As part of our special issue on political marketing, Sridhar Moorthy wrote a piece explaining marketing strategy and electoral politics. This uses ideas from competition theory. He focuses on analytical models. These are models based on mathematical theory. (Empirical models, on the other hand, are based upon observed data).
Spend Does Not Necessarily Deliver Results
Moorthy starts with the observation that advertising spend does not necessarily deliver elections. For example, Hillary Clinton’s team put considerable resources into the 2016 election. Despite this it did not turn out as she hoped. This all-or-nothing outcome is a peculiar feature of electoral strategy. Coke and Pepsi can both do well-selling colas. Between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump someone had to lose. Even if you get nearly half the votes you don’t get to run half the government. (Even if you get more votes in the US for some peculiar reason you often don’t seem to win.) The candidate who loses, therefore, will in many ways have just wasted the effort. To the winner the spoils. To the loser not much at all. Maybe the lecture circuit. This, therefore, can make competition more intense.
Yet, strategy in politics is not completely different to commercial marketing strategies. In both marketers worry about whether people participate in the market (i.e. vote for someone). The marketers also worry about who they ‘buy’ from (i.e. who they vote for).
Truth, Marketing Strategy and Electoral Politics
There are specific problems in political marketing strategy. Many have noted that messaging in politics can push facts beyond what seems reasonable.
Unlike the commercial sphere, however, political candidates are not bound by “truth-in-advertising” laws such as Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act which bans “unfair methods of competition” and “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” Political messaging is effectively a free-for-all. Although factcheckers in the media exert some pressure toward truth-telling, legal remedies for falsehoods are virtually non-existent.
Moorthy, 2019
When platforms like Facebook try to be hands-off in allowing political speech it isn’t clear anyone else will combat falsehoods. As a result there is much concern about deception in politics.
Analytical Models of Political Competition
Moorthy shows some analytical models of competition. He notes that uncertainty is a key factor of many models. This makes sense a lot of sense. Better strategy/candidates will win more often. That said, it is impossible to make any firm promises about what will happen in an election. (An exception comes to mind. Perhaps it really was inevitable that Jeremy Corbyn — disastrous Labour Party leader — and his flunkies were not vote winners. In other words, that was an accident waiting to happen. We then saw it happen and, hey presto, Brexit).
One challenge noted is the problem of firing up pre-disposed voters to vote. This, unfortunately, could backfire and motivate supporters of the other side to turn out. Electoral strategy is complex. Using the discipline of strategic thinking can help us get a better understanding. In conclusion, there is a lot of potential for work on political marketing strategy.
For more on political marketing research see here and here.
Read: Sridhar Moorthy (2019) On Marketing Strategy in Electoral Politics Customer Needs and Solutions, December 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3-4, pp 57–62