Murphthesurf

In the most expensive presidential contest in the nation's history, John
F. Kerry and his Democratic supporters nearly matched President Bush and
the Republicans, who outspent them by just $60 million, $1.14 billion to
$1.08 billion.

snipped here

In a $2.2 billion election, two relatively small expenditures by Bush and
his allies stand out for their impact: the $546,000 ad buy by Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth and the Bush campaign's $3.25 million contract with the
firm TargetPoint Consulting. The first portrayed Kerry in unrelentingly
negative terms, permanently damaging him, while the second produced
dramatic innovations in direct mail and voter technology, enabling Bush to
identify and target potential voters with pinpoint precision.


snipped here.


"They were smart. They came into our neighborhoods. They came into
Democratic areas with very specific targeted messages to take Democratic
voters away from us," Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R.
McAuliffe said. "They were much more sophisticated in their message
delivery."


The ultimate test of the two campaigns is in the success of their efforts
to increase turnout from 2000. Kerry and his allies increased the
Democrat's vote by about 6.8 million votes; Bush increased his by nearly
10.5 million. In the key battleground of Ohio, Bush countered Kerry's
gains in the metropolitan precincts by boosting his margin in exurban and
rural counties from 57 to 60 percent, eking out a 118,457-vote victory.


snipped here

A large part of Bush's advantage derived from being an incumbent who did
not face a challenger from his party. He also benefited from the
experience and continuity of a campaign hierarchy, based on a corporate
model, that had essentially stayed intact since Bush's 1998 reelection
race for Texas governor.
Take Office, Plan Campaign



When Bush moved into the Oval Office in 2001, planning for his
presidential reelection campaign began almost immediately. Under the
direction of Karl Rove, Bush's top White House adviser who served as a
kind of chairman of the board, White House political director Kenneth B.
Mehlman, the chief executive officer, pollster Matthew Dowd, chief
operating officer, and Mark McKinnon, the principal media consultant, the
Bush political team developed a strategy for 2004, began investing in
innovative techniques to target voters and prepared an early and
cost-effective advertising plan. During this period, the Republican
National Committee, where much of the planning was based, outspent its
Democratic counterpart by $122 million.


In 2001, Dowd said that "we made some of the basic strategic assumptions
about what we thought the election would look like."


One fundamental calculation was that 93 percent of the voting-age public
was already committed or predisposed toward the Democratic or Republican
candidate, leaving 7 percent undecided.


Another calculation was that throughout the Bush presidency, "most voters
looked at Bush in very black-and-white terms. They either loved and
respected him, or they didn't like him," Dowd said. Those voters were
unlikely to change their views before Election Day 2004.


That prompted Republicans to jettison their practice of investing 75 to 90
percent of campaign money on undecided voters. Instead, half the money
went into motivating and mobilizing people already inclined to vote for
Bush, but who were either unregistered or who often failed to vote --
"soft" Republicans.


"We systematically allocated all the main resources of the campaign to the
twin goals of motivation and persuasion. The media, the voter targeting,
the mail -- all were based off that strategic decision," Dowd said.


Republican officials said they put $50 million into "ground war" drives to
register and turn out millions of new voters in 2001 and 2002, and an
additional $125 million after that.


Meanwhile, Kerry, faced with a difficult primary campaign and infighting
and turnover among his consultants, did not begin seriously to address the
general election until after his Super Tuesday primary election victory in
March, eight months before the November vote. By that time, the campaign
was hamstrung by legal restrictions on any cooperation between the
campaign and the independent 527 organizations running ads and mobilizing
voters on Kerry's behalf.
527s' Ineffective Messages



The 527 groups, named after a section of the tax code and allowed by law
to accept unlimited contributions, provided invaluable help in registering
and turning out voters. America Coming Together put about $135 million
into what became the largest get-out-the-vote program in the nation's
history. But the 527s, fueled with money from billionaires such as George
Soros, proved ineffective in helping Kerry deliver a consistent and timely
message in his advertising.

snipped here

At two junctures, when Kerry was either out of funds or under pressure to
conserve resources for the close of the campaign, the absence of an
overall strategy had damaging consequences: in March 2004, just when the
Bush campaign began its first anti-Kerry offensive; and in August 2004,
when the Swift Boat Veterans commercials raised questions about Kerry's
service in the Vietnam War.


The Democratic media 527s "didn't do what we wanted done," Kerry media
adviser Tad Devine said. "We would have run ads about Kerry, we would have
had answers to the attacks in kind, saying they were false, disproved by
newspapers."


Harold Ickes, who ran the Media Fund, a 527 organization that raised about
$59 million in support of Kerry, said the federal election law prohibiting
communication with the Kerry campaign created insurmountable obstacles in
crafting effective, accurate responses to anti-Kerry ads. Ickes said he
regretted not responding to the Swift Boat Veterans' attacks, but at the
time he thought they seemed "a matter so personal to Senator Kerry, so
much within his knowledge. Who knew what the facts were?"
Early Research Is Like Yeast



The 2002 elections, along with the Kentucky and Mississippi gubernatorial
contests the following year, became testing grounds for the Republican
effort to mobilize supporters. Designed to get base voters to the polls,
it became known as the "72 Hour Project," whose cost Republican officials
refused to disclose but is estimated by sources to have been in the $200
million range.


Under Dowd's direction, the RNC began investing in extensive voter
research. One of the most striking findings, according to Republican
consultants, was the ineffectiveness of traditional phone banks and direct
mail that targeted voters in overwhelmingly Republican precincts. The
problem: Only 15 percent of all GOP voters lived in precincts that voted
Republican by 65 percent or more. Worse, an even smaller percentage of
"soft" Republicans, the 2004 target constituency, lived in such precincts.


The RNC decided to cast a wider net for voters. But to work, Dowd's
motivation and mobilization strategy needed expensive, high-tech micro
targeting to cherry-pick prospective Republicans who lived in majority
Democratic neighborhoods.


Republican firms, including TargetPoint Consultants and National Media
Inc., delved into commercial databases that pinpointed consumer buying
patterns and television-watching habits to unearth such information as
Coors beer and bourbon drinkers skewing Republican, brandy and cognac
drinkers tilting Democratic; college football TV viewers were more
Republican than those who watch professional football; viewers of Fox News
were overwhelmingly committed to vote for Bush; homes with telephone
caller ID tended to be Republican; people interested in gambling, fashion
and theater tended to be Democratic.


Surveys of people on these consumer data lists were then used to determine
"anger points" (late-term abortion, trial lawyer fees, estate taxes) that
coincided with the Bush agenda for as many as 32 categories of voters,
each identifiable by income, magazine subscriptions, favorite television
shows and other "flags." Merging this data, in turn, enabled those running
direct mail, precinct walking and phone bank programs to target each voter
with a tailored message.


"You used to get a tape-recorded voice of Ronald Reagan telling you how
important it was to vote. That was our get-out-the-vote effort," said Alex
Gage, of TargetPoint. Now, he said, calls can be targeted to specific
constituencies so that, for example, a "right to life voter" could get a
call warning that "if you don't come out and vote, the number of abortions
next year is going to go up. "


Dowd estimated that, in part through the work of TargetPoint and other
research, the Bush campaign and the RNC were able to "quadruple the
number" of Republican voters who could be targeted through direct mail,
phone banks and knocking on doors.


Democrats had access to similar data files. But the Bush campaign and the
RNC were able to make far better use of the data because they had the time
and money to conduct repeated field tests in the 2002 and 2003 elections,
to finance advanced research on meshing databases with polling
information, and to clean up and revise databases that almost invariably
contained errors and omissions.


"Very few people understand how much work it takes to get this technology
to actually produce political results. We are one election cycle behind
them in this area," said a Democrat who helped coordinate voter contact in
the 2004 campaign.


The Bush campaign's early fundraising success made much of this possible.
By March 2004, Bush had $110 million in the bank and virtually no debt.
During this period, Kerry was forced to spend all his time and money in
the Democratic primaries, a fight that cost him $36 million and that left
him $5 million in debt.


"Nobody was giving a thought at all to the general election," said Kerry
pollster Mark S. Mellman. Until that March, "it was: How do we survive
this week?"
Bush Ads Undermine Kerry



Two days after Super Tuesday, the Bush campaign, anticipating Kerry would
have no money to respond, began a $40 million, six-week televised assault
designed to crush the Democratic nominee before he could get off the
ground. "We had a financial advantage over them for four to six weeks.
That's why we did what we did," Dowd said.


With a $177 million ad budget, the Bush campaign and its allies ran more
than 101,000 anti-Kerry "attack" or negative ads, more than the combined
total of "positive" and "contrast" ads, according to the University of
Wisconsin Advertising Project, based on data from Nielsen Monitor-Plus
ratings of media buying effectiveness.


Less than 5 percent of Kerry's ads were "attack" or negative, according to
the Wisconsin advertising project, and the remaining 95 percent were
positive or contrast ads.


During March and April, before the candidate had replenished his war chest
to finance TV ads, Kerry strategists were convinced that Kerry needed a
barrage of positive biographical ads describing him in a sympathetic light
to counter the negative picture drawn by the Bush ads. But when the
Democratic 527s began their ad campaign, they aired negative ads
reflecting their intensely anti-Bush donor base.


By the time Kerry had raised enough money to begin his positive ad
campaign two months later, the Bush "attack" ads had helped convert the
ratio of Kerry's positive to negative ratings in battleground states.
Kerry's positive ratings fell from 40 percent to 35 percent, and his
negative ratings rose from 24 percent to 36 percent at the start of May,
according to the National Annenberg Election Surveys.


The negative Bush barrage was followed in August by the Swift Boat
Veterans ads, the first one airing on just four cable channels at a cost
of $546,000. The Swift Boat Veterans eventually would raise and spend $28
million, but the first ad was exceptionally cost-effective: most voters
learned about it through free coverage in mainstream media and talk radio.


An additional Republican television commercial that significantly affected
the race, according to surveys, was a positive spot financed by a second
GOP 527 group, Progress for America. It invested $17 million in "Ashley's
Story," which featured Ashley Faulkner, 11, whose mother had been killed
in the attack on the World Trade Center, describing her meeting with Bush.
GOP Dollar Power



Overall, Kerry, the DNC and the Democratic 527s spent $344 million on ads,
while Bush and the GOP counterparts spent about $289 million, much of
which was disbursed in the final three months. Arguably, Republicans got
more bang for their bucks.


The Bush campaign's early strategy decisions shaped GOP spending. Under
the guidance of Rove, Dowd and Mehlman, the Bush campaign had financed
early research into ways to communicate to center-right voters through
nontraditional media.


The Bush campaign concluded that many of their voters did not trust the
networks and the establishment press, and therefore did not trust messages
transmitted through them.


Mehlman said that talk radio and cable television "are more credible" to
potential Bush voters. Ultimately the Bush campaign invested an
unprecedented $20 million in narrowly targeted advertising on cable and in
radio, with a heavy emphasis on religious, talk and country and western
stations, and such specialty outlets as golf and health club channels.


"They did a lot of stuff really well. They were ahead of us," said one of
the Democrats' get-out-the-vote managers who did not want to be
identified. "They had a strategy set by the beginning that they were going
to live and die by. And we didn't."


In an election with a 2.6 percent margin of victory, the Bush campaign was
run to ensure that every dollar went to fulfill core strategies, that
resources were allocated to capitalize on Bush's strengths and on Kerry's
vulnerabilities, and that the money necessary to finance research,
technological advance, television and the ground war was available when
needed.


At the July Democratic National Convention in Boston, McAuliffe commented
on the disciplined Republican team: "We are up against the dirtiest,
meanest, toughest group of people we have ever faced. They have money,
they have power, and they ain't going to give it up easily."


Researcher Alice Crites, database editor Sarah Cohen and research database
editor Derek Willis contributed to this report.

__________________
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...f/9751e16f.jpg
1990 LS Coupe Red
Eibach springs
18" Konigs
Falken tires
416,000 km

 

Murphthesurf

Sorry I had to snip some text to get it down to be accepted on the forum. Hope you like it. If you want to read the edited parts I can put them in a new message.

__________________
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...f/9751e16f.jpg
1990 LS Coupe Red
Eibach springs
18" Konigs
Falken tires
416,000 km