Mark Pack - 101 Ways to Win An Election

There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not? Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy

N ew York Governor Mario Cuomo uttered the famous line that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. We are idealistic enough to believe that there is room for a little poetry in government, too, but the magic of a well-run campaign can have the same uplifting and enlightening impact as the best of poetry. Just as the best poets have a powerful and emotional message they want to give the reader, so the best campaigners want to appeal to voters minds and to move their emotions. Democracy is about explaining to people why you and your ideas are the best choice.

Repeatedly in the course of this book we will remind you that voters lead busy lives, disconnected from government and politics. As a candidate and a campaigner you will only have brief moments to make your point to them and to make an impact. Your message why someone should vote for you should be a simple answer to a simple question. It is surprising how often it catches out aspiring politicians.

Shortly before the 2010 general election in Britain, we were involved in running a training event for incumbents facing a tough battle for re-election.

One session was about the message. One of the trainers asked each Member of Parliament (without any advance warning) that simple question: why should someone vote for you? Some of the answers were rather rough round the edges. One, however, stood out. This MP even though they were not the first to answer and so had a little longer to think about it than some colleagues was utterly floored. The only answers they could provide were about themselves: because they wanted to be an MP, because they liked doing it and so on. They lost at the next election.

The lesson is a simple one: you need to give voters a reason to vote for you that will be relevant to them. Your answer needs to be about you but appeal to them. I want to win does not work. You want me to win does.

Look at the example of the successful Conservative campaign in the 2015 UK general election. It focused in on what the election result could mean for the personal finances and job security of voters in this case persuading them that a LabourSNP coalition would endanger their jobs and make them financially worse off. Honed by campaign mastermind Lynton Crosby, the message wasnt about Please elect us because we want to win but rather Make yourselves better off by electing us.

Nevertheless, beware bland platitudes, too. Your message needs to capture why you will do a better job than the others will. It needs to be brief, credible and real. Brief because voters have better things to do than listen to you. Credible because voters are smart enough to figure out when it is snake oil on offer. Real because you need to believe it too only then will you be able make your case convincingly.

Voters are not memory magicians. They do not remember everything everyone says, especially on a topic such as politics that most of them spend most of their time paying little attention to. We will talk a lot in this book about the ways you can communicate your message. You will know it is working when people start repeating your own lines back to you without realising they are doing so. Much of that is about repetition but it starts with a message that is clear, powerful and succinct.