Understanding elections as a science

Quite often, candidates for political office find comfort in the sizes of crowds that show up at their rallies. “Everywhere we go, we have huge crowds,” you hear them say. They begin to believe that victory is certain.

However, crowds in themselves do not mean anything. In sub-Saharan Africa, rural areas do not have many avenues for entertainment. Occasionally, the village’s football team provides the much-needed entertainment. Sometimes there is a wedding or the coronation of a new chief. Most of the days, however, are a ritual of waking up in the morning, working on a piece of land, enjoying lunch and dinner then going to bed by 7 or 8 p.m.. Therefore, when they hear a politician is coming to the neighbourhood to address a rally, the masses show up to get entertained. Any politician, whether from the party in power or from the opposition, will get a similar turn-out. It is hard, therefore, to simply conclude that you are on course to victory based on the size of crowds.

Campaigns need to understand that elections are a science. Whenever an election looms, voters spend months wrestling with policies, politicians, ideologies and even tribe. When the day of voting comes, the following scenario plays out: some do not vote at all, others go to vote for their favourite candidates, while others decide on which candidate to choose while inside the polling booth. Even there in the booth, some choose to write nonsense on the ballot paper and go — which is why there are null-and-void votes. Understanding the psychology of voters, knowing the issues they deeply care about and the kind of solutions they believe in, and building on the history of the voting pattern in a region or the country as a whole are essential for a campaign that wants to win.

The biggest mistake any campaign can make is to ignore the need for approaching the elections as a science. A winning campaign requires well-researched data by experts with in-depth knowledge of the country or the region in which the vote will take place. Campaigns need to understand the risks they face and how to mitigate them. In addition, winning political campaigns also have strategies for seizing any opportunities that come up from time to time. Also essential is the mapping of stakeholders. There has to be a clear understanding of who the stakeholders are. Other matters: How do you handle the media in this era of staggering technology in which news travels at the speed of light? How do you manage a crisis in the event of bad press or leaks of confidential information?

The understanding of elections as a science also helps you to design your campaign more effectively. Campaigns are a very expensive exercise. Any campaign requires enormous amounts of both your time and money. A winning campaign needs to be designed in such a way that it gets value for money in everything it does. A well-designed campaign needs to have ways of scoping and feasibility assessment of a candidate or of the party’s chances of electoral success. It must also develop a unique campaign message and an effective communication strategy. At the same time, there must be a robust fund-raising strategy to ensure that the campaign’s chances are not weakened by lack of funding.

Then there is opinion polling — an important aspect of elections as a science. Usually, candidates want to hear something nice, something that gives them the comfort that they are on course to victory. A good campaign must avoid such a trap. It must rely on credible opinion polling, even when the results are not pleasant. Ignoring polling is a recipe for disaster. How can you be designing a campaign’s strategy without knowing where the people stand? There is also the allure of social media, the temptation to simply put a question on social media and obtain answers from the public. Such short-cuts are risky and the results are unreliable. A campaign needs polling that draws opinions from a big range of samples. The biggest voting block in sub-Saharan Africa is in rural areas, where technology has permeated the least. A campaign needs to use opinion polls that effectively sample this important block.

This is not to suggest that social media should be ignored. On the contrary, social media has become an important tool in opinion-shaping and swift responses to damaging news. A tweet to correct a wrongly quoted speech goes a long way to stop the damage from spreading than a press statement published in the most widely read newspaper. A campaign needs to have a robust strategy for using social media to communicate its messages and to mobilise its supporters.

There is also the matter of branding. Your party or your candidate needs to be a brand. Unfortunately, not all candidates understand branding or the role it needs to play in their campaign, and in some cases, it has even played a part in costing them the election. A brand is really the audience’s perception of you as a candidate or your party as an entity. It includes, but is not limited to, logos, colors, fonts, jingles, catch phrases, and graphics or other images. These should appear on or in a candidate’s campaign website, social media, email, paper materials, political advertisements and signs, and all communications. In fact, being able to control a news cycle and define the language used for a particular topic is also a part of your political brand. Political branding is crafting a narrative, and each element supports and strengthens that narrative, making you easy to recognize and hopefully easier to vote for.

All these and more are ingredients of elections as a science. Candidates or political parties need to hire experts to help them build a campaign super-structure capable of victory. You can ignore this science at your own peril.