Maravi

Invisible campaigning

Invisible campaigning
By Dr Guy Scott
Wed 17 Aug. 2011, 08:30 CAT

Last week's article about various presidential hopefuls each fantasising a "demographic" segment of the population that was going to vote for them, attracted one very trenchant commentary from an anonymous source. I will give his or her remarks verbatim, after a quick reminder that a "demographic" is a statistically defined section of the population: for example Under-25s, mothers of more than one child, widows, unemployed males, Members of a certain tribal or religious grouping etc. Here we go:

"Dear Mr. Scott,

"The most competent user of the demographic idea, because it is the richest party by far and can afford all the analysis and consultancy, is the MMD. The MMD, with some help from vote-splitting spoilers in the opposition, has now beaten PF three times in Presidential elections and it will do so again if you do not buck up your Oxford (or is it Cambridge?) ideas.

"Roughly speaking the electoral register in Zambia is divided into two halves: two-and-a-half million voters under the age of 30, and the same number over the age of 30. We can slice it finer than that but there is no point in getting sophisticated before we have the basics right.

"Any election strategist will tell you that under-30s are unreliable. Give them a couple of T-shirts or a few sachets of tujilili and they are anybody's. They can also be swayed by rhetoric, music, and visions of an unrealistically perfect future. This may be less true of educated youngsters who cannot find a job (a growing pro- PF demographic) but nonetheless it is broadly true. A good election planner, therefore, places his or her faith in the more mature fifty per cent of the voters and tries to secure a "nest-egg" of reliable votes from there.

"You would think it was a simple matter for any party to get its message to voters of all ages and accumulate supporters, but that is not the case. Look at a photograph of any large political rally and you will see that the under-30s tend to dominate by far. The oldies are also not avid consumers of radio or newspapers, largely because they have little interest in the ding-dong discourse of politicians. They are also typically more vulnerable than youngsters, having acquired a spouse, several children of their own, and the gift of other dependants from the extended family. A very mild "shock" is enough to cast them into the deep end - and partly to evade unwelcome shocks they do not want to be publicly identified with any political party. Some of the older voters feel so insecure that they shudder at ludicrous stories about Sata throwing old people into the Zambezi (starting with himself presumably).

"To cut the long answer short, the way to reach the older demographic is for organisers to go door-to-door and politically incognito, compiling lists of sympathisers as they go, which information helps to organise and target the next round (with weapons such as women's clubs and Citizens Empowerment). The MMD has at least one very sophisticated, computerised system for this "invisible campaigning", which is unknown even to its own party officials.

"Of course you cannot win them all; but if it can assemble a nest-egg of loyal and stable supporters in the region of one million votes, say, then MMD are home and dry. Given the likely turnout of 70 per cent there will be 3.5 million votes cast; the MMD can easily pick up half-a-million in the hurly burly of the younger voters. And with the nest-egg in place that is probably enough to ensure victory with around 40 per cent of the total vote.

"Even if PF has a nest-egg of a million voters amongst the youngsters, this is rather unstable and susceptible to influences earlier described. Further, to match MMD it will still need to hunt votes on an order greater than half-a-million amongst the older voters.

"And that can only be done house-to-house and hut-to-hut in the infantry fashion - by footing.

"So there you are Mr. Scott. Think about it and give my regards to president Sata. Oh, by the way, PF's Don't Kubeba campaign is a step in the right direction. If you can persuade people to lie or keep quiet about their political persuasions as a way of ensuring that they are able to vote freely, unfettered by feelings of obligation, Zambia is making progress towards democracy.

Yours in the struggle,

Mr. X"

Labels: GUY SCOTT, PF

posted by MrK @ 10:37 PM