Although this presidential election took place in 1984, I
think Reagan’s campaign ad “It’s
Morning Again in America” is the perfect and best example of persuasive campaigning, thus I had to share it.
If you are an American, how could you possibly dislike this video?
We discussed two types of political campaigning in class:
persuasive and informative. A candidate uses persuasive campaigning in order to
gain support from all voters, regardless of their party affiliation. In
contrast, informative campaigning focuses on the candidate’s political platform
and where exactly they stand on an issue. Of the two, Mueller favors persuasive
campaigning because it can only have positive impacts on the candidate, if used
right.
In his ’84 re-election campaign, Reagan listened to Mueller
and utilized persuasive campaigning. “It’s Morning Again in American” campaign
ad is persuasive because Reagan reminds how wonderful America has been the last
four years, since he has been president. Instead of telling voters where he
stands on an issue, he illustrates how more Americans are getting married,
buying more houses, and getting more jobs. Reagan has made America “prouder,
stronger, and better” and that’s all he explains in this ad. An informative
campaign would have had little benefit to Reagan as he would have gained
support from the voters with the same political beliefs, but would have pushed
other voters further away.
The result: Reagan received 525 out of 538 electoral
votes (the highest ever by a presidential candidate), which Mueller would
attribute to his persuasive campaign ad.
2 comments:
I will extend your post to say that persuasive campaign ads’ positive effect can be dangerous in poorly educated countries such as the Dominican Republic. In 2012, ex-president Hipólito Mejía ran for presidential elections and obtained around 47% of the votes, losing only by 4%. This is a surprisingly large percent of votes considering the fact that in his term as president, 200-2004, the Dom Rep. went through one of the deepest and severe crisis it has experienced in the last century. His motto, “Llego Papá,” which literally means, “Daddy came” together with an extremely catchy song was the key of this unexpected support. Watch campaign ad: http://bit.do/Hipolito-Mejia-llegopapa2012
Chantal, is it really that surprising that Hipólito Mejía received such a high percentage of the vote? Although the country was experiencing a crisis, our discussions from public choice would tell us that the rational voter would have remained ignorant of the candidates platforms. If voters are truly ignorant, it would be expected, rather than surprising, that such a persuasive advertising campaign would garner so much support for the politician making the ads.
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