As some of you may know, tomorrow is election day.  Although nothing is certain, there is a strong correlation between campaign cohesiveness and campaign success.  Yes, it is true that wild campaigns can be successful, and that disciplined campaigns can be unsuccessful, like most things in life, focus will generally succeed in the end.

Below are four types of ways a campaign can go awry. Some are systemic, while others come about because of the attitudes of both the office seeker and their staff.  Most, however, are a combination of both.

Entropy:

It is time for us to all think back to our high school physics or biology class on this one. Entropy is the state of nature where things naturally go from a higher sate of order to a lower one unless more energy is added. Think about how your kitchen will naturally become messy until you clean it up – it requires work to clean, and the natural state is to just get more and more dirty.  Some campaigns have a similar problem, however the mess can be seen as overconfidence.

The Lee for Utah Senate campaign is a prime example of this.  Lee came in and always felt that he was on top.  Indeed he was the favorite going into the Republican state convention last month.  Lee, however, did not come in first, but rather second.  This should have been a sign that his campaign needed to toughen up and hunker down to succeed, and energy should be spent to make sure that he could secure as many votes as he could rather than try to take them away from his opponent.

It is said that in an election you should always run like you are in second place, but talk like you are in first. Lee has done the exact opposite – people in second place fight dirty and thereby loose site of the main goal of winning.  Meanwhile, Lee acts as though he has the election locked up and does not seem to be doing much to try and secure new voters. This is one of the principal reasons I feel that Lee will be unsuccessful tomorrow.

Inexperience:

Despite what the movies tell you, a rag-tag group of people most likely will not succeed when it is time to play the big game. Professionals are professionals for a reason, they have a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t.  This is not to say, of course, that a campaign should be comprised of only highly paid staff and campaigners – indeed the fresh faced intern and the campaign volunteer play very important roles in a campaign.  But we must also not forget that the intern is there for a reason – to learn more about the process, and that the hardcore volunteer is likely to soak up a ton of nuts-and-bolts information about how a campaign is run and carry that forward to the next campaign.

I look to the Wright campaign as an example of campaign inexperience. I am hard pressed, from the candidate on down, to find an experienced campaigner. I will admit that their campaign is a passionate one, but their lack of campaign experience has shone though time and time again (sometimes on this blog). Think back to the days of yore when two armies met on the battle field. One side may have more fire, but the military is improperly trained, while the other is able to hold a line and steadily advance. Both sides are fighting for what they believe in, but having experience is invaluable.

Passion without discipline can have an unfortunate side effect: aliening potential future allies. Campaigns are a portion of the “industry” (for lack of a better word) of politics. Often times, people you have run direct campaigns against are people you need to work with in order to achieve your personal goals in the future. Indeed, I have run direct campaigns against people I work with on a day-to-day basis, and no hard feelings persist. Why? Because experienced individuals know that, in the end, we are all on the same side; within a political party, it is to advance the goals of that party, outside of the party, it is to advance the common good. Inexperienced individuals, if not properly apprenticed into the political world, often lash out and burn bridges along the way, all the while forgetting that the sun will rise the day after the election and that it is much more difficult to repair a relationship than to maintain one.

Lack of Critical Mass:

This is, by far, the most common reason a campaign putters out and dies. For whatever reason, the campaign simply can not get enough resources to succeed. All campaigns need three things: money, volunteers, and supporters.  If you are lacking in any one of those three areas, you simply can not win.  With no money, you can not buy ads, pay staffers, or give volunteers supplies; with not volunteers, you can not spread your message across the district; with out supporters, you can not get the votes you need to show you are a legitimate campaign in the first place.

I look to my very own Fair Boundaries as an example of a campaign that did not reach critical mass. In our case we had many supporters, but volunteers and money were difficult to come by. Some of this was due to the complexities of explaining the issue and the byzantine laws surrounding the initiative process, while others problems arose due to a lack of funds to pay for necessary staffers and field coordinators. Finally, although the volunteers on the campaign worked diligently to collect signatures, the simple fact was that there simply were not enough to go out into all sections of this state to collect the necessary signatures.

As I said before, this is the most common reason a campaign fails.  The upside to these types of failures is that much can be learned from them. Campaigners can ask why they didn’t have enough of a particular resource, and carry that information into the future.

Third Party Players Dominate:

This seems to be the most popular reason of late as to why a campaign fails. With the rise of the internet, it has become more and more difficult for third party players to take over a campaign. As an example, ask yourself why so many (or any for that matter) Americans honestly think that President Obama is a: terrorist, Muslim, Kenyan born, the anti-Christ, and/or a Black Panther.  The reason is simple. People will believe what they hear if it comes from someone they know or from a source they trust. Furthermore, the internet has become a grand echo chamber where fifty websites will “report” a “fact” they like from an original source, not so much because it is true, but because the poster wants it to be true.

If a campaign does not mount a strong counter-propaganda program, it can easily be consumed by it. I do not see this problem going away any time soon, and the only way to lessen (but not eliminate) the problem is to make sure you have a good working relationship with legitimate sources that can help you in countering attacks. I honestly feel that the days of ignoring outrageous attacks need to end, because, anymore, any “truth” can become viral and impossible to stop.