The Evolution of Political Approaches

The Evolution of Political Approaches

"By 2012, it has become impossible to correctly interpret campaigns strategy without understanding revolution in tactics." (12) Political strategy has been around since voting was established, and over the years the approaches have evolved to meet the political demand. These approaches have evolved from the traditional "wise man" approach to a social science- centric approach. The "wise man" approach was very critical in the start but soon began to fall behind the curve, and to meet this demeaned and changes of time a new approach needed to move in. the social science-centric approaches provide the basis for more successful campaigns, and many different elements to produce varying accurate data used in technology advanced political campaigns.

The first approach called "Wise Men" established the bases for political strategy. "Wise men" were men who studied the area of political consultants as a result they were hired to help produce successful campaigns and voter turnout, which include many men like Dick Morris. "Wise men" used many different events of which included debates, party conventions, and television ads to win the voters choice. These big events gained popularity for the candidates which helped produce correct results for the "wise men", but there still was no way in telling if the results were true or not or from which event caused the win in votes. "Wise man's" data could not be decided if it was true or not because "there was no governing theory of where people got their information and how the processed it, or the relative role that parties, issues, and candidates profiles played in the minds as they weighted their choices before election day." (20) An example of this is when Bob Shrum a democratic media consultant said, " A campaigns rally is three people around a television set."(11) Shrum made money from television-aids, but his predictions were not completely statistically right by any means. These "wise Man" approaches soon died out, because there was not any progressive changes that occurred and it was simply was unscientific with the data that was produced.

Times began to change and to keep up with this change the "wise man" approach dyed out and was replaced by the Social science-centric approach. "In the 1950s, political scientists had started talking like economists, describing politicians, and citizens as rational beings who acted to maximize their self- interest.(70)" Social science-centric approaches described this new approach that was taken on by political scientist, they used this approach to compare data and rise more questions then a single framework test that was used by the "wise men".

The Social science-centric approaches provided very accurate data from using the statistical method, this data was then used to project the feature in campaigns and determined their strategies used. When the scientific method was applied it relied on the use of field experiments manipulating the treatment on voter turn out, rather then the old ways which used hunches to project voter turnout. (PowerPoint) " The use of field experiments to measure cause and effect...allows campaigns to confidently address individual voters instead of broader public." (9) This revolution of field experiments was guided in voter turnout by two political scientists, Gerber and Green. Gerber and Green used randomized intervention to show the difference between the control and treatment group