I am Alex White, a progressive campaign strategist, writer, social marketer and policy activist.
Despite the (still) prevailing orthodoxy that election strategies are a matter of well-timed policy announcements, media management and “feeding the chooks”, and focus-grouped television ads, the fact is that personal contact is the most effective way to change someone’s voting intention. A while back, I had a discussion with someone who posited that political campaigns [...]
Mobilising and motivating your committed supporters is the key to winning campaigns. The upcoming Federal Election is focusing minds amongst unions and campaigning NGOs. The reality of an Abbott Government looks like an increasingly likely risk. Many hard-fought gains across a number of policy areas could be wiped out. The seductive trap for campaigners in [...]
Australia is experiencing record low levels of traditional political engagement, as evidenced by continuing low turn out at polling booths. Membership organisations have crashing levels of members, and even large activist organisations like Amnesty, Greenpeace and Get Up would be happy to have “click through” rates in the high teens. With clicktivism and apathy on [...]
…voters in Lindsay and Macarthur didn’t swing huge in 2007 because they responded to the “your rights at work” campaign or because they particularly wanted action on climate change. Although if asked by pollsters they probably gave these as reasons. Nor was it because Labor had suddenly worked out how to win them over. It [...]
Some interesting new research by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler from Dartmouth examines attempts to change people’s strongly-held pre-existing beliefs. This kind of research is very important, especially for progressive organisations and causes, and it ties into what my previous blog post about evidence-based campaigning. The research looks at (mis)perceptions of three issues: the war in Iraq, [...]