The new face of election campaigning

There’s an old saying in political campaigning that half the money you spend on advertising is completely wasted, but you can never tell which half. 

That’s because a large number of voters have already made up their minds and won’t be swayed by the campaign.

While television advertising, for example, will run until the pre-election blackout on October 23, close to half of the electorate is expected to have cast its vote by then. So it’s certainly true that half of the generic advertising could be spent on people whose votes are no longer up for grabs.

But the art of winning votes is becoming far more targeted to individuals than in the past, which means the political parties get far more bang for their advertising dollar, and much less waste.  Digital advertising allows messages to be tailored to recipients by their age, gender, location, issues of interest and a range of other demographic factors.

This means that the state election campaign that I experience will be different to yours. And those of us who are more politically aware (such as readers of The Inside Word) may not see much of the campaign at all. The parties know us intimately and will not waste their money on preaching to those who have already formed their political opinions.

The real battle in this election is for those who are disengaged or just not interested. Often these are younger voters, and both major parties (and some of the minor ones) have developed very sophisticated online campaigns to reach them.

A few weeks ago, one of these campaigns escaped from the curious recesses of the internet and found its way into the mainstream media. It was a TikTok video released by the LNP showing an AI version of the Premier dancing beneath a caption highlighting cost-of-living issues and insinuating a lack of care on his behalf.  It’s a far cry from the serious, old-school campaign letters that you and I are currently receiving from our MPs and candidates. But it is a very good example of how the parties are trying to influence the influencer generation.

Labor and the union movement have also used/explored new ways of getting their messages across to this demographic. But actually, the clear leader in tapping the zeitgeist for political purposes has been Pauline Hanson, with her Please Explain video series.  (Warning – it’s a deep rabbit hole to be dragged down once you start clicking on the videos.)

This is the new style of campaiging – entertaining the target audience in order to get them to absorb the political message.

Old-fashioned door-knocking and letterbox dropping haven’t disappeared, but they also are now serving up content curated for households based on demographics and local issues.

So when a long-time political friend asked me the other day how I think the campaign is going, I had to say I really don’t know because I think most of it is hidden from view. Voters are being targeted directly, and privately, on a scale that has never occurred before. And that means it’s very hard for those of us who get our news the old-fashioned way to get a handle on the true campaign.

Having said all that, I don’t believe this new campaigning will change the outcome of this Queensland election, which has taken on an air of inevitability.  But it will shift some votes in different directions, and that may affect the outcome in some seats.

And if the polls and pundits turn out to be wrong and we get a result that no-one saw coming, it will be because the campaign was designed that way.