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This is probably going to be the easiest article I’ve ever written, purely because of the sheer obviousness of the focus.

Meta: If you wish to learn how to campaign well in real life, other than being tutored by your party, you want to pay attention and have a good read through the posts and images of the following users, sometimes quality is acceptably sacrificed for exposure and the balance struck between the two is hard to get right, but these two have nailed it. It is also worth noting one of these people (at least) has been/is going to be a candidate IRL.

So, how do we choose who ran the best campaign? Well, there are certain things a pundit looks for in a political campaign:

Exposure

The candidate has to have good exposure, its fine spending time writing massive press releases but if they don’t do the job and get the message out it won’t work.

A key concept of electioneering is that if people don’t see you, they won’t vote for you. This is why Stakeboards tend to be vital in local elections, because a lot of the voting public may agree with your ideas, but if they think you won’t win (usually a conclusion reached if they don’t see your brand everywhere) then they won’t turn out.

Quality

Quality is also a major factor, but truthfully second to exposure. Even a poor campaign with huge exposure can do exceptionally well. The Trump campaign is a good example here, the speeches and events themselves were often poorly written and badly thought out, but his exposure was so massive (along with other factors) it pushed quality to the side.

Consistent Messaging/Brand

Candidates are ideological in nature. You don’t tend to get people run for political office who don’t have ideas about how to improve things. The problem here is that the candidate wants to push ALL of their ideas, constantly. This can lead to confusing messaging and a lack of a focal point for a campaign. Along with this, an over-eager campaign designer may want to try out a cool new advert style such as pretending your poster is one your opponent produced with silly words to make them look stupid.

This ruins your consistency. A lot of people vote on party lines and vote for the colours they see and the messaging they get. If you bounce from idea to idea in front of the voters they’ll never pay attention to your core platform.

Targeting

A good election, targets. You have to know your opponents, their key strengths and weaknesses and know what your squeeze/switch messages are. Making sure you are targeting the correct voting base for your squeeze/switch messaging and taking advantage of grey areas.

So without further ado, Saltcon is pleased to announce the following as the winners of The Best Campaign of the 10th General Election

Wagbo_

If you pay attention to anybody, pay attention to this mans campaign. I can’t write or sum up how perfectly it encapsulates and covers professional political campaigning. Our choice picks from his campaign are

JackWilfred

JW really hammered home on exposure, I couldn’t go five minutes without seeing some new press release, some new graphics or event from him. He really nailed the quality and exposure balance and his targeting was phenomenal.

-XavierP-

This is our exposure example really, despite a rocky start Ecological Future with some solid brand consistency (that goddamn mint colour) came back in strength, and despite some poor quality in events and images, the volume and brand consistency really helped keep the campaign fresh in everyone’s mind.

Congratulations to these candidates and we wish you well, should you get elected Saltcon would love to interview you.