Conventional Un-Wisdom: Dirty Hippies Must Fake Being Moderates to Win

chain of communications is Candidate > Supporter > Voter, where the candidate has direct and intimate contact with the supporter who then is motivated and conveys their passion to a voter they have a personal relationship with, persuading them to join them in support of the candidate. If you are running in a district of 10,000 votes, this short chain may work fine, but if you need upwards of 30,000 votes, you will need to recognize that with every  ‘link in the chain’, the level of energy/passion/conviction dissipates a bit, until you reach the Ferris Bueller chain of indeterminable relation where the end of the line is not going to convince anyone to join the cause. The stronger the projection of passion and conviction from the candidate, the more ‘links’ can be placed in the chain and still support campaign growth. If you start from mild, lacking conviction and passion, minimally inspiring, you aren’t going to gain any votes beyond direct contact. If you are Rep. Alan Grayson or Senator Bernie Sanders, you can support chains longer than a dozen people (which luckily for Sanders is nearly all the voters in his state).

In a well executed (and some what idealized) situation, by the later stages of the campaign, a number of registered Republicans who passionately support the campaign will have been identified and those supporters will make calls to potentially persuadable registered R’s and NPA/3^rd party voters. Using their own personal narrative, why they have chosen to cross party lines, they will have a much better chance of persuading conversions, and be less likely to motivate voters for the opposition. Dirty Hippie volunteers calling registered R’s is never a good idea.   In a particularly wild demonstration of “Un-Wisdom”, a 2008 Congressional campaign gave Jim Dean of DFA (brother of Howard) a canvassing list that was 50% R, 40% NPA and 10% D. Exactly what does Jim Dean say to a Republican to convince them to vote for a DFA Endorsed candidate for Congress?  In the late stages of a campaign, the focus must be GOTV, reaching out to your own identified supporters and high percentage unidentified voters (registered D, likely voters, of favorable demographics) and getting them to the polls.  If you are putting your resources in September and October into contacting Republicans and unknown NPA/3rd party voters, you are more likely to active votes for your opponent.

Back to the beginning, if the district is 28% Democratic, 38% Republican and 44% NPA/3^rd Party, basic math tells you that you need all or nearly all the Democratic vote, a majority of the NPA/3^rd party vote, but keep in mind some percentage of those voters are more conservative than the registered R’s, so maybe 25% from D’s, 22% from NPA/3^rd, leaving you a need to get 5% from the Republican spectrum, since we aim for 52%. If you focus on getting those 5% of R’s, you will bleed voters from the other two spectrum, requiring you to get more R’s to compensate – this creates a situation were you are basically bailing out a sinking boat with a spoon. If you project strength and passion, you will gain votes you were never accounting for and gain more monetary and volunteer support with which to further disseminate your message.  Additionally, you will increase turnout rates among your “base demographics,” while your opponent may see reduced turnout.  Given that few election contests in America see turnout over 60% overall, and more often well below that level, there is no need to panic at being “out-numbered” by the opposition party, just do a better job of getting your people out to vote and that gap disappears pretty quick.

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