I find primary elections endlessly fascinating. Partly because the decision is so tricky. We rarely have enough information to make an ideal choice, Yet, people still develop very strong opinions. In the 2008 Democratic primary it was hard to see significant policy differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. That didn’t stop intense arguments. What can we learn about primary election strategy?
Preference Versus Electability
In a primary, the voters should not only be choosing who they like. They should be weighing this against the likelihood of that candidate winning the later general election. Thus a Republican primary voter might prefer Rick Santorum to Mitt Romney in 2012. They might believe Romney probably had a better chance of beating President Obama. (I.e. Romney was more electable). Balancing personal preference and electability is nearly impossible. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that voters find it challenging.
Similarly, political marketers have a massive challenge. The theory of political marketing is to serve the voters. The problem is in primaries we have at least two sets of people to serve.
- 1) the primary voters, and
- 2) the general election voters.
These groups may have quite different preferences. This presents a challenging strategic task. A politician seeking to win needs to align sufficiently with primary voters. Still, they do not want to align so much that general election voters see the politician as unwilling to take on his or her own party.
Candidate Strategy
I worked with Alina Nastasoui to examine the candidates’ strategic problems. For example, we give the general advice to candidates that they “don’t stop thinking about tomorrow”. In the primary candidates who want to win the general election should be very careful about the compromises they make to win the primary.
We illustrate our advice with examples. In the 2000 Republican primary between George W. Bush and John McCain we analyzed the candidates’ advertising. This uncovered how McCain shifted to more Republican core issues, such as taxes. He did this as he saw the primary election slipping away. Bush did the reverse. He shifted to discuss education, a less notable “Republican” topic. Bush did this as his confidence increased that he would beat McCain.
Bush tackled taxes early in his campaign, building conservative support. Once secured, Bush strengthened his electability. The number of ads focused on education increased.
Bendle and Nastasoiu 2014,page 103
Primary Election Strategy
Primary elections have a lot to tell us about decision-making. We can learn about candidates. But we can also learn how people see the candidates. How people make complex choices. There is, therefore, much to be gained by studying primary election strategy.
For more on political marketing see here, here, and here.
Read: Neil Bendle and Mihaela-Alina Nastasoiu (2014) Primary Elections and US Political Marketing in Political Marketing in the United States, Edited by Jennifer Lees-Marshment, Brian Conley and Kenneth Cosgrove. Routledge, New York, NY
