The biggest cause of election failure is not connecting with voters
By Ray Hanania
How do you connect with voters? By recognizing that not all voters are the same. They are a diversified audience.
Some are concerned about abortion. Others are concerned about taxes. Many are concerned about crime. Younger parents with kids are concerned about schools and education. Older voters are concerned about Social Security and senior rights. Most young people are enthusiastic and concerned about themselves.
Who votes?
Statistics show that the biggest voting block are seniors, individuals who are at least 50 years of age or older.
Women are strong voters but often do not express their opinions early during the campaign process. Many men express their views early but often stay home from voting.
And then there are the “machines.” Basically a Machine is not like the old days when Mayor Richard J. Daley had an army of precinct workers who canvassed the precincts. Every candidate has a Machine and some Machines work better than others. A machine is basically your organization. And how your Machine networks has a lot to do with your success, combined with delivering specific issues out to specific audiences.
The biggest mistake candidates make is believing the news media hype. The media gives them some coverage and they think that they are ready to rock. But the public is skeptical about the news media. Putting aside the current assertions by President Trump, that is often criticized and politicized, that the news media is biased and fake, the truth is the news media IS biased and it IS often fake — in a narrow sense. They are biased about some topics, some issues but amazingly talented when dealing with other less controversial topics. Sadly, many “journalists” engage their opinions more than their reporting skills in today’s journalism world.
That’s why news media audience numbers continue to drop like a lead balloon. They are failing and the public sees it. The public isn’t as “stupid” as the media believes, They don’t often express their views about the bias, but they do see it.
As a candidate, you need to understand this principles and not get swept away by misleading emotions driven by news media bias against you, or in favor of you.
So what do you do?
Be smart. Look at your total constituency and identify the segment that is most likely to vote. Then speak to them about issues that they care about. Target Seniors, for example. Understand their concerns. Then speak to those concerns. Don’t make the election about yourself. Don’t pat yourself on the back. Don’t cheerlead for yourself. Cheerleading is a substitute for success. If you are doing well with the voters, you won’t need to cheerlead.
Identify your segmented audience like seniors, for example. Then spend time understanding their concerns. Speak to them. Listen to them. Understand the issues as if you were them. Once you understand those issues that THEY care about — not what you care about — develop a platform or a policy that addresses thei rneeds and their wants.
Put that plan in a Press Release — yes good press releases work but far too often ,many people simply don’t know how to write the basic press release. Put it in promotional materials like direct mail and target that audience. Let them know how you feel and what you are doing. Make sure they understand what you are saying. Too often people speak to themselves in their messaging, more than they speak to audiences. Just because the candidate understands something doesn’t mean that the public will understand the issue. Get feedback and then adjust your issues, policies and platform.
Listen to voters. Make sure they recognize that you are listening to them, not lecturing them.
Avoid controversial groups. Avoid emotion-driven groups. Avoid emotion driven events and issues. The more you are associated with extremists, the more you will be pushed aside away from mainstream audiences.
Be smart. Make that connection with your target audience. Then target another audience segment and speak to them. Do this over and over again and make sure your different segment audience messages are easily discernbable and separated so they can be clearly comprehended by the public.
Most importantly, understand the 10 basic fundamentals of effective communications. Once you understand those principles, everything else is easy.
You can talk like crazy and convince yourself that you are doing well. But a sad difficult reality will set in on election night. And all of your self-promotional hype won’t mean much in terms of votes.
Be humble but be creative and courageous. Be smart and be a thinker. Show yourself to your audience as a person who understands the issues and is concerned about what the audience is concerned about.
Most importantly, don’t over do “negative.” Don’t become the negative hammer. Negativity will often attract media coverage but it does so in the wrong way. Become or present yourself as the victim of negative attacks. Don’t be the promoter of vicious negative attacks. Don’t create more negative messages than positive messages. You should always distribute four positive messages for every one negative message. Keep them separate. Make your negative message, rare, a form of self-defense — like you have no choice but to address something. Don’t “martyr” your rival by being excessively negative and angry. Voters have a love-hate relationship with mud-slinging. It quickly reaches a point of turning off voters and causing a negative association of you, rather than your rival.
Voters love positive candidates who rise up above the negativity and who have great ideas.
If you can define one strong original idea that can be associated with you, you can win. But if you just parrot all of the same old, same old headlines and topics, you will blend into the election almost to the point of being unidentifiable.
One powerful idea can win an election and motivate voting audiences. But that’s difficult to find. It’s better to plan on identifying several great ideas that speak to the concerns of several targeted voting audiences. Speak to them. Let them hear you. Then be honest and check to see if they are really hearing you, or if you have clouded your vision with your own hpopes and dreams.
Find the reality and understand it.
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