Leadership and Political Marketing in the Republican Primaries
Dr Paul Baines & Professor Donna Ladkin
Graham Bell
Welcome to the first in a series of briefings from Cranfield School of
Management focussing on the themes of marketing and leadership in the
run up to the US election 2012. Joining me today in the studio are Dr Paul
Baines, Reader in Marketing and expert in political marketing and Donna
Ladkin, Professor in Leadership and Ethics, who has conducted a number of
studies in this area.
Now Donna, we are seeing the results come through from Super Tuesday
where ten states have been voting to choose their preferred Republican
candidate. How do you think these candidates have performed so far?
Donna Ladkin
Well as expected Mitt Romney comes out as a winner. Not as decisively as
he would have liked. He has won six out of the ten states. I think what is
particularly interesting about his campaign is although he has thrown loads
of resource behind it, he hasn’t actually closed the deal as it were, so I think
that’s quite interesting and sends out some warning signs to his campaign
overall because he has had huge amount of resource and he hasn’t actually
clinched the deal as it were.
Graham Bell
Paul, do any of these candidates represent a serious challenge to President
Obama?
Paul Baines
Well I think if you look at a recent poll from the Wall Street Journal, what we
can see is that the array of Republican nominees are relatively less popular
than Obama is, so for example against Obama’s 50% of the votes, Romney
would get about 44%, Santorum about 42% and so on. However this kind of
lead is probably, to some degree, within the margin of error of a typical poll,
so at the moment there is still all to play for. Another poll from Rasmussen
suggested that Romney might even be a point in front of, which is well
within the margin of error, ahead of Obama, so I think at the moment it is
difficult to say whether Obama would have a decisive victory in the
Presidential election, but it does look like at this stage that he would win an
election.
Graham Bell
And Donna, what do the results from Super Tuesday tell us about what the
Republicans are looking for from their Presidential candidate?
Donna Ladkin
I think it’s very interesting in the primary election, because basically in the
primary election you have the die-hard Republicans who are taking part in
this process so generally speaking you see a constituency that wants a more
extreme version of Republicanism represented. Somebody who would be
quite keen on anti-government, sort of low-government interference, would
be against health care, those sorts of things. I think what’s a real challenge
for anybody who is going to come against Obama is that not only do they
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Leadership and Political Marketing in the Republican Primaries
have to win that Republican need for a more extreme version of that, they
also have to appeal to the more general American public, so although the
Republican party may want somebody a bit more extreme, that extreme
person may not actually be the candidate who could win the general
election, and I think that’s the balancing point that the Republicans are
having to dance around at the moment and perhaps that’s part of the
reason that Romney isn’t actually enjoying the sort of support he would like,
because he is seen as a more moderate candidate, so whereas he may
actually do better in a general election for the Republican party they may be
looking for something a bit more extreme.
Graham Bell
Now Paul each of these candidates has a large campaign team behind them.
What role do they play?
Paul Baines
Oh their role is hugely important. A typical campaign operates a bit like a
small business, it’s very entrepreneurial kind of set up, so the first thing that
a politician would want is a general consultant helping them on the strategy,
working out what issues to talk about, how to talk about those issues and
the general consultant would be a very decisive and important member of
the team. There would then be a campaign manager that runs the day to
day campaign. That campaign manager would have a team of other people
around him or her which would incorporate a fund raising consultant, a
communications consultant, a pollster, a director of the volunteer team, a
team of people doing all the telephoning and so on, an on-line specialist
these days and of course an opposition researcher, the person that digs up
the dirt on the opponent. So that campaign team is actually extremely
important. Without the campaign team of course we wouldn’t see as much
of the candidates as we typically do and how big the campaign team is
depends on how much money has been raised and we can see that someone
like Romney of course with the support of his super pack has a sizeable,
considerable, organisation behind him.
Graham Bell
And will we see these candidates take up a different position from that of
the primary to the Presidential elections?
Paul Baines
Yes, as Donna says, there is a big difference between the two because for
example in Republican primaries the people that are voting in the
Republican primaries are Republicans, by and large, whereas in the
Presidential election the people that are voting are maybe registered for a
party, the Republicans or the Democrats or an independent, but equally
they may not yet have made up their mind and may not register with a
particular party at all. So what we see there is an attempt by a candidate to
win swing voters and that requires a much more moderate position. So
there is a very interesting positioning change inside a primary from targeting
partisan voters to targeting more moderate voters in the general election
and it is quite interesting because that change is never really picked up and
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Leadership and Political Marketing in the Republican Primaries
yet it could be. So if you are too extreme, if you start making really extreme
statements then that could come back and haunt you in the Presidential
election.
Graham Bell
And Donna, what’s your feeling about that?
Donna Ladkin
I agree with what Paul has said. I think one of the real difficulties for anyone
wanting to win office, high public office in the States, is that the United
States is such a disparate group of people, so to actually represent the
United States of America, to represent all the different constituencies in the
country is very, very difficult and I think in terms of the kinds of messages
that a candidate sends out, they have to be very careful because a message
that one constituency will actually love, another constituency will hate and I
think that we have actually seen that being played out through Barrack
Obama’s presidency as it is, that he is trying to do certain things that other
constituencies don’t like, and I think that is a real challenge for anybody
taking up political office in the United States.
Graham Bell
And Paul, we have seen quite a lot of negative campaigning, so called attack
advertising in the primary race. Are we going to see that continue into the
Presidential election?
Paul Baines
Very likely. Negative campaigning in the US is de-rigour, it’s the stuff of
American politics. We have it a bit in the UK but it’s nothing like the vitriolic
campaigning, or the toxic campaigning as one of my colleagues calls it, that
exists in the US. There are various reasons for this actually. One reason is the
freedom of speech doctrine that operates in the US. The idea that you can
say anything and that’s fair game. Another thing is that America has much
stronger freedom of information laws, so you can actually find the details
out. Court records, whether someone’s got divorced or not. You can find this
stuff out. So opposition research is actually a fundamental element of US
politics. But the interesting thing about negative campaigning is that if it’s
done properly it can severely damage the vote of an opponent. It doesn’t
tend to swap somebody over from one party to another, so if you run a
negative add against your candidate what you are trying to do it depress the
vote for that particular candidate. It’s unlikely that those voters will come to
you, but what you might do is stop them from voting for that particular
candidate. The problem though is if you don’t do it right, in other words,
make a charge, a negative charge, which isn’t true, then what you can do is
damage you own image. So what most political parties do in the US,
candidates do in the US is aim for third parties to undertake that negative
campaigning on their behalf. So we see a lot of campaigning by third party
groups. The obvious example was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against
Kerry in 2004 which severely damaged his chances of winning. I’ve no doubt
we will see much more of that in this particular upcoming Presidential
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Leadership and Political Marketing in the Republican Primaries
campaign.
Graham Bell
Donna, what are you going to be looking out for in the coming months?
Donna Ladkin
There are two things. First I’ll be looking to see what kind of messages
different candidates put out. It will be interesting to see how Romney
actually reacts to the sort of marginal win that he’s had on Super Tuesday so
it will be interesting to see what constituencies he tries to appeal to, and
similarly how other candidates like Rick Santorum might respond and the
second thing that I will be looking for is to see what President Obama does
as the candidate who is going to be taking on becomes clearer, so it will be
interesting to see what response he makes to it.
Graham Bell
What will you be looking for Paul?
Paul Baines
I think I will be looking to see Obama step up in the sense of really illustrate
his position because he does have a negative image with voters at the
moment, so we will be looking to see him set out his stall, illustrate why US
voters should select him, and also we will be looking for a Republican
candidate which will probably be Romney also step up and define why US
voters should select him for presidency, so I think that’s the key thing to see
them set out their stalls in a much more ambitious way than they have done
at the moment.
Graham Bell
Thank you both for your interesting insights. We will pick this up again in
August after the party convention.
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