Last week, I participated in a symposium at Iowa State University entitled “Social Science, Presidential Campaigns and Political Reporting.” Among those who examined last year’s presidential election, the consensus seemed to be that the actual influence of the things we call “the campaign”—including advertisements, candidate visits, volunteer activity, etc.—was very […] Read more »
Overwhelming Hispanic Support for Obama Wasn’t Preordained in 2012
… Given the key role that Latinos had played in Obama’s 2008 win, this particular leg of his coalition looked pretty wobbly just a year and a half before Election Day. Little wonder that when pollsters, including Gallup, Peter Hart and Bill McInturff for NBC News and The Wall Street […] Read more »
American consultants abroad
… Having just finished a year as the strategist and pollster for Yesh Atid in Israel, the party led by Yair Lapid, which went from zero seats in the Knesset to the country’s second largest party in one night, I’ve been thinking about lessons learned there that apply here. A […] Read more »
Political ads: Not as powerful as you (or politicians) think
In the weeks before the 2012 election, pundits debated the impact of President Obama’s team’s unorthodox advertising strategy and Mitt Romney’s side’s last-minute “ad bomb.” Now, with the election returns in, we can begin to assess just what the presidential candidates and their allies got for the hundreds of millions […] Read more »
Once Upon a Time, There Was a Person Who Said, ‘Once Upon a Time’
… Last summer, President Obama conceded that he had failed to “tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism.” … The underlying and more ominous question is whether the story of our species — the greater human narrative — has […] Read more »
Were Obama’s Early Ads Really the Game Changer?
Many post-mortems of the 2012 presidential campaign suggest that Mitt Romney erred by allowing President Obama to “define” him early through an advertising blitz in battleground states. … The problem, however, is that there is very little evidence that these early ads mattered much, according to research I have done […] Read more »