Target Campaign Audience - Paper Example

A political campaign requires a lot of planning to be carried out to be prepared for any challenge that may arise. What goes on during the campaign period plays a major role in determining the possibility of a candidate winning or losing. A political campaign that aims at ensuring that the candidate wins requires taking time to target the voters, develops an excellent message to be communicated to the voters and has a reasonable plan that has been set to help contact those voters directly. Texas 30th Congressional District is located in the northern part of the state and also part of Dallas County (Herrnson, Campbell, Ezra, & Medvic, 2013, p. 152).

A candidate should start by ensuring that the message that is being communicated is being delivered to the right audience. Delivering given information to the wrong audience will not have a negative impact on the campaign since they will not be listening to what is being said. A candidate should start by considering the demographics of the audience. This includes their gender, ethnic background, level of education, age group, income level, geographic location and family size. In Texas District 30 the largest percentage which is 35.7% of the population has two persons per household (Maxwell et al., 2015, p. 104).

The candidate is further required to identify the psychographics of the target audience since different people have different reasons that motivate them to vote. Voters who have the same characteristics may tend to have interests which are similar as well and probably vote the same way. This will help the candidate to focus more on the groups that will help win the election and spend their time and money on them rather than the whole population of Texas District since not everyone is a voter. The candidate should be able to know of the 750,000 total population the total number of voters it comprises, the households in which those particular voters live and the votes which are required to win the election. In Texas district 30 the biggest percentage of the population is between 18-64 years which is 62.6% while 86.4% of the populations speaks English only.

The three most critical demographic factors in Texas that would be important for Eddie Bernice to address are education, age, and income. Determining the level of education of the target audience will help determine the means of communication that will be used to ensure the message is delivered to the audience. A group of audience who do not have a high level of education will require a message that is simple to understand by use of a simple language. While on the other hand a group of people who are literate can be communicated through different media channels and also various social media platforms (Brown, 2016, p. 504).

The age bracket may determine the voter turnout that should be expected. In Texas district 30 a lower voter turn-out may be as a result of the socioeconomic status of the State. In Texas, a relatively large percentage of the population lives below the poverty level. In Texas District 30 a small percentage have both parents in a family working. In Texas District 30 there is a large number of people who have not yet graduated from high school and hence a high possibility of them not voting. The level of education and income tend to be low for the Latinos and African Americans and hence the voter turnout for these groups is low

A unique message can be passed to every voter group depending on their different demographic and psychographic profile. The messaging strategy that should be used to influence demographic and other specific target groups are ensuring that the campaign message informs the target audience and voters the reason for running for a particular political seat or office and why they should vote for you as their preferred candidate and not your opponent. As a candidate, I should ensure the message is short since the voters usually have little patience listening to long speeches by politicians and hence they easily divert their attention. It is important to build a campaign messaging that reaches out to the target audience to help the voters to decide who to vote for between you and other candidates. The campaign message should be credible, truthful and should be repeated several times so as the voters can internalize it and also make the voters aware that you are requesting for their votes. A message that is truthful and credible will help the candidate to win the trust of that particular group and hence have a better chance of convincing them to vote for him.

The types of messages that should be used for example are those which are clear and persuasive. The message used should also be important to the voters. The topics which are important to the voters are those that relate to the problems that the voters face in their day to day lives. For example, a voter has a higher possibility of supporting a candidate who is talking to them about improving their jobs to increase their level of income, their pension and their childrens education. The message should have some form of contrast to help the voters differentiate it from that of other candidates.

References

Brown, L. C. (2016). Practicing Texas politics.

Herrnson, P. S., Campbell, C. C., Ezra, M., & Medvic, S. K. (2013). Guide to political campaigns in America. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

Maxwell, William Earl, Crain, Ernest, Jones, Mark, Christopher. (2015). Texas Politics Today 2015-2016 + Mindtap Political Science, 1-term Access. Wadsworth Pub Co.