{"id":97733,"date":"2003-03-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-03-20T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2003\/03\/20\/part-one-the-campaigners\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:14:34","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:14:34","slug":"part-one-the-campaigners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/2003\/03\/20\/part-one-the-campaigners\/","title":{"rendered":"Part One: The Campaigners"},"content":{"rendered":"

Message in a Bottle<\/h3>\n\n

In the two weeks following the 2002 general election, the Institute for Politics, Democracy, & the Internet conducted interviews with campaign staff from 33 of the most hotly contested races for governor, U.S. Senator, and U.S. Representative.\u00a0 We wanted to learn about the Internet\u2019s utility as a campaign tool from campaign professionals with areas of responsibility beyond the Internet.\u00a0 Our respondents consisted primarily of campaign managers, communication directors, and their deputies.\u00a0 We also conducted seven supplemental interviews with campaign Web masters.<\/p>\n\n

Our interview subjects worked under intense pressure in a shifting, often opaque, and always ambiguous information environment.\u00a0 It was their job to obtain and deploy campaign personnel, messages, and money with increasing speed and power until Election Day.\u00a0 \u201cMomentum\u201d is a common term in the campaign world for a good reason: in campaigns, as in physics, force equals mass (of supporters) times acceleration (of visible messages, which cost money).\u00a0 The brief history of online politics is highlighted by campaigns \u2013Jesse Ventura, Moveon.org, John McCain, Roh Moo-Hyun (in South Korea)\u2014which used the Internet to go into turbo drive.\u00a0 Could others repeat their success?\u00a0 Who tried, how well, to what result?<\/p>\n\n

The 2002 hot races that we looked at lacked the charismatic personalities, first-time news appeal, and historical dimensions of the three online campaigns just mentioned.\u00a0 Nevertheless, our races took place on a bigger stage than their state and district jurisdictions suggest.\u00a0 Because control of the House and Senate hung in the balance, these tight contests attracted the attention and involvement of the White House, national political parties, PACs, political journalists, and active citizens everywhere.\u00a0 The Internet facilitated the nationalization of these races.\u00a0 It made it a snap (or click) to keep track of dozens of election contests across the country, and, if one was so inclined, to donate money to a handful of them at the right moments. We sought to learn who among our subjects took advantage of the citizens\u2019 new capability, and multiplied the force of their campaigns by infusing them with online national resources.<\/p>\n\n

What Worked and What Didn\u2019t in Online Campaigning<\/h3>\n\n

The heart of our November 2002 survey was a series of ten questions about the effectiveness of the Internet in facilitating key campaign functions.\u00a0 We asked campaigners to rate Internet effectiveness by function on a scale of 1-5, where 1 is not effective and 5 is very effective.\u00a0 The results appear in Table 1.<\/p>\n\n

\"Campaigner<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

Our campaign professionals found the Internet most effective for conducting research and communicating with the press.\u00a0 These results were not a surprise.\u00a0 Most professionals in all walks of life now head to the Web for research, and rely on e-mail for day-to-day communications.\u00a0 Last year, an IPDI study of political journalists found, for example, that even Net novices rely on it for news releases and campaign finance information.[1. The Virtual Trail: Political Journalism on the Internet<\/em>www.ipdi.org, p. 14.]<\/p>\n\n

At the other end of the scale, the Internet functions that garnered the poorest ratings were advertising and message testing.\u00a0 We were somewhat surprised at the low aggregate rating, and low number of responses, regarding online advertising.\u00a0 Despite the concerted efforts of online media outlets and advertising agencies, online campaign advertising appears to be stuck in neutral.\u00a0 We can identify several factors inhibiting campaigners from placing ads on the Internet: a counter-reaction to the Net hype of the late 1990s; an absence of clear ad-buying procedures, prices, and success benchmarks; and the technical difficulties and ethical questions bound up in targeting voters for a given locality.[2. Advertisers of commercial products can find likely buyers with great precision through the Internet, thanks to demographic data and the tracking of online purchases and visits. But political targeting revolves around information in voter files (party registration, turnout for past elections), and voter files have yet to be matched well to e-mail addresses and tracked Web movements.]\u00a0 Still, online advertising is inexpensive to produce and place (in part because of the dot-com crash).\u00a0 We thought more campaigns would have experimented with it, and had more to say about it.<\/p>\n\n

Testing messages was not part of the close-race campaigners\u2019 repertoire, either.\u00a0 It takes some effort and know-how to test a message online before a targeted audience, if scientific and nuanced feedback is the goal.\u00a0 However, we know from our national survey that the online citizenry enjoys participating in polls (See Part Two).\u00a0 In 2001, the Mark Earley for Governor campaign in Virginia posted an endorsement video featuring Rudy Giuliani, and the positive response encouraged the Republicans to re-shoot the spot and purchase television time for it.\u00a0 The next, logical step, we think, will be for campaigns to post television ads, speeches, written appeals, and other messages, ask online supporters to evaluate them \u2013and then ask them for contributions to pay for wider distribution of the ones they like.<\/p>\n\n

No clear pattern emerged regarding the use of the Internet to recruit and mobilize campaign volunteers.\u00a0 The respondent from the campaign reporting the largest number of online volunteers (2000, for Janet Napolitano, a successful Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Arizona) gave weak ratings of 3 for recruitment and 2 for mobilization.\u00a0 A representative from another successful gubernatorial candidate, incumbent Democrat Gray Davis of California, reported only \u201cseveral dozen\u201d volunteers, yet rated mobilization effectiveness at 4.\u00a0 We expected more consistent answers, such as the one we received from Connie Morella\u2019s unsuccessful effort to retain a Republican Congressional seat in a highly wired Maryland district.\u00a0 Her staffer said they found 250-300 volunteers online, and awarded the highest possible ratings (5) for both recruitment and mobilization.\u00a0 Our open-ended questions also elicited comments about the Internet and volunteers which were all over the map.\u00a0 We believe the best way to summarize the situation is that while a majority of campaigns recognized how valuable the Internet can be with respect to volunteers, some campaigns did not know what to expect, or how to proceed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Fundraising received a slightly lower effectiveness rating from our respondents than volunteer recruitment and mobilization.\u00a0 Again, the scattered pattern of ratings and comments points as much to an absence of accepted standards in expectations and procedures as to poor outcomes.\u00a0 Most online campaigners we have spoken with, both for this report and other IPDI research, have made back in contributions what they have spent on fundraising.\u00a0 Solid majorities of campaign Web sites in races for Congress in 2000 and 2002 posted information about how to make donations.\u00a0 Slender majorities provided the technical wherewithal to make contributions through the Internet.[3. Source: netelection.org<\/a> (for 2000) and politicalweb.info<\/a> (for 2002).]\u00a0 We do not know how many 2002 campaigns were as sophisticated with online fundraising as they generally are in direct mail, telephone fundraising, and at events, which is to ask point-blank for a specific amount of money.\u00a0 (In fundraising jargon, this is known as \u201cthe ask.\u201d)\u00a0 On the Internet, many such asks would have occurred via e-mail, which was beyond the scope of our study.\u00a0 It was not possible for us to discern whether more candidates even bothered to ask for money on the Web page where they posted their contribution forms; in 2000, as an earlier report of ours showed, a scant 3% of House candidates did so. <\/p>\n\n

There were a few fundraising breakthroughs.\u00a0 The deputy campaign director for victorious Senate candidate Mark Pryor in Arkansas said the campaign Web site \u201cpaid for itself a hundred times over,\u201d in the money raised and the way the press paid attention to it.\u00a0\u00a0 Candidate Martha Fuller Clark, in a losing campaign for a Congressional seat in New Hampshire, raised 30% of her individual contributions online, roughly half a million dollars according to FEC data.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Very few campaigns \u2013four, to be precise\u2014said they received online assistance from their national parties.\u00a0 This stunned us.\u00a0 To the extent that any of the tight races were \u201cnationalized,\u201d this seems to have been accomplished largely through old media and modes of transportation, instead of through the Internet.\u00a0 In the future, we expect parties (and other politically interested organizations with nationwide memberships) to move beyond electronic funds transfers and bus caravans, and integrate the Internet into their efforts on behalf of candidates in close races.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n

To be sure, such outside online help will be circumscribed.\u00a0 Political organizations are understandably reluctant to share their lists of donors and volunteers.\u00a0 For one thing, the new campaign finance reform law may deter the development of online collaboration, until what is legal and what is criminal in the category of coordinated activities has been thoroughly clarified.\u00a0 For another, there is the problem of list dilution.\u00a0 As soon as a list of names is released to anyone, it can rocket around the Internet, and the originating organization may discover to its chagrin that its capacity to summon help has been considerably reduced.\u00a0 Still, parties, corporations, unions, and groups can protect themselves by sending messages on a candidate\u2019s behalf which urge recipients to click over to the candidate\u2019s site.\u00a0 We heard nothing to that effect from our respondents.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n

The lack of party assistance helps explain why using the Internet to get out the vote received a sub-medium rating from the campaigners.\u00a0 The 2002 campaigners we spoke with were evidently unimpressed by the success of the Gore campaign in 2000 with its late multi-state ad buy, the NAACP\u2019s real-time coordination of its resources on Election Day, and the Bush campaign\u2019s use of the Net during the Florida controversy.\u00a0 Perhaps they did not know enough about these operations.\u00a0 A few did, however.\u00a0 Illinois gubernatorial candidate Rod Blagojevich deployed a highly sophisticated multi-channel GOTV operation, utilizing the Web, email, and wireless text messaging, to win the Democratic primary in the spring of 2002.[4. Nicholas Thompson, \u201cMachined Politics,\u201d Washington Monthly<\/em>, May 2002.]\u00a0 The Mike Huckabee campaign to retain the Arkansas governorship unleashed a late e-mail blitz which helped Huckabee win even as his co-Republican Tim Hutchinson was losing to the aforementioned Mark Pryor.[5. Dick Morris, \u201cPolitical Emailing Comes of Age,\u201d Jewish World Review<\/em>, January 10, 2003.]<\/p>\n\n

The most discouraging results of our questionnaire dealt with the immediate future.\u00a0 Respondents split evenly on whether they would put more effort into their Web site next time around: 51% said they would (a socially respectable answer to questioners from an Online Politics Institute), while 45% would not.\u00a0 Most said they noticed a proliferation of campaign Web sites, and of sophistication in their use.\u00a0 Yet most respondents could not cite an online campaign that impressed them, a sign that they saw no external incentives to improve.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Finally, we learned more about online campaigning, and about email lists in particular, from our separate post-election interviews with seven campaign Web masters.\u00a0\u00a0 They echoed the effectiveness ratings awarded by the campaign managers and directors, saying the Internet helped them conduct research and deal with the press.\u00a0 All seven respondents maintained lists of news media contacts; the media lists of statewide campaigns ranged between 150 and 500, while the House campaigns said their lists ranged between 30 and 45.\u00a0 The Webmasters were more sanguine than their organizational superiors about the Internet\u2019s utility in raising money and assembling and deploying volunteers.\u00a0 Although the Webmaster for Republican Congressman Mike Rodgers in Alabama said that online fundraising wasn\u2019t worth the effort, others appreciated the immediacy and systemization of the activity.\u00a0 The Webmasters found success alerting supporters of upcoming candidate visits in their area and, to a lesser extent, directing people to voter registration sites.\u00a0\u00a0 Five kept lists of contributors, the same number that kept lists according to issue interest.\u00a0 Four maintained geographic lists, and three, demographic lists.\u00a0 Targeted e-mail communication is clearly an accepted practice among Web masters.<\/p>\n\n

Four campaign Web masters said they sent multiple emails in one day, primarily related to breaking news events and mobilization efforts.\u00a0 The Webmasters agreed that big news events, new television ads, and the last days before an election led to spikes in traffic.\u00a0 The volume of incoming emails varied greatly, from 100 per day for Democrat Frank Lautenberg, who won a Senate seat in New Jersey, to 800 per day for Republican Rick Perry, who retained his office as Governor of Texas.\u00a0 Most Webmasters routed the incoming emails to the appropriate campaign departments, which decided on whether and how to respond.\u00a0 This aspect of online campaigning presents an organizational challenge to political managers: designing a system of email communication which involves every department without resulting in overload, turf wars, security and privacy breaches and such problematic public issuances as leaks, inconsistencies, and misinformation.\u00a0 The content management challenge, like the parallel challenge of list management, is not insuperable.\u00a0 But it needs to be addressed from the top early in a campaign, and that recognition seems a cycle or two away for the bulk of American electoral campaigners.<\/p>\n\n

Best Practices and Other Practices: What Campaigners Did on their Web Sites<\/h3>\n\n

Since 1999, the Institute has promoted a set of best practices for online campaigning.\u00a0 These best practices were developed in consultation with political professionals, scholars, and Internet experts, as part of the original mission of the Institute\u2019s precursor organization, the Democracy Online Project.\u00a0 We have argued that, because the Internet is user-driven to a great degree, and because it is also a very public medium, campaigns should adhere to high standards of political discourse in order to win votes and support online.[6.numoffset=”6″ The full case for best practices, and other practical advice, may be found in Online Campaigning 2002: A Primer<\/em>, www.ipdi.org<\/a>.]\u00a0 Emphasizing transparency and interactivity is not only the right strategy from the standpoint of free democratic politics, but the smart strategy, as our seven Best Practices make clear:<\/p>\n\n