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phantom power

(25,966 posts)
Thu Jun 7, 2012, 12:19 PM Jun 2012

You are not normal

Outspending by freaking 8 to 1: still on the short list.

I'll be writing a number of posts over the next few days with thoughts and analysis from the June election. The first point I want to make won't be new to many of you, but is often forgotten by even seasoned political professionals: you are not normal. That phrase is constantly repeated at election trainings put on by Democracy for America, Howard Dean's spin-off organization now run by his brother Jim. You are not normal. What that means here is that activists often assume that the general electorate has something approaching their own level of awareness of campaign issues and news stories.

This happens a lot. Activists will make arguments about how the President's approval numbers will go up or down based on his support or lack thereof for some specific policy, or because that activist's own pet issue, when in reality it has much more to do with a voter's overall sense of personal and national well-being, and their ability to see themselves hanging out with the politician. Or one might see activists insist that the polls are all wrong, because the GOTV ground game will overwhelm the opposition--after all, everyone they know is fired up and ready to go, so that enthusiasm must be everywhere. Confirmation bias plays a big role there, and it was quite prevalent among progressives leading up to the Wisconsin vote.

Then there's the assumption that voters are deeply aware of the intricate arguments and fights leading up to a campaign. I've posted before about Linda Parks, the Republican-turned-independent Supervisor in Thousand Oaks who ran for Congress in the CA26 top-two primary against a field of four Democrats (including progressive Assemblymember Julia Brownley) and a very conservative Republican State Senator, Tony Strickland. Almost every organization on the left endorsed Brownley, and there was a massive outpouring of local Democratic activism on her behalf. The DCCC came in heavy for Brownley with a slew of mailers in the final three weeks, some of them a little over-the-top and cartoonish but none of them dishonest, tying Linda Parks' deficit obsession, refusal to repeal the Bush tax cuts, and refusal to condemn the Paul Ryan budget to Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and George Bush.

...

A lot of progressives blame the amount of money spent by conservatives in the race, but it's important to remember that Walker was ahead and ahead big for a long time. Most people's minds had been made up already, and they weren't changing them. The campaign such as it was appeared to be mostly noise.

And it was an important lesson in Ventura County, too. We're not normal, and we need not to read too much into why election and poll results are the way they are. Usually, the simplest and dumbest explanations are the right ones.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/you-are-not-normal-by-davidoatkins_06.html
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