Abstract
The advent of the computer enables a greater clarity of segmentation, and illustrates both the transforming power and political consequence of the new technology and the indispensability of professional advice, with real power going to those who purvey it; the right with their business linkages became the first fully to integrate such technologies. Political marketing and its antecedent, propaganda, are really technology-led, and such technology demands the leasing of a specialised expertise which has to be paid for. The progress is towards the elusive ideal of ever-refined segmentation. For segmentation is a key element in marketing since we derive our political identity from major social groupings we belong to.
‘In the absence of great parties, the United States swarm with lesser controversies; and public opinion is divided into a thousand minute shades of difference upon questions of detail.’
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
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Notes and References
Stein, Art, ‘The Powerful New Machine On The Political Scene’, Business Week, 5 November 1984.
Burnham, David, ‘When an Ethnic Name Makes a Voter Fair Game’, New York Times, 17 April 1984.
Nimmo, Dan, The Political Persuaders (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970).
Blumenthal, Sidney, The Permanent Campaign (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984) ch. 4.
Sabato, Larry, The Rise of Political Consultants, New Ways of Winning Elections (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
See O’Shaughnessy, John, Competitive and Strategic Marketing (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984).
Perry, Roland, The Programming of the President (London: Aurum Press, 1984).
Perry, James M., The New Politics (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968).
Butler, David and Kavanagh, Dennis, The British General Election of 1987 (London: Macmillan, 1984).
Chagal, David, The New Kingmakers (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981).
Arterton, F. Christopher, Media Politics: The News Strategies of Presidential Campaigns (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1984).
McGinnis, Joe, The Selling of the President, 1968 (New York: Trident Press, 1969).
Further Reading
Bakshian, Aram, Winning the White House (Bolton: Ross Anderson Publications, 1984) on how Wirthlin would provide updated polling data every two weeks, pp. 90, 91; on gender gap, pp. 91–3; and on the great importance of newspapers, pp. 95, 96.
Graber, Doris A., Mass Media and American Politics (Washington: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1984) for account of muck-raking journalism, ch. 8.
Harrison, T. ‘Impact Polling: Feedback for a Winning Strategy’, Campaigns and Elections, Spring 1980.
MacNeil, Robert, The People Machine (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1968) on Kennedy making the first political use of computers.
Teer, F. and Spence J.D., Political Opinion Polls (London: Hutchinson, 1973) especially ch. 2 on methods.
White, Theodore H., The Making of the President 1960 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1962) for discussion of J. F. Kennedy’s management of the press, p. 339.
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© 1990 Nicholas J. O’Shaughnessy
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O’Shaughnessy, N.J. (1990). Washington’s Space Cadets: The Centrality of Polling, Computer and Other Technologies in US Politics Today. In: The Phenomenon of Political Marketing. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10352-2_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10352-2_8
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