Warning This Manual Cannot Be Directly Applied to Japanese Electoral Campaigns

For more details, please see notes.

Introduction

A political campaign can be an exciting experience. A great deal will happen between now and Election Day and with a little forethought and planning you can be prepared for all the twists and turns and in many cases control the situation. This manual is designed to help you anticipate what will happen and be better prepared.

While the given political landscape is an important factor in any campaign, in many cases the most important factor - the difference between winning and losing - is what goes on inside the campaign. There are three types of political campaigns that have nearly no chance to achieve victory on Election Day due to their own internal failures.

1. The first is the campaign that does not have a persuasive message to deliver to voters and does not have a clear idea of which voters it wants to persuade. This type of campaign lacks direction from the beginning and the situation will only get worse.

2. Second is the campaign that has a concise persuasive message and a clear idea of which voters it can persuade but lacks a reasonable plan of what to do between now and Election Day to persuade these voters. This type of campaign wastes time, money, and people as it wanders aimlessly toward Election Day. It is often distracted by the day's events, by things the opponent's campaign does, or by things the press says, spending more time reacting to outside factors than promoting its own agenda.

3. Finally, the third kind of campaign is one that has a clear message, a clear idea of its voters, and a plan to get to Election Day but it fails to follow through on the plan, not doing the hard work day after day to get elected. This is a lazy campaign that makes excuses as to why it cannot do what it knows must be done and in the end makes excuses as to why it lost.

The winning political campaign is most often the one that takes the time to target voters, develops a persuasive message, and follows through on a reasonable plan to contact and those voters.

This manual has been developed to assist political parties and candidates in taking these steps to become this type of winning campaign. You should read through the entire manual once so that you have some understanding of the whole process. You should then go through the manual step by step, answering all the questions and filling in all the worksheets. In this way, you will have a good start on writing a campaign plan.

A written campaign plan, like the plan for building a house, defines the overall political landscape, the strategy, and resources required to get to Election Day. As with construction plans, this campaign plan should serve as a guide to be referred to when questions arise. Progress can be measured against this outline. You could build a house without plans, but you would make a lot of mistakes, you would waste a lot of materials, time, and money, and you probably would not be satisfied with the results. It is the same for the political campaign without a written plan.

While it is true that every campaign is unique, there are some basic principles that can be applied to any election campaign. This manual is designed to help you apply these basic principles to your unique campaign.

The basics of any election campaign are deceptively simple. All campaigns must repeatedly communicate a persuasive message to people who will vote. This is "the golden rule" of politics. A political campaign is a communication process - find the right message, target that message to the right group of voters, and repeat that message again and again.

Unfortunately, the actual planning process is much more difficult than simply following one rule. There is much more that goes into the process. This manual is designed to take the campaign through a step-by-step process to develop a written campaign plan.

These steps include:

1. Doing the research necessary to prepare for the campaign.

2. Setting a strategic campaign goal of how many votes are needed to win.

3. Analyzing and targeting voters.

4. Developing a campaign message.

5. Developing a voter contact plan.

6. Implementing that plan.

This manual cannot give you all the answers to all of the problems your campaign will face. It cannot tell you what your campaign message should be. It cannot tell you who are your most likely supporters. It cannot tell you what are the most effective methods of contacting voters in your region. What it can do is provide the questions that will help you think through the planning process in a thorough and methodical way.

Therefore, the candidate, the campaign manager, and all the key advisers should conduct a strategic planning meeting and go through this manual seriously and rigorously. Your strategic planning session should also result in a written campaign plan. Too often, politicians believe that they hold the winning strategy "in their heads". In reality, they have no strategy at all and are wandering aimlessly. Too often, the candidate and the campaign manager believe that they are following a single strategy only to find out later that their opinions about the strategy are completely at odds. A written campaign plan agreed upon by the candidate, the campaign manager, and all the key advisors would help avoid such problems. The rule is simple - if a plan is not written down, no plan exists.

Once you have the written plan, you must follow that plan in a disciplined way. As with any plan, it is only as good as its implementation. All campaigns must be flexible to changing circumstances, but these changes should be carefully considered and weighed against the original research and strategy laid out in the plan.

A political campaign is an intense experience, and when done correctly, it is also a lot of hard work. There are no tricks or short cuts to winning the confidence of the voters. A political campaign can also be an exhilarating, rewarding, and fun experience. To the campaign workers, you should be commended for offering your time and skills to improve the general situation and make democracy work. To the candidates, you should be commended for stepping forward and offering your services to your community. In doing so, you not only serve your community, you are contributing to the democratic process as a whole.

Good luck.