“Persuasion” vs “Turnout” – A False Choice
Every year, politicians and pundits take to the airwaves to pronounce whether this next election cycle is about “turnout” or “persuasion”. More often than not, turning out the base ends up as the preferred strategy, driving both campaign dollars and on-the-ground strategy overwhelmingly towards getting “our side” to show up and vote. As one example of that, In advance of Aftyn Behn’s recent special election in TN congressional district 7, DNC Chair, Ken Martin apparently told Liam Kerr that the election is “not about persuading voters, it’s about turning them out.”
In most respects, however, turnout vs persuasion is a false choice, one that has contributed to shrinking the Democratic base over the long-term while doing little to help them win races in the short term.
When candidates focus overwhelmingly on turnout, three problems follow. First, they narrow the universe of potential voters with whom they have contact, by phone, at the door during canvassing and more broadly at town hall meetings, community events, etc. I know from the experience of my own congressional campaigns just how much pressure there is to focus on Democrats or those who “lean Democrat” and to steer clear of everyone else. That’s the advice you’ll get from campaign staff and most consultants, even in districts like Virginia’s 9th CD which is listed as Republican + 22, itself a substantial understatement of the Democrats’ disadvantage here. If Democrats turn out at record numbers here – and in most rural districts – we still lose by big margins. Because there just are not enough of us at this point.
Second, when we focus on turning out the base, our priorities and messaging usually shift as well. What we talk about and how we talk about it remain comfortably within our liberal bubbles. In the last few election cycles, this has translated to a relentless focus on “Trump is bad!” messaging, if not from candidates themselves, most decidedly from national figures and Democratic Party leaders and pundits. Putting aside the fact that constant criticism of Trump usually makes Democrats less appealing to swing voters (as described in Arlie Hochschild’s Stolen Pride), this also serves as a substitute for putting forth our own clear and compelling vision of what we are for. Outside of our bubble, “Trump’s a fascist pedophile” doesn’t hold a candle to “farmers should be able to fix their own equipment.”
Third, the work of rebuilding trust between rural and urban folks, between “red” and “blue” goes out the window. If our top priority is to get people in our camp to vote, why bother spending time and resources listening to potentially persuadable people, to Trump voters now having second thoughts, or to people who’ve become so disillusioned with politics that they’ve largely quit voting altogether?
The real question for those on the Left is not persuasion vs turnout, but rather, what must be done to make us more persuasive? More persuasive to swing voters, to those who have dropped out of politics and even to our own “base”? What policies, investments and concrete strategies will help rebuild and broaden our base, motivate infrequent voters to re-engage with politics, and get more folks already on “our side” fired up as voters, volunteers or contributors? We’ll get into the details in next month’s issue but in the meantime, let’s begin by exorcising the idea that we must choose between turnout and persuasion. Instead, our goal must be to create a party whose words and deeds, policies and messages, investments and concrete actions are in and of themselves persuasive to the majority of our fellow citizens.