On the face of it, the goal of campaigning is to win elections by changing people’s minds.
That doesn’t look obvious to me unless we’re talking not about the face but the facade. Campaigning is mostly about telling people what they want to hear, certainly not about informing them they will need to rearrange their prejudices [1].
From the elections point of view there are three groups of people you’re concerned with:
Your own Rabid Base. You want to energise them, provide incentives for them to be loud, active, confident, with contagious enthusiasm.
Other parties’ Rabid Bases. Flip the sign: you want to demoralise them, make them doubtful, weak, passive. You want them to sit inside and mope.
The Undecideds, aka the Great Middle through which you have to muddle. This is where most of the action is. Do you want to convince them with carefully arranged chains of logical policy arguments? Hell, no. They don’t vote on this basis. They vote on the basis of (1) Who promises more; (2) Who seems to be less likely to screw the pooch; and (3) Who exhudes more charisma/leadership—not necessarily in this order, of course. Most of this is System 1 stuff, aka the gut feeling.
Notice how pretty much none of the above involves changing people’s minds.
[1] “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices”—William James
That doesn’t look obvious to me unless we’re talking not about the face but the facade. Campaigning is mostly about telling people what they want to hear, certainly not about informing them they will need to rearrange their prejudices [1].
From the elections point of view there are three groups of people you’re concerned with:
Your own Rabid Base. You want to energise them, provide incentives for them to be loud, active, confident, with contagious enthusiasm.
Other parties’ Rabid Bases. Flip the sign: you want to demoralise them, make them doubtful, weak, passive. You want them to sit inside and mope.
The Undecideds, aka the Great Middle through which you have to muddle. This is where most of the action is. Do you want to convince them with carefully arranged chains of logical policy arguments? Hell, no. They don’t vote on this basis. They vote on the basis of (1) Who promises more; (2) Who seems to be less likely to screw the pooch; and (3) Who exhudes more charisma/leadership—not necessarily in this order, of course. Most of this is System 1 stuff, aka the gut feeling.
Notice how pretty much none of the above involves changing people’s minds.
[1] “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices”—William James