Election Campaigns, How Do They Work?

Don_Julio

I've decided for my campus this semester to run for Student Government here in Texas (I won't name what university!). Our elections and campaigning ultimately start at the end of April, but I want to start ahead of that deadline in order to be prepared when we're able to campaign. However, I've come to terms with I don't exactly know how to run a campaign effectively. My VP and I have already begun to hire friends and influential persons we know that can help out as a Campaign Staff.

However, there are other things other than getting a strong staff together that I need to do. My opponent has already established a reputation on my campus as well as his VP. They're veterans of this organization that I'm trying to become President of. What are ways to essentially get my name out there on campus?

ceres

Sorry if this is a silly question, but do you have student government experience? Not necessarily running one, but being a member, at least.

OnTheLastCastle

Student elections are a lot different than regular elections. You can expect extremely low turnout, so if you had a party you'd get their "diehard" vote. And by diehard I mean the "Oh, it's election day, uh... better log onto the website and vote."

I don't mean to be cynical, but that is what college student elections are like. Lots of stunts and sometimes articles in the college paper, but ultimately I never once knew who won or why. And I live in a college town and read the paper. Getting the students to care more than I did as a student is toooouuuuuugggghhhhhh. You should be joining/talking to one of the college parties. They'll probably have a weird name like the Ancient Sloth Party. That was seriously a party name here, I think.

Don_Julio

ceres wrote: »

Sorry if this is a silly question, but do you have student government experience? Not necessarily running one, but being a member, at least.

Yeah, I've been involved in the local governments for two years.

You should be joining/talking to one of the college parties.

Political Parties are banned on my campus. You basically create your own for the position you're running for.

OnTheLastCastle

I never said political party. I said COLLEGE party. I know how it works. They do sometimes survive year to year.

Wezoin

Does your college have a reimbursement program for expenses? I know mine reimburses up to $1500 for campaign expenses. You should look into that and see if you can get some posters printed, and a stunt usually helps (free cookies, candy, etc.) Its a bit late for it now but an example at my university is a candidate hired an acapella group to sing a love song to a bunch of classes on valentine's day and then came out and introduced himself.

A campaign website and a youtube presence, as well as a facebook group in support of a candidate are pretty common here too.

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

Oh man, student elections.

The first thing is funding. You don't need a lot of funding, but you need some. Most of this will go into stuff like t-shirts, posters, flyers, and other basic materials.

Second thing, network. Students are notoriously disengaged from politics, and ironically they're least-engaged with student politics. You might have a kickass platform, but I'll tell you right now 99% of the student body doesn't understand your issues and probably wouldn't care if they did.

What this means is that people are going to vote for you for stupid, transparent reasons. You seem like a cool dude, one of their friends knows you, they're in your class, whatever. Assuming you haven't been heavily involved in student government already, this puts you in a bind; the most reliable voters already know your opponents.

What I would do right now, #1, is start building relationships with student groups you think will be receptive to your issues. Start going to their meetings, meet people, etc. You need to get facetime with as many people as you possibly can between now and the election. Hopefully, whatever issue has inspired you to run will have an attendant constituency you can reach out to that will help provide a start.

Doing interesting things with social media is cool too, if you can swing it, but if you're not going to do a pretty kickass job (i.e. actual, well-produced youtube videos), anything more than a facebook group for supporters is going to make you look silly.

edit: and, find somebody who's run a campaign on your campus that you can talk to. There are a million little things you probably need to know about elections that are specific to your campus.

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

The other thing I would suggest is that you evaluate carefully what the best use of your time is. You don't seem particularly well grounded in your campus' student government environment, just based on how general your questions are. That makes me think an executive campaign is maybe not the best thing for you to be doing.

Student unions are always, always, always starved for interested people. If there's some particular area in which you want to make an impact, showing up and expressing an interest in it is often the only step you need to take.