Margin of Victory: How Technologists Help Politicians Win Elections

Nathaniel Pearlman, the founder of NGP Software (which now, in the merged guise of NGPVAN is the main electoral database supplier to the UK’s Liberal Democrats), has assembled an impressive cast of American contributors for Margin of Victory: How Technologists Help Politicians Win Elections.

The large number of short chapters from experts in many different aspects of using technology to help win elections is both the book’s strength and weakness. The strength is that the range of chapters provides a very comprehensive overview of the issues anyone interested in the topic should be aware of. The weakness is that each chapter gives little in the way of detail about what astute campaigners should actually do. It is great as a list of areas to think about; it doesn’t provide a list of things to then go and do.

Many of the chapters also pay a lot of attention to the personal careers of their authors, painting a good picture of how the political consultancy profession works in the US, though not leaving much in the way of lessons about how to go and win. (Of course for more of that, I can point you in the direction of the book I co-wrote, 101 Ways To Win An Election.)

An important and consistent theme through the book is how technology, especially of the digital kind, is really still in its infancy in its applications to elections – and therefore simply trying to copy what someone else did a few years ago means you are bound to end up off the pace.

It is also good to see several of the authors point out that changing technology means adapting tactics, but doesn’t mean abandoning all the old campaigning principles nor does it mean that politics is just about technology.

Abraham Lincoln‘s advice is still good: “keep a constant watch on the doubtful voters”. That applies just as much as it did for him in a world before computers and networks.

Wise advice too is the analysis that ends the book,

The heart of a great campaign resides where it ought to, with an animating idea and the character and competence of its standardbearer. The role played by political technologists is and should be a supporting one.

Buy Margin of Victory: How Technologists Help Politicians Win Elections, edited by Nathaniel Pearlman, here.