Advantage Of Policy Amateurs

Obviously, a candidate that has already ran for an office and won is considered a quality challenger. Any candidate that has never held political office before is considered an “amateur”, though there are varying degrees of amateurism. “Ambitious Amateurs” are candidates who have decent name recognition and an adequate amount of resources available to them. “Policy Amateurs” are those who run for office based on one or more particular issues (i.e. a candidate with a platform based solely on limited government or abortion, gay rights, etc.). Some “Ambitious Amateurs” give incumbents a run for their money, but “Policy Amateurs” tend to burn out quick (Lecture Notes, 9/3). While candidates on the local or state level can be rather unseasoned,
Conducting numerous polls and placing advertisements across various media markets does not happen without the help of millions of dollars. Although the 2.5 billion figure spent in the 2012 presidential race seems excessive to the general public – those defending the view that there is too much money in politics should be reminded that Procter and Gamble spend more money on advertising soap each year than Americans do on the marketing pageant that elects their president (Issenberg 169). Nonetheless, the average winning House candidate in 2012 spent upwards of $1.5 million while the average winning Senate candidate spent around $10 million (Fowler, Franz, Ridout 18). As mentioned previously, while it is important to build a sizable war chest, there are several factors that limit the effectiveness of campaign spending. The most important point being that it is important to have money when it is needed. In general, money spent earlier in the campaign has the most widespread effect (Jacobson 103). A candidate may spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to send out a flurry of last-minute advertisements but there are limits as to how many voters can be influenced at such a late point in the race. The second most important point is that campaign spending is subject to diminishing returns (Jacobson, Carson 67). With each dollar that a campaign dumps into a political race, the
An estimated 75 percent of all campaign funds go toward advertisements (Garrett 85). Over three million political advertisements were aired at the federal level alone in 2012, at a cost of nearly 2 billion dollars (Fowler, Franz, Ridout 2). Part of the reason behind this massive figure is the sheer amount of bases that campaigns must cover in order to get their messages into the public. Campaigns must consider the types of media and their relative costs when determining which channels to funnel advertisements through. There are numerous mediums, such as mail, telephone, print, radio, internet, and television – and each medium has a different effect. Considering that 75% of all mail is never opened, does it make sense to invest in an extensive mail campaign? When conducting phone banks, is a volunteer’s message able to be discerned within 4 seconds? These are just two examples of the many questions that the campaign’s advertising analysts must