Blogs

We start the second day of CMPM2014 with Jennifer Rayner, whose interest is in the extent to which American campaigning innovations are being imported to Australia (and whether this makes sense). Some US approaches simply don't work elsewhere, due to different laws on advertising and funding, and the different electoral laws.

So in truth this is more of a process of hybridisation of campaigning, rather than a straight-out importing of US approaches. Any such approaches need to be adapted and filtered through local contexts, even if the Australian media appear to be obsessed with the "Americanisation" of Australian political campaigning.

The final speaker at CMPM2014 today is Campbell Klose, and adviser on the wildly successful Cathy McGowan campaign which managed to unseat Liberal shadow minister Sophie Mirabella in the electorate of Indi in the 2013 Australian federal election. Indi is a very large electorate (roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts), with some 100,000 voters.

Early on, the Voice 4 Indi campaign began by holding some 55 kitchen table conversations with 425 participants, covering local and national issues. The results of this process were taken to Mirabella, who fundamentally disagreed with them and suggested Indi-ans cared only about cost of living issues; in response, the campaign vetted several candidates and finally settled on Cathy McGowan.

V4I then attracted volunteers, with each volunteer having to sign up to a shared value statement. These volunteers covered the entire political spectrum from the left to the right, and represented all the geographical areas covered by the electorate. Social media was used extensively to break down the geographical boundaries (such as mountain chains) separating these different areas – and the campaign conducted significant social media training with its diverse group of volunteers.

Next up at CMPM2014 is Mark Triffitt, again via Skype, whose focus is on political spin. He suggests that the battle of spin versus substance has become increasingly complicated, and that the basic system of liberal democracy simplify can no longer function in the present environment as it was meant to do. Over the last twenty years the combination of globalisation and changing communication technologies mean that the functionality of political systems has been eroded, leading to other means being used for political contestation.

The final session at CMPM2014 starts with Mike Smith from Ethical Consulting Services, who has worked with the Obama campaign in the past. He suggests that the Australian Labor Party can campaign like Obama, but only if there is considerable culture change in the ALP. However, he also notes that there are significant differences between the US and Australian system.

Voting in the US is voluntary, so there is a need for campaigning to generate a preference for one or the other side which is strong enough to motivate people to go to the polls on a regular working day; in Australia it is compulsory, so there is only a need for a mild preference which is expressed in a Saturday poll.

The next speaker in this CMPM2014 session is Edward Elder, whose interest is in how leaders may maintain public support once elected. Political leaders in recent decades have tended to gain power through market-oriented behaviour, but maintaining such market orientation once in government becomes a lot more difficult, due to the pressures of office – including time constraints, the public desire for leadership, contradictory negative reactions to expressions of leadership which go against public opinion, and the communication strategies of government.

Voter/leader communication changes markedly after election, therefore. Edward compared post-election communication strategies used by Barack Obama and John Key, and explored what elements of their public persona they were trying to promote. He found that such strategies varied by issue type, communication medium, and the timing of the communication in relation to when a decision was made. Communication of leaders' personal features was also backgrounded substantially once in government.

The next speaker at CMPM2014 is Daniel Laufer, whose interest is in regulatory fit. Is creating such regulatory fit always beneficial for candidates, parties, and governments? Research shows that persuasion is enhanced when a person's goal orientation and the manner in which the goal is pursued are in line with each other; in this, regulatory orientation may be focussed on promotion (aiming for awards for achievements) or prevention (avoiding punishment for failure).

In a political context, it may be assumed that conservatives are more focussed on prevention-, and progressives on promotion-style regulatory orientation. Targetting promotion-oriented voters would therefore use messages about improvements, while targetting prevention-oriented voters would highlight preventing the deterioration of the current situation. Creating such matching messages is creating regulatory fit.

The next speaker at CMPM2014 is Gavin Lees, via Skype link (uh-oh). His interest is in the segmentation of political supporters in Australia, and the political targetting strategies which emerge from this; and this builds on Roy Morgan data on the demographics of some 42,000 Australian voters covering the periods before and after the 2010 election.

Amongst the variables examined by this study were gender: National voters were slightly biased towards men, Green voters slightly toward women; age: National biased toward older, Greens towards younger and against older voters; income: National biased towards low-income, Greens slightly biased towards higher income groups; socioeconomic groupings: National biased towards E, F, G (lower socioeconomic) and Greens towards A and B (higher socioeconomic) groups; and education: Greens strongly biased towards higher degrees, Nationals slightly biased against higher degrees. There were few clear differences between Labor and Liberal voters on these variables.

Next up at CMPM2014 is Edwina Throsby, whose focus is on swinging voters. These are important figures in Australian politics, and seen as determining party policies and deciding elections; the fact that Australia has compulsory voting also makes their position very special in an international context.

There are plenty of assumptions about who these swinging voters are, and how they might be targetted by political campaigning – and indeed most campaigns are squarely focussed on this group. But such targetting has become increasingly difficult in recent years: while campaigners continue to believe that they can be targetted as a bloc, they also acknowledge that to define and target this cohort is now very difficult.

Such swinging voters are sometimes seen as unprincipled, apolitical and disengaged, or at best as calculating or capricious; conversely, they are also acknowledged as the group which ends up deciding who will govern the country, and who are therefore important and critical. Political operatives in Australia still largely hold negative views, but also acknowledge the substantial diversity within this group.

The next speaker at CMPM2014 is Stephen Mills, a market research practitioner from UMR Research New Zealand. His interest is in the much-maligned device of the political focus group: a tool which continues to have a significant impact on political decision-making. This started during the Second World War, when Robert K. Merton researched how Americans could be encouraged to support the war effort.

But since then they've been increasingly strongly criticised for replacing political leadership, for leading to soft decisions rather than necessary reforms, for pandering to prejudice, taking over the role of political parties, driving leadership churn, and losing elections (this has been highlighted especially in the context of the ALP's self-destruction as it replaced Kevin Rudd with Julia Gillard).

The next plenary speaker at CMPM2014 is Jennifer Lees-Marshment, who reflects on the development of political marketing and management. This field focusses on how political actors and their staff use management tools and concepts to achieve their goals. This is not just about seeking votes, but also about driving certain issues and agendas, developing a political profile and image, and it is about governing as well as campaigning.

The scholarship of political marketing no longer just researches what voters want, but also explores how they might be involved in political processes, how long-term relationships can be built, and how internal marketing to the party faithful should be conducted. There are also questions about long-term, mutual, interactive communication relationships, and an expansion of these questions from campaigning to policy delivery and leadership in government.