The US is the only state in the international system with the busiest elections calendar. This is because elections are held at state, federal, and local levels. This means that the American voter would vote more in his or her lifetime as compared to German, Japanese, and British voters. High-visibility elections are given much focus due to the intense lobbying and voter mobilization.
The senatorial, presidential, and governorship mobilizations are conducted by professionals, such as media advisors, pollsters, speechwriters, and political scientists. Presidential mobilization emphasizes more on mass communication. In this regard, television adverts are often utilized to access voters.
Furthermore, high-visibility elections are based on issues rather than ethnicity and partisan politics. At the local levels, elections are waged on small scale because local politicians do not have enough resources to launch formidable elections. It is surprising to learn that even judicial offices are contested in the US.
In other parts of the world, judicial officers are simply appointed by governmental agencies, such as the judicial service commission. The main aim of contesters is to reach potential voters. Individuals seeking political offices are faced with a dilemma of balancing scarce resources with the demands of voter mobilization.
The author reveals some of the astonishing factors that are considered when designing a campaign structure. One of them entails the steps that would be taken when formulating campaign policies while the other factor relates to cost-effectiveness (Gerber and Green 37).
Cost-effectiveness and restructuring of campaigns are the two useful factors that influence voter mobilization in any voter recruitment process. The two factors influenced the electorate in the just concluded US presidential elections in a number of ways. Regarding cost-effectiveness, it is always important to consider the number of votes that a single dollar would bring before spending.
In a densely populated region, making phone calls would be ineffective because few voters would be reached. In a densely populated region, a door-to-door campaign would be effective. Door-to-door campaigns are costly, but they generate high number of votes as compared to making phone calls.
In particular, randomized door-to-door campaigns have higher chances of soliciting high numbers of votes as compared to any other technique. The technique is preferred in the US because of a number of reasons. One of the advantages is that it defines the observed population. The observed population consists of all individuals who will be sampled. Another advantage is that the sampled population is divided into a number of groups.
The sampling itself is random meaning that those mobilized would represent all groups in a sample. Another advantage is that an intervention strategy would be devised upon studying the group behavior. For instance, members from the treatment group would be contacted through emails, encouraging them to vote for the preferred candidate.
The above technique was applied in the just concluded presidential elections. The Republicans and the Democrats had limited resources yet they had to reach many voters in the country. In regions considered that belonged to Republicans, Democrats employed randomized voter recruitment technique because it would help in identifying some of the behaviors of voters.
However, each party had an effective method of reaching voters. It is because of advanced voter mobilization techniques that the pollsters predicted a cutthroat presidential competition. However, the party that had the ability to blend the various techniques emerged winner.
Works Cited
Gerber, Alan and Donald Green. “Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-scale Field Experiment.” American Political Science Review 102.2 (2008): 33-48. Print.