Bloomberg’s Robostrategy
Common sense is that while money matters in politics, it’s hard to just bury a viable candidate under a pile of cash because of diminishing returns. But Mark Schmitt brings us this interesting tale of Michael Bloomberg’s unsuccessful efforts to find a way around this problem:
As for diminishing returns, it’s easy to see why more money doesn’t matter — there’s only so much you can do. Once people have seen your TV ads or heard your radio ads a dozen times, another two dozen are only going to annoy them. Bloomberg seems to have engaged in a very creative experiment to see whether he could defeat the law of diminishing returns — rather than mere robo-calls, his campaign came up with a scheme of precisely targeted calls, so that you might get a recorded call from your own building manager, or a call precisely keyed to language — older immigrant voters might get a call in their language, younger voters in English with an accent!
It’s brilliant, and expensive, but robo-calls don’t work (another fact proven by Don Green!) and so it should come as no surprise that micro-targetted robo-calls don’t work either. The only thing Bloomberg’s $85 million campaign did was keep a lot of campaign consultants off the streets.
Back in the summer of 2001, I was interning for Bradley Tusk (at the time Chuck Schumer’s communications director) who managed Bloomberg’s campaign and he’s definitely a clever guy*. But the fact that robo-calls don’t work seems like something that professional political operatives are in denial about.
* Indeed, the last time I saw him was at the 2004 Democratic Convention. He was working for Ron Blagojevich and told me I needed to make sure I saw this one guy Barack Obama speak.
25 Responses to “Bloomberg’s Robostrategy”
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November 4th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
There’s a logical fallacy here you could drive a bus through: diminishing returns are not 0 returns, and Bloomberg won narrowly. Maybe the extra $70 million or so he spent over a normal candidate only bought him a few votes, but he only won by a few votes.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
But the fact that robo-calls don’t work seems like something that professional political operatives are in denial about.
No, their bosses are in denial. Operatives have a perfectly rational reason to support robocalls: the money they could pocket from them.
As for why politicians persist in denial, well, I don’t think that’s a very difficult question to answer. Their entire careers are predicated on denial.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
The claim that every politician’s career is predicated on denial is stone cold stupid.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
The relentlessness of Bloomsberg’s robocalls aggravated several people I know right out of voting for him.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Every damn time, Matt… it’s Rod Blagojevich, not Ron. Someday, right?
November 4th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Oh, robo-calls work. But you have to place them at 2:00 am in the morning and pretend to be calling from your OPPONENT’s campaign.
One of the tricks of the trade here in Philly.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Politicians love robo-calls like CEO’s love automated phone systems. Both systems are cheap imitations of real human communication. Messages only go one way, from them to “their followers.” How small can that number go?
America has abysmal leadership, like the “Ron” Blagojevich guy.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
“So dey know enough about me to target an accent?”
America truly is an endemic spying society…
November 4th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I’ve been getting robo-calls for Jesus. These robo-call companies having a sale?
November 4th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
The claim that every politician’s career is predicated on denial is stone cold stupid.
Well, it takes a certain type of doublethink to deal with the fact that nearly every elected politician routinely sells out his or her constituents for cold, hard cash. The cynic or realist in me would argue that those donors *are* the constituents.
But that isn’t how the aforementioned politicos describe it; I’d like to find one quote from a politician arguing that he is *not* working for his constituents.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Trust me, campaign consultants know how ineffective robocalls are. The reason they’re still used so much is because they’re just so easy and cheap. For only a couple hours time and a few thousand dollars, you can flood a district with robocalls. Anything else takes magnitudes more time and money. For instance, for the price of airing one TV ad once, on one cable channel (especially in a crazy media market like NYC), which might reach a few thousand people, you could contact millions of actual voters. Even if it only convinces/actually affects a dozen people, isn’t that worth it?
So, put yourself in the position of a campaign manager on election day. You could either sit there and distribute the extra five grand in the campaign’s account as win bonuses (assuming you win), or you can spend it on robocalls to convince yourself that you’re doing something useful and don’t regret anything by 11pm that night. Which would you do?
November 4th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Those are just dirty campaign tactics from Satan–Jesus wouldn’t robo-call
November 4th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Actually, I admit when I first saw the picture, I was overjoyed to think that Bloomberg was going to be turning over the NYPD’s duties to a bunch of cylons.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
But, really, isn’t that the greatest gift of all?
November 4th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
The celebrity endorsement robocalls sometimes go over reasonably well, just for the novelty. They have to be well targeted, though–the beloved president of a union speaking to its members, or the former politician with the post-career ’statesman’ glow calling to nostalgic oldsters. People will joke about it–”oh, I was glad to get that phone call from Mr. Cuomo the other day!”
But the prerecorded voice of some stranger? Pretty much useless. Just a way for a lazy campaign to increase the number of voters they can claim to have contacted.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
“The only thing Bloomberg’s $85 million campaign did was keep a lot of campaign consultants off the streets.”
Does it never occur that if Bloomberg hadn’t spent every penny that he did, he would have lost the election?
He may have spent a lot per vote, but given that the money spent mattered far less to him than the outcome of the election, I don’t see the problem with his strategy.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
You had to bury the footnote below the fold? Is it
that big a deal?
November 4th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Bloomberg also paid for some really stupid robocalls. He Joe Lieberman telling people to vote for Bloomberg; in liberal New York that’s about as valuable as a Dick Cheney endorsement.
November 4th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I don’t have any reason to think the Mayor’s political views are much different from Sen. Lieberman’s, so he may not see the liability the way contributors to this blog would. Also, his constituency and JL’s probably show considerable overlap. So his consultants sold him that overlap, and it may not have been nearly so stupid as suggested.
In fact, i’ll bet that the voters who hate Lieberman were never Bloomberg voters anyway.
I am writing in a bit of a vacuum, however, as i seem to be the single, solitary, registered, regular voter in NYC who never got a call of any kind this election season. i got a four-color, glossy card stock (with no indication of recycled content) mailing every day–and i do mean every day–but no calls.
so, we can at least be grateful that even offensively huge campaign spending leaves room for inefficiency.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
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November 5th, 2009 at 2:39 am
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November 5th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Skinjobs or Centurions?
November 5th, 2009 at 9:21 am
I’m now picturing sentinels roaming the desolated streets of New York, interspersing their relentless mutant-hunting with commands to vote for the (futurama-inspired) head of mayor Bloomberg for a 20th term and a blog written by an ancient Yglesias arguing that Sentinel-campaigning has been proving (sic) ineffective
November 5th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Robocalls work for things they work for. GOTV is generally not one of them. I don’t think there has been much research specifically into the way Bloomberg used them, though. Research on other types of contact does suggest that a more personal touch increases their efficacy.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:25 am
I’ve been getting robo-calls for Jesus.
Eh, those are harmless. The robo-call of Cthulhu, now *that* you have to watch out for.