These firms aren't paid to provide the sort of head-to-head comparisons of each candidate's appeal produced by firms like Gallup - campaigns can read about those in the newspaper. Campaign pollsters tend to provide detailed information on how likely particular groups are to vote for the candidate, and what messages resonate most effectively.
These days, high-profile campaigns like Ms Whitman's use sophisticated micro-targeting and printing techniques to categorise voters and send very specific mailings. Campaigns send specific information," says Mr Edmonds, adding they can even sometimes identify the nearest polling station to direct a voter to. She's also targeted particular ethnic groups with multilingual phone calls and ad spots in languages including Spanish, Mandarin, Farsi and Korean.
Campaigns like Ms Whitman's also hire consultants for a range of specific tasks - to book speaking engagements, throw fundraising events different planners are usually employed for each major city a candidate raises money in and even advise on wardrobe. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who recently appeared at a Nascar rally, is running the most expensive non-presidential campaign in history. Costly California. Spanish and Mandarin. As is customary in California campaigns, both candidates poured the bulk of their money into communicating with voters through television and radio advertisements.
Between Sept. The reports underscored the strategic advantage enjoyed by Brown because he, unlike Whitman, had no significant primary opposition. Although Whitman spent about three times more than Brown on campaign mailings overall, more than half her mail spending came during her hard-fought primary race against then-California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. Seema Mehta is a reporter who covered the campaign, the fourth presidential race she has written about for the Los Angeles Times.
She started at the Times in and recently completed a Knight-Wallace fellowship at the University of Michigan. All Sections. She was running against a candidate who had taken all sides of so many issues that it wasn't clear which parts of the Democratic base he could count on for support. She was running in a year when, in most places, the Democratic brand was wildly unpopular.
And speaking of brands, she was affiliated with one -- eBay -- that is generally well-respected and elicits a positive response from the public. So then why did Whitman lose? For one thing, she never connected with voters and that hurt her when the Brown campaign started pushing the message that she was this rich empress who lived in a bubble and couldn't relate to average Californians.
For another, she never proved she was up to the job of being governor of the nation's most populous state. Then there was the fact that the unions really delivered for Brown, especially in terms of direct mail -- in both English and Spanish.
In fact, you can't overstate how strategically important it was for the Brown campaign to have so effectively locked up the Latino vote -- by hook or by crook. Some of what happened was truly underhanded. For instance, during the campaign, the California Democratic Party put out a Spanish-language mailer telling Latino voters to vote for Brown for governor because his Republican opponent, Whitman, would keep Latino students out of state colleges and universities.
That's not so. Whitman said that she would bar illegal immigrants from state colleges and universities. Someone ought to tell California Democrats that "Latino" and "illegal immigrant" are not synonymous.
In any case, when you have that many assets in your arsenal, your opponent can't defeat you until you give him an opening. Just about six weeks ago, the candidates were tied in the polls, and Whitman was busy trying to market herself as a new kind of Republican -- you might say, a kinder and gentler one to borrow a phrase.
But when the news broke that Whitman had, for nearly 10 years, employed an illegal immigrant housekeeper, one whom she just happened to fire before running for governor, voters got a glimpse at a different Whitman. Suddenly, she seemed heartless and mean. When Santillan insisted that Whitman had shouted at her, "You don't know me, and I don't know you" -- a lot of Californians believed her.
What they found harder to believe was that Whitman had no idea that Santillan was in the country illegally. The housekeeper story opened Whitman up like a peanut to questions about her integrity, empathy and honesty.
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