How Democrats Keep Winning Elections, Part 1

The formula for winning elections is completely straightforward:  get more of your voters to show up and vote for your candidates.

After losing close elections at the national level in 2000 and 2004, and at the state level in 2002 and 2006, Democrats got together and figured out how to start winning again.  The approach they developed was, again, simplicity itself:  discourage Republicans from voting and get Democrats who rarely vote to show up and vote.

It turns out that Republicans have a built-in advantage:  our voters tend to be more engaged in the process and more likely to vote than Democrats.  Step one for Democrats is to discourage Republicans from voting.

Every time you see an ad on TV attacking Jeff Johnson or Mike McFadden, understand that the ad is not trying to get you (the Republican or Independent voter) to vote Democrat, the ad is trying to get you to not vote at all.  By convincing right-leaning and centrist voters that Republicans are evil, vile people, they hope to discourage turnout and frequently succeed.

In step 2, on the other side of the ledger, Democrats have invented a new model to get their voters to vote.  They have mastered Big Data, the use of huge computer databases to identify and locate potential voters from the less-engaged general population. 

Please read this short, but illuminating piece on Catalist, which explains why Republicans lost the 2012 election, and may not win again, unless we develop something like it.

Catalist is not just a better version of our voter lists (which it is), it’s how the Democrats use it.  When we identify a new Republican voter, we will send a mail piece, or leave a phone message just before Election Day.  When the Dems find a new voter, they will—via Catalist—dispatch a real, live person or two (known to the voter) to ask the voter face-to-face to vote Democrat, with a pitch customized to that voter’s demographics, interests, and preferences.  Guess which approach is more effective.

Notice I have said nothing about issues or messaging.  The Democrats’ message and delivery system is simple:  Republicans are evil and will take stuff away from you (TV ads) and Democrats like you and will give you free stuff (in person, at your front door).

Republicans have been using the same playbook for decades.  Every cycle, our candidates pivot to the center, trying to win the votes of independents and assuming our base will show up on their own initiative.  Very little of the money and effort on the Republican side goes into activity which will win elections:  getting out our voters.

Instead, much activity is spent on winning the argument:  convincing people that we have better candidates and ideas.  We confuse governing (what we’ll do, once elected) with campaigning (how to get our voters to the polls).

In the Republican model, to win we must run the table: field great and appealing candidates, articulate a clear governing vision, identify the top issues that resonate with voters, and craft the perfect messaging to reach the voter.  It's a Field of Dreams approach: build a great campaign, and voters will come and find you.

Democrats, instead, focus all of their campaign activity on the act of voting.  Their formula does not depend on having good candidates and winning issues:  Democrats sell a brand, not a candidate or a philosophy.  They don't wait for voters to come, they go out and find them.

GOP election efforts are candidate-centered: the entire system must be reassembled every election.  Dem's, on the other hand, operate a permanent infrastructure.  In 2010, the race for governor was over, even before the Democrats got around to picking a candidate.

Mitt Romney won independents by a big margin in 2012—he won the argument—but lost the election.  It turns out that winning over independents (winning the argument) takes a lot of time, effort, and money.  The Dems figured out that it’s much cheaper and easier to get someone who agrees with them in the first place, but wasn’t planning on voting, to come out and vote.  After 2004, Dems gave up on independents and learned to win by growing their base, one voter at a time, from among the crowd of left-leaning Americans who didn’t used to vote in elections.

In Part 2, I will go into more detail about the scope of the Democrat's vote-finding machine.

In Part 3, I provide a case study in the new politics.