now, if Perry is actually incompetent or if he just came across that way is an issue that could be debated, but I think it’s a rational thing for voters to consider.)
Not that I disagree, but in the interest of playing devil’s advocate, where’s this coming from? Is the reasoning evidence-based, or is it just stuff that “everyone knows”?
It’s not too surprising to me that established political orgs like the DNC believe almost all the available leverage to be found in rallying the base or theatrics targeted at uninformed voters; that is after all what we observe them doing. But beliefs like that often turn out to have more to do with culture than the outside world. If the DNC is basing them on data that hasn’t been widely disseminated, on the other hand, that could be surprising and useful.
Political science corroborating observed evidence; The polls barely moved at all during the entire 2012 cycle, including internal very-expansive-and-ultimately-accurate polls. I very much doubt this is a cultural-belief based thing—if anything, political operatives tended to believe they had more ability to influence results than reality would suggest.
Political organizations have algorithms to predict how an individual will vote, how likely they are to vote, and how likely they are to volunteer to work for a candidate. These algorithms are actually pretty simple, with a ton of accuracy coming from not-very-much data (and severely diminishing returns on increased accuracy as you pour in massive amounts of marginally-useful data). They run experiments (testing different methods of GOTV, different email subject lines) using control groups and decently-large sample sizes to see if any discernible change is induced by any of these approaches. Spoiler: After thousands of experiments, nothing earth-shaking was discovered. The biggest discovery of the last cycle was “using short, casual subject lines in email raises somewhat more money which can be used to very-slightly-marginally increase voter turnout among less-motivated voters”.
A lot of this has been publicly discussed, especially in post-election articles about the campaign—you can look it up. None of those accounts are entirely accurate, and the specific data is confidential, but the gist is there. You can get an idea of what’s probably possible by what people got excited about.
Disclaimer: All of this is about change at the margin of the current climate/system. A drastic overhaul (with something totally mind-bogglingly sane like anything-but-first-past-the-goalpost-voting) probably would enable some actually-effective approaches (at least for a while until a new equilibrium was found).
I agree with you, but I do wonder how much of that is just because they’re just looking at short-term effects (“how many votes can I swing over the next 6 months”). Major changes to a person’s belief system (or to a borderline tribal identity like political parties can be) can happen, but they usually happen over years or decades, not weeks or months.
Edit: Although I should mention that a person’s parents political view tend to be a fairly good predictor of your political party affiliation, so perhaps even the long-term effects are moderate at best.
But among the people who care and who have a favorite before the campaigning period, would not some change their minds if they saw their favorite being intellectually humiliated on TV? (For the first time ever, that is.)
Almost no one changes their mind in elections; Almost everything that goes on in elections is
(1) motivating people who have already made up their mind to go vote or
(2) theater to convince the least-attentive least-well-informed voters.
Raising the level of discourse of the theater is probably not going to have a significant effect; the theater is targeted at the people least interested in how much sense things make.
Source: I worked for the DNC during the 2012 cycle.
I, too, have heard that “undecided” voters tend to be those who have no idea what’s going on.
Seems reasonable for general elections but what about primaries? A lot of people changed their mind about Rick Perry after his debate performances in the 2012 republican primaries. If better debates during the primaries produced better candidates from both parties, that seems like it would be a win.
This is a good point. My argument is kind of specific to high-profile elections with very-well-defined tribes.
But was that because of substantive policy issues, or was it because of Perry’s lack of public speaking skills?
I think it was more a perception of a general lack of competence on the part of Perry during the debate then either one of those things.
People aren’t just voting on the issue, at least not for president; trying to find someone who will intelligently and competently run a large bureaucracy and make decisions about new issues and foreign affairs on the fly is probably just as important. If someone seems like they’re not competent enough to do the job properly, then that seems like a rational reason to vote against them.
(Now, if Perry is actually incompetent or if he just came across that way is an issue that could be debated, but I think it’s a rational thing for voters to consider.)
Not that I disagree, but in the interest of playing devil’s advocate, where’s this coming from? Is the reasoning evidence-based, or is it just stuff that “everyone knows”?
It’s not too surprising to me that established political orgs like the DNC believe almost all the available leverage to be found in rallying the base or theatrics targeted at uninformed voters; that is after all what we observe them doing. But beliefs like that often turn out to have more to do with culture than the outside world. If the DNC is basing them on data that hasn’t been widely disseminated, on the other hand, that could be surprising and useful.
Political science corroborating observed evidence; The polls barely moved at all during the entire 2012 cycle, including internal very-expansive-and-ultimately-accurate polls. I very much doubt this is a cultural-belief based thing—if anything, political operatives tended to believe they had more ability to influence results than reality would suggest.
Political organizations have algorithms to predict how an individual will vote, how likely they are to vote, and how likely they are to volunteer to work for a candidate. These algorithms are actually pretty simple, with a ton of accuracy coming from not-very-much data (and severely diminishing returns on increased accuracy as you pour in massive amounts of marginally-useful data). They run experiments (testing different methods of GOTV, different email subject lines) using control groups and decently-large sample sizes to see if any discernible change is induced by any of these approaches. Spoiler: After thousands of experiments, nothing earth-shaking was discovered. The biggest discovery of the last cycle was “using short, casual subject lines in email raises somewhat more money which can be used to very-slightly-marginally increase voter turnout among less-motivated voters”.
A lot of this has been publicly discussed, especially in post-election articles about the campaign—you can look it up. None of those accounts are entirely accurate, and the specific data is confidential, but the gist is there. You can get an idea of what’s probably possible by what people got excited about.
Disclaimer: All of this is about change at the margin of the current climate/system. A drastic overhaul (with something totally mind-bogglingly sane like anything-but-first-past-the-goalpost-voting) probably would enable some actually-effective approaches (at least for a while until a new equilibrium was found).
I agree with you, but I do wonder how much of that is just because they’re just looking at short-term effects (“how many votes can I swing over the next 6 months”). Major changes to a person’s belief system (or to a borderline tribal identity like political parties can be) can happen, but they usually happen over years or decades, not weeks or months.
Edit: Although I should mention that a person’s parents political view tend to be a fairly good predictor of your political party affiliation, so perhaps even the long-term effects are moderate at best.
But among the people who care and who have a favorite before the campaigning period, would not some change their minds if they saw their favorite being intellectually humiliated on TV? (For the first time ever, that is.)
Probably not