Yeah, I am convinced that money in politics is mostly a red herring, and I’m not surprised it is mostly wasted.
The real challenge is generating passion, which these days is more about reaching your existing tribe. E > On Sep 28, 2017, at 8:40 AM, BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical > Centrist Community <[email protected]> wrote: > > Real Clear Politics > Real Clear Science > > > > Political Campaigning May Be Mostly Pointless > > By Ross Pomeroy <http://www.realclearscience.com/authors/ross_pomeroy/> > September 28, 2017 > Roughly $6.8 billion > <https://www.cbsnews.com/news/election-2016s-price-tag-6-8-billion/> was > spent during the 2016 election, and according to a forthcoming study > <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3042867> in American > Political Science Review, much of it probably went down the drain. > > That money wasn't technically wasted, of course. It paid for campaign > managers, television ads, private planes, and countless cups of coffee. What > it didn't do, however, was actually convince citizens to vote for a candidate. > > Joshua L. Kalla, a graduate student in the Department of Political Science at > UC-Berkeley, and David E. Broockman, an assistant professor at Stanford > Graduate School of Business, teamed up to conduct the very first > meta-analysis of studies examining the effects of campaign contact and > advertising on voter choice. They uncovered forty studies estimating the > effect of "campaign advertising and outreach through the mail, phone calls, > canvassing, TV, online ads, or literature drops on voters’ candidate choices." > > When pooled together, these studies showed almost no effect of campaigning on > altering a voter's choice in a general election. (Below: A summary of the > effect sizes from some of the studies analyzed. Notice that they're all over > the place.) > > Broockman and Kalla > "Our best guess is that it persuades about 1 in 800 voters, substantively > zero," Kalla and Broockman wrote. If that estimate holds true in the real > world, it means that out of the 139 million people > <http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/324206-new-report-finds-that-voter-turnout-in-2016-topped-2012> > who cast ballots in 2016, only 174,000 were actually swayed from one > candidate to another. > > Kalla and Broockman also oversaw nine new field studies examining the effects > of canvassing on altering voters' preferences come election day. None of the > canvassing campaigns were substantively effective. > > "To be clear, our argument is not that campaigns, broadly speaking, do not > matter," the researchers wrote. "For example, candidates can determine the > content of voters’ choices by changing their positions, strategically > revealing certain information, and affecting media narratives. Campaigns can > also effectively stimulate voter turnout." > > The latter point seems to be the most relevant. In an era of increasingly > entrenched beliefs and echo chambers, campaigns are more about encouraging > those who already agree with a candidate to go to the polls than actually > convincing people to change their minds. > > "Voters in general elections appear to bring their vote choice into line with > their predispositions close to election day and are difficult to budge from > there," Kalla and Broockman wrote. > > While campaigning doesn't seem to alter beliefs in general elections, it is > effective in primaries and ballot initiatives, when partisanship is mostly > absent, the researchers found. They also noted that solid studies are scarce > in the arena of television and digital advertising, and more research is > needed to tease out any potential effects or lack thereof. > > If there's one takeaway from this new research, it's that campaigns should > essentially serve as giant voter turnout drives, rousing excitement and > allaying apathy. Also that campaigns and political action committees can stop > bombarding us with all those maddening ads. (Pretty please?) > > > -- > -- > Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community > <[email protected]> > Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism > <http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism> > Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org > <http://radicalcentrism.org/> > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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