As voters, we mistakenly believe that we pick our candidates after careful analysis of their political platform, their leadership qualities and their communication skills.
Sadly, those traits are actually used to justify our decision. Various academic studies show that when it comes to picking politicians, instinct, first impressions and stereotypes guide us far more often and powerfully than we'd like to admit.
Princeton researchers showed people a series of photographs of two people for one second and asked the viewers to make snap judgments of who was more competent, the person on the left or the person on the right. What the participants didn't know is they were looking at the two main candidates in various previous elections across the United States. The respondents picked the election winners 68.8 per cent of the time and the frequency the respondents chose one picture over the other roughly corresponded to the voter breakdown in the actual election.
In her book Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them, Susan Delacourt, one of Canada's most revered political journalists, goes to great lengths to show how Canadian politics, particularly at the federal level, has embraced modern marketing techniques to entice voters to make a snap, intuitive decision, in the same way they choose where they go for their morning coffee.
As Delacourt laments, the most sought-after political operatives are now skilled marketers who employ the same sophisticated tools used to sculpt advertising campaigns to shape candidates, campaigns and voters - vast consumer databases, focus groups to test effectiveness, precise micro-polling (not the cheap, unreliable view from 10 miles high the news media buy during every election) and targeted messaging.
The Conservatives under Stephen Harper have particularly embraced this model as the path to victory. Their database, using publicly available government data, combined with private consumer data bought from various meta-data companies, can give street-by-street demographic descriptions of who lives there and the talking points they are most likely to want to hear, based on their age, gender, income, wealth, number of children and a host of other characteristics.
In other words, when they come door knocking, they already know what you want to talk about and what you want to hear.
Before the marketing gurus took over, Delacourt points out, political leaders crafted their campaigns based on reaching voters with what they hoped were the most attractive parts of their platform. Today, the platform itself is shaped by marketing and the campaign never stops as the leaders use the most current data available to shape their responses to the issues of the day. As a result, a marketing mentality has immersed itself into every part of the political process, no matter how seemingly trivial. There is a reason Harper was the first national party leader in Canadian history to employ a full-time stylist. Nothing is left to chance, from the backdrop to the cut of his suit to the color and shade of his tie.
Political salesmanship may not be so deep and methodical for civic elections in Prince George but it is still there. Savvy candidates identify core constituencies to target, both for money and votes (in other words, they choose who will support them and tailor themselves accordingly) and pick their clothes, haircuts and colors on their campaign signs as carefully as they pick slogans, issues and debate lines.
The key for voters is to not see candidates as a Tim Horton or a Starbucks candidate (that's the prism political marketers want voters to use) but as job applicants. Voters are the boss and the candidates want the job of representing them. First impressions are still important here but it's much easier to take the emotion out of the equation and apply careful second thought and reconsideration before making the final choice.
