A campaign can seek marginal voters or raise turnout and margin among existing supporters, and the two strategies pull towards opposite platforms.
The 2004 Bush campaign is the textbook base case, the 1996 Clinton campaign the persuasion case. The choice determines platform: mobilisation rewards distinctiveness, persuasion rewards moderation.
In practice
- A candidate spends the campaign on turnout in four counties and never once addresses the undecided voters in the suburbs, because the arithmetic says the base is cheaper.
- A union leader facing re-election hardens the position that pleases the members who vote in internal ballots, not the ones who would settle.
- Standing
- Pulls directly against the median voter theorem; which dominates depends on how polarised and how elastic the electorate is.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works