Elections That Are Not Necessarily About the President Vote For Me! Elections That Are Not Necessarily About the President

Campaign Strategy There are multiple issues that have to be addressed when you are running for office. Where are you going to focus your campaign? Should you run an aggressive or a low key campaign? What is your theme or slogan? What issues should you stress the most? How much should you advertise? How personable are you going to be?

Campaign Organization Candidates often have a campaign manager that will organize and execute the campaign strategy during the election. The campaign manager will organizers local campaign workers to focus on contacting the constituents.

The Candidate’s Image What is the most important characteristic that voters consider when looking at the candidates? #1 – Confidence #2 – Character If an incumbent’s previous administration has given the voters confidence during their previous term, then they will usually be re-elected.

What is Your Slogan? Candidates will often use catchy phrases to help people remember them. Their phrases are often used repeatedly throughout the campaign to summarize their ideas.

Candidates Debate Debates are a tool used by candidates to put their agendas out to the public while putting their verbal skills against the other candidates. These made for television events can often make or break candidates depending on how well they handle the questions, the pressure, the situation, and their opponents.

What Issues Should be Stressed? Many voters are not well informed about the issues except those that are the most important to them today. Candidates attempt to address the issues that they feel are most important to the people. Candidates will also stress issues that they feel are important to the future of their candidacies.

Mediums of Advertising Television is still considered the ideal way to advertise the candidate to the people, but it is very expensive. Radio is also a good way to get your name to the voter, but you may be speaking to more people outside of your voting area than not.

Mediums of Advertising The internet has become a growing medium for advertising a candidate. You can ask for campaign contributions, give a brief description of your opinions, and share your speeches. The benefit of the internet is that it is relatively inexpensive and it can reach a large target audience.

Mediums of Advertising Of course, there is the old-fashioned approach of signage. This type of advertising includes t-shirts, buttons, banners of various sizes, bumper stickers and hats. The advantage is that this approach is inexpensive, but the target audience is limited.

Techniques Used to Promote the Candidates Labeling – Name calling; identifying a candidate with a name or phrase. Spinning – Interpreting an event or statement. Card Stacking – Giving only one side of the facts to support a candidate’s position. Transfer – Associating a patriotic symbol with a candidate. Plain Folks – Identifying the candidate as “just one of the common people.” Testimonial – A celebrity endorses a candidate. The Bandwagon – Urging voters to support a candidate because everyone else is.