March 27, 2007
Fear, greed and the American election
When I went to the Clinton fundraiser last week, I found myself wondering why presidential election campaigns have to raise quite so much money? $100m is thought to be the target figure for the Clinton and Obama campaigns. After chatting with some "campaign insiders" (to use a horrid cliche), I think I have an answer of sorts.
Part of the answer is that a sort of "arms race" is going on - in which campaigns try to intimidate each other out of the race, by the sheer vastness of their accumulated financial resources.
But there is also a specific reason to do with the 2008 presidential election.
Changes in the schedule of primary elections look like they will greatly raise the cost of running a winning campaign. Most political junkies are familiar with the time-honoured timetable of an American presidential election. You start with the Iowa caucus in January of the election year, then it is onto the New Hampshire primary, and then there are a succession of primary elections over the next six months - culminating in California in June.
The trouble is that the bigger states - in particular California - have got irritated by the idea that by the time they get to cast their vote, the Democratic and Republican nominations are usually sown up. And it does seem a bit odd that the 75,000 people who will vote in the Democrats’ Iowa caucus may have more influence than the millions who will cast their ballots in California.
So the Californians have decided to act. They have moved their primary election way up the schedule to February 5th - just after New Hampshire.Ten other medium-sized states were already planning to vote on that day. And now it looks as if Texas, New Jersey, Florida and Illinois may also plump for February 5th. So the US will - in effect - be having a national primary election.
That will make waging a campaign hugely more expensive. In a traditional presidential election you could have a core campaign team, who moves from state to state, as the primary schedule unwound. But in 2008, any competitive campaign, will have to have a full team in place right across the United States - to avoid being caught out on February 5th. They will also have to be able to afford television advertising in expensive markets like California from day one.
On the Democrats side the Clinton campaign are confident that they are winning the money race. That could be helpful in building up a sense of "inevitability" about victory; but it might also risk alienating voters by making Hillary look like the "machine" candidate.
And there is also a big inherent risk for all campaigns in the front-loading of the primary season. Make one big mistake in the second half of January, and you may never have time to recover.
