Understanding the Politics 2012 Posts

All Politics 2012 analyses are generated by NextStage’s Political Analyzer Tool and are often augmented by other NextStage tools. This page serves as a primer on understanding the analyses.

One of the first things any politician wants you to know is that they’re the best available. Either close behind or in front of that is their desire that you believe them. After all, if you don’t believe them then de facto they’re not the best person for the job and, if they’re not the best person for the job, you probably shouldn’t believe what they say if they’re saying they’re the best person for the job.

Circular logic?

Not really. Welcome to the world of political marketing.

Let’s start with nine marketing messages that any politician wants you to know:

1. I Am Leadership Material
2. I Am Electable
3. I Have a Vision
4. I Have a Vision for this Country
5. I Am Listening
6. I Am Listening to You
7. I Can Lead Us to a Better Place
8. I Can Get Us Out of This
9. I Am a (Man, Woman) of the People

Those messages need to be communicated in that order for a specific reason. Someone might make a good leader but if they don’t have a chance of being elected, why bother? So first comes leadership followed by electability. If someone has leadership ability and is electable, what are they going to do with those qualities?

Well, it helps if they have a vision and specifically, a vision for their country. These two aren’t the same. They could have a vision of world domination with themselves as world emperor that’s much stronger than their vision for their country because they envision themselves as greater than their country.

If their country vision isn’t much bigger than their plain old vision, watch out.

Okay, they have a vision and it’s a good one for the country as a whole. But are they paying attention to themselves, you, a select group of advisors, the little voices that speak only to them at night? These questions are answered by the listening and listening to you values. These values close together mean the politician is listening to everybody, listening much higher than listening to you means they won’t pay attention to the population as a whole, listening to you much higher than listening means they’ll say anything the public wants to hear.

Leadership, electability, vision and listening. Does a plan come out of all this? This is answered by leading and getting. If they truly have a vision and have a plan to get us there, leading will be quite strong.

They may have a plan but if it’s not well formed then getting will be strong. And if leading and getting are on a par? Be careful, they may have a plan but it’s going to change minute by minute.

Lastly, does the politician see themselves as one of the people, possessing similar if not identical qualities to all the citizens they’ll have to serve? Or do they see themselves as separate, distinct, apart, of a different class, entitled, someone who should be served rather than someone who is willing to serve? When this people value is high, the politician is trying to connect, when low, they’re working to disconnect. This is a metric that should be watched closely over time. More “me” than “they” means someone who’s ego will get in the way of good service. More “they” than “me and you’ll have someone who will only take the most popular stands.

Why Do All those “9 Messages” Charts Look Alike?

Excellent question, that. It has to do with many things and the two main ones are 1) All the candidates are pretty much saying the same thing and 2) They’re all pretty much saying it the same way. I mean, really, when was the last time you heard political rhetoric that in and of itself made you think, fired you up, changed your opinion, …?

Believe it or not, this has to do with marketing. A given market, once recognized, will become flooded with similar products and services. Those products and services have to be similar because that’s what the market will bear.  Most people know of at least one or two “extreme” candidates who are so over the edge that not even their mothers will vote for them. Extreme candidates are the products and services so dissimilar from the rest that the market (over time) ignores them. Again, over time, only a few products and services remain, and even then the few remaining products and services have lots of similarities.

That market is the election cycle. Voting citizens and polls determine which products and services — candidates — remain.

But What Does Their SpeechWriter Think?

One thing NextStage’s Evolution Technology has been picking up since we introduced it back in 2001 are the hidden messages, the real feelings, the little twitches some of us pick up in our gut but don’t know how to express.

In this case, what’s the difference between what the speechwriter/politician wrote to be said versus what they really felt about what they’d written, about the politician his or herself, about the campaign in general. We recognize these in two ways

1. Confidence (top)
2. BlueSky (bottom)

Does the author have confidence in the politician being able to do what they claim, promise, intend, etc., and how much bluesky do they think is in the speech?

Negative confidence is just what one thinks, basically a statement of “This ain’t gonna happen” and the more negative the more convinced the author is that the politician ain’t going nowhere, as they say. The more positive, the more likely the politician has at least one vote coming their way.

BlueSky…well, if the author thinks there’s a lot of bluesky in what’s being said…

The Gender Vote

Not much to offer here. The more male oriented, the more the politician is going after male supporters, the more female oriented, the more the politician is going after female supporters. The ideal is a 50/50 mix and that basically means 45/55 to 55/45 is pretty good. When things get over 60 in either direction, watch out.

There’s also that Age thing

The ideal politician reaches all age groups equally or close to and yes, that’s the ideal.

What usually happens is that political speeches are designed for specific demographics. Sometimes this happens intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. In all case, any continuous address to any single demographic alienates the politician from the rest of the citizenry, hence this is a chart to watch over time.

And then there’s the incidental stuff

The rest of the NSPA reports lists Evolution Technology’s determinations of the politician and the author.

Enjoy!