At his WaPo blog, Chris Cillizza has a post up that hashes over the question of whether Republicans, poised to make major gains at the mid-terms, need a new “Contract with America”—an updated version of the document that the Newt Gingrich-led GOP produced on its way to a big win in 1994. Various operatives get space to argue pro (voters need something to vote for!) and con (it’d just give the Dems a target!), before the conclusion:
House Republican leaders have made a big strategic bet that Gingrich is right. On Nov. 2, we’ll find out if that bet was the right one.
But in all likelihood, we’ll find out nothing of the sort. Or at least, nothing that we don’t know now, which is that these gimmick platforms—whether the Contract with America, or, twelve years later, the Democrats’ “Six in ‘06” agenda—don’t seem to make much of an impression on voters.
There’s ample evidence that only a small portion of the electorate was even aware of the Contract with America at the time of the 1994 election, much of it rounded up in a good Media Matters item from 2006. This representative passage comes from a poll just before the vote (PDF) by the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press (now the Pew Center), which was flagged by Media Matters:
The much-ballyhooed Republican Contract With America has failed to do much to improve the prospects of GOP candidates this fall. But neither has it boomeranged to the degree many Democrats had hoped. In the new survey, only three in ten (29%) claimed to have heard about this document signed by over 300 Republican congressional candidates last month. Overall about as many voters say it makes them more likely to vote Republican as say less likely (7% vs. 6%).
Twenty-nine percent of voters is not nothing, but political information is not randomly distributed among the electorate. If a minority of voters is aware of some bit of political news, it’s a good bet that they’re the most politically engaged people—which means the most likely to already hold strong political views. The political stories with the potential to move votes are the rare ones that break through to people who don’t follow politics closely, and are only weakly attached to a party. The Contract with America wasn’t one of those stories.
That doesn’t mean that reporters shouldn’t report on this debate, if it’s what the political class is chattering about at the moment. It’s interesting, if you’re a political junkie, to know that this is the sort of thing GOP consultants are spending (and, presumably, billing) their time on at the moment. And it’s possible that these campaign platforms might matter in a roundabout way, by fostering cooperation among partisan allies: a 2006 Hill article cited by Media Matters (no longer online, but retrievable through Lexis-Nexis) suggests that the Contract played a role in “creating new unity among disparate camps of incumbents” and “bettering the campaigns of their challenger candidates.”
But we should keep things in perspective, too. Truth is, while this debate might seem like a big bet to the politicos who craft mission statements and message strategies for a living, in the bigger picture the stakes are pretty small.
Using Media Matters for proof puts your entire publication at risk. They are well known as being a highly partisan outfit and the research you pointed to in order to prove your point is no different.
The basic question being asked is: Did the contract with America affect the 1994 election?
Those people, like Media Matters, who wish to devalue Mr. Gringich's contribution point to one basic fact: only 30% of the voters knew. One thing they point to talks about exit polls, which does lend some credence to their argument, but everything else they point to lends absolutely no credible evidence to their answer.
Simply put, if 30% of the voters are aware of some political push, you've done something quite difficult. Most voters don't know anything about politics, they only know about the most recent dust-up. Most voters in 2008 still thought Republicans were in charge of both houses of Congress.
Most voters don't study things like Contract with America, or any of the other things non-profit groups might ask a candidate to sign, like tax groups asking for signatures against raising taxes. Most voters have no idea how many promises their candidates made and to whom they were made.
This does not mean that those who did know where not affected. & when elections have been very close historically, it seems odd you'd make the claim that 30% of the voting public knowing meant nothing.
Maybe back out of the politics of it and think of it as a product sale. Republicans and Democrats are selling a product - themselves. Neither group knows exactly which advertisements, which communication strategies, and which campaign pushes help their vote totals, but they know they all help.
As the axiom is marketing goes: "I know 1/2 the money I spend on marketing works, I just don't know which 1/2"
Lastly, even if I have no idea which 1/2 is working, if I as any CEO could get 30% of my potential client base to know the 10 principles of their organization.... just wow. They'd live and die a very, very wealthy person and be sought out by every book writer and researcher to figure out just how that was possible.
For the Columbia & Media Matters though - it's just overblown.
cross posted: www.detailedabstractions.com
#1 Posted by Michael S. Langston, CJR on Wed 26 May 2010 at 12:18 PM
@Michael S.,
A couple points. First, your point about Media Matters is silly. Yes, they have a well-articulated and well-known political position. That's obviously something to take into account when reading their output, but it is not on its face reason to dismiss what they have to say on a given issue, any more than the varying political positions of other outlets are reason to dismiss what they say. The work needs to be judged on the merits.
Second, I wasn't really citing a Media Matters argument at all -- I was noting that I found the other sources I discussed through them, which is common courtesy on the Internet. The key data point I cited was the Times Mirror survey, which was conducted by a group led by Andrew Kohut, who's a pretty credible individual.
Third, you say "most voters don't know anything about politics." I agree! There's also the paradox that voters who do know more tend to be less "persuadable," because they're highly engaged and have strong political views -- they're not "better-informed" because they're trying to figure out whether to vote for an R or a D, they're better-informed because they're political junkies. To my eye, this means our default position should be skepticism about the power of any message strategy to move votes, and I'm not persuaded that the Contract is an exception.
#2 Posted by Greg Marx, CJR on Wed 26 May 2010 at 03:39 PM