This paper analyzes how Barack Obama transformed political campaign marketing, utilizing both traditional and new ways to communicate and engage with the masses.
This is accomplished by first illustrating a general framework for political marketing. Then, I examine the history of political campaign marketing, with a special emphasis on how technology has transformed the field over time.
Lastly, I analyze how online and social media tools helped Obama win the election and how the internet has transformed the nature of political elections. Bush in , Obama benefited enormously from not having to fight for his party's nomination. Gerald Ford in , Jimmy Carter in , and George Bush in had to wage such battles, and each of them was defeated by his general election opponent in November. In contrast, Obama was able to use the first eight months of to raise money, rebuild his campaign organization, develop lines of attack on his likely Republican opponents, and launch his general election campaign from a united, enthusiastic Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Caroline, in September Following the pattern of reelection-seeking presidents since the s, Obama chose Vice President Biden to run with him for a second term.
While Obama was uniting his party for the fall, the Republicans were waging a fierce intraparty battle to choose their nominee. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won the nomination, but was subjected to severe attacks by his Republican rivals.
Romney won the nomination and placated conservatives by choosing the chair of the House Budget Committee, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, as his vice presidential running mate in advance of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.
But only then was he able to focus on raising money for the general election, move toward the more popular political center, and direct his campaign toward defeating Obama. The Supreme Court's decision in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates to corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals to spend massive amounts of money in an effort to elect either Obama or Romney, as well as in the congressional elections. Obama, like many incumbents, turned in a rusty and therefore ineffective performance.
But, chastened by his weak showing, Obama came back strongly in the second and third debates and regained his lead over Romney. Toward the end of the campaign, the unemployment rate finally dipped below 8 percent, reinforcing Obama's claim that his economic policies had placed the nation on the road to prosperity. Obama defeated Romney by 51 percent to 47 percent in the national popular vote and by to in the electoral vote.
His margin of victory was down slightly from , making him the first president since Woodrow Wilson to be reelected by a smaller majority than in his first election. Also disappointing to Obama, the House of Representatives remained in Republican control, by a margin to to Even though twenty-three of their seats were on the ballot in compared with only ten for the Republicans, the Democrats actually gained two seats in the election, raising their majority in the upper chamber to 55 to Still more important for the long term, Obama ran best among those groups in the electorate that were growing most rapidly: young people, single people, nonreligious people, Latinos, and Asian Americans.
Despite his victories, Obama began his second term with a very limited mandate. His campaign's one-word theme was content-free—Forward! The one specific issue Obama did stress on the campaign trail—his continuing desire to raise taxes on wealthy Americans—bore fruit one month after the election, when Congress voted to raise the marginal income tax rate from But during the campaign, he deemphasized other issues that were important to him but politically risky, including immigration reform, climate change, and gun control.
As in , voter turnout was considerably lower in than it had been two years previously: 34 percent in the lowest in a national election since compared with 58 percent in Because midterm electorates tend to have a higher concentration of the older and more conservative white voters who tend to favor Republican candidates, the Democrats were likely to suffer. Adding to their disadvantage in the Senate elections was that Democrats held 21 of 36 seats on the ballot in , seven of them in states that Obama had lost to Romney.
Republicans gained nine seats in the Senate elections, the largest gain for any party since , and took away control of the chamber from the Democrats with a majority.
They added two to their ranks of governors, leaving them in control of the executive in 31 states. They also won majorities in ten additional state legislative chambers, giving them control of 67 of The midterm election guaranteed that Obama spent the last two years of his presidency with a Republican Congress.
Although the 22nd Amendment barred Obama from seeking a third term as president in , he was intensely interested in seeing a Democrat succeed him, especially because all of the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination promised to seek the repeal of major parts of his legislative legacy if one of them was elected. Obama did not endorse either of the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, but he clearly favored Clinton as the most electable and privately discouraged Vice President Biden from entering the contest for fear of dividing his supporters between Biden and Clinton.
In the fall campaign, Obama campaigned ardently in multiple battleground states for Clinton and against the Republican nominee, Donald J. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. If you know of others, let us know in the comments. Top campaign staff developed a Nate Silver-like appetite for the data they needed to make decisions. That new campaign included a massive data-organization effort.
Instead of a bevy of databases, some for fundraising, some for voter-drives, some online, some accessible only in campaign offices, as was the case in , they developed a single, comprehensive database. Then they hired the quants. According to Time , their analytics department was five times the size of the previous election. They used the data—not just the basic age, sex, race, and neighborhood—but also consumer information, to figure out not just that, say, Joe Smith of Anaheim was likely to donate, but that he was most likely to donate the most online when sent an email by Michelle Obama offering him a chance to enter a raffle to eat dinner with the president, while his neighbor would likely give more after receiving a phone call from an in-state supporter.
It was no longer a numbers game, a hope that their supporters would know how to best approach people. The campaign had, scientifically, figured out the best way to ask people for money and votes. What they discovered was that QuickDonate subscribers donated four times that of average contributors, according to Time. Then they expanded the program. In the earlier campaign, his grassroots supporters ran their own drives, figured out who to ask for votes, and who to ask for money or time.
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