If it feels like you’re getting more campaign mailers this year, you’re not wrong. In spite of more modern means of communication, Stephen Farnsworth – a retired professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington -- says the U.S. mail remains popular with candidates.
“There’s been a huge escalation. We don’t necessarily know which mailer works well with which voter, but if you bring a range of issues, maybe one of those will stick,” Farnsworth says.
Relative to TV ads, mailings are not expensive, and while broadcasting goes out to a broad audience – people who might not even be in a candidate’s congressional district – mailings are targeted.
“One of the things that we can do in this modern, technological environment is look at people’s social media posts, who they are friends with, who they are giving money to, what they’re spending it on, and you can tailor messages," Farnsworth explains. "People running these campaigns know a lot about us and can offer up messages that are likely to convince us to show up.”
That said, there are voters who’ve already made up their minds or have no interest in voting. Donald Green is a professor at Columbia University, and an expert on how campaigns mobilize and persuade voters. It’s easy, he says, to disregard mailings.
“You might have five seconds to impress the voter with your content on route to the trash can.”
And he claims those mailing lists are not all they’re cracked up to be.
“The dirty little secret about these campaigns is that those micro-targeting lists tend not to be especially effective, but that said, it’s pretty rare for mailings to be sent to everybody. In the context of a get-out-the-vote drive, you want to encourage people who might be your natural supporters, so if you’re on the right it would be Christian conservatives or home schoolers or gun rights advocates. On the left it would be African Americans or people who have subscribed to liberal publications."
Farnsworth says the prevalence of mailings is a reflection of just how much money is being spent on campaigns.
“When you have millions and millions of dollars to spend, you’ll try everything. You don’t want to leave any money on the table, and so instead of ten mailers, maybe 15.”
And they can be wildly misleading.
“Politicians will say what it takes to win an election in many cases, and that means that the narrative can be detached from honesty or reality as the case may be," Farnsworth says.
We invited John McGuire, an incumbent candidate in the 5th congressional district, to talk about any misinformation his opponent might be spreading. He did not respond. But challenger Tom Perriello laughed at claims made by McGuire.
“Oh, they’re just making stuff up. I think this is what’s so frustrating,” he said.
A McGuire mailing claimed, for example, that Perriello opposes millions of dollars in funding for rural hospitals.
“This is just such an insult to people’s intelligence," Democrat running in Virginia's fifth congressional district said. "He took a trillion dollars out of rural healthcare and offered $190 million back. If someone took a dollar out of your pocket and then gave you two pennies back, you don’t say thank you for the two pennies. You say, ‘Where’s my 98 cents?’
And another mailer showed Perriello’s head attached to the body of a spider, warning he is at the center of the radical left’s dark money web.
Character assassination is nothing new in American politics. Candidates who opposed Thomas Jefferson, for example, branded him an atheist and an enemy of Christianity who would – if elected – ban the Bible, but Farnsworth says things are so much worse in the 21st century.
“The narrative can be provided from any one of a million potentially sources on social media. Many sources don’t say who they are. They may not even be American voices that we’re hearing.”
He concludes the nation is in a downward spiral with a lot of money and a lot of rewarding going on for people who don’t tell the truth in politics.
