As happens in soccer, basketball or baseball and despite what the demoscopes may think, to whom I send an affectionate greeting from here, an electoral campaign does not fit in an excel table.
Fortunately, and as in everything important, the human factor is decisive to achieve a victory or for a candidate to sink in an absolutely unexpected wayin such a way that campaigns have been seen in which, based on chaining unforced Errors, there have been candidates who, despite having reached the last week of the campaign with a double-digit difference over their competitor, have finished sinking and losing the election.
Any campaign avatar left to chance, insufficiently thought out or poorly executed can be decisive for a rival whom everyone considered defeated builds enough momentum to start a comeback that can lead him to win an election in extremis.
A problem poorly resolved at a meeting, an interview in which the candidate is caught in a resignation or in a lie, a candidate’s anger with his partner, heavy digestion, two drinks at the wrong time… Or a bad intervention in a debate -especially the latter- can have dramatic consequences for the final result of an election.
And in these cases the important thing is not really the fact, but the process that fires after it and I will try to explain:
Let’s take the hypothetical case of a candidate who, in an invented country that we will call, I don’t know, Hispannia for example, dramatically loses a debate in front of 10 million viewerss, a debate that also gives him as defeated by KO even the most sympathetic press, a debate -as you can see I’m making it up- in which everyone also gave him as easy winner and in which he also shows a horrific image and forms, political manners almost incompatible with the high magistracy to which he aspires.
That party and that candidate will automatically go into a tailspin
He candidate flies into a rage and blames his campaign team from the moment he gets into the car after leaving the television where it had taken place and arriving at the headquarters of his party, after a press conference in which he tries to maintain his type, he shouts at all his collaborators, whom he leaves at the feet of the horses. Yes, I have a great imagination, as you can see.
The next morning that campaign team is not going to hit one to the right – or to the left if they prefer – and those who are not capable of inhibiting themselves, are going to chain error after error until compromising the final result of the election.
Handing over the choice to rivals
From that point on, if they are not able to stop to analyze what has happened and go into crisis modethat party and that candidate will automatically go into a tailspin:
They will not dare to make executive decisions, they are going to be obfuscated by the slightest problemand they are going to sink little by little until inadvertently handing over the election to rivals without even putting up a fight.
A process whose last stage, when everything is already lost, ends with the worst decision of all, put yourself in the hands of the department of great ideas -every party has one- that will start launching horrific commercials, Martian banners and posters and speeches so extravagant that it will only deepen the crisis, confuse voters and hasten the end.
And that’s when Murphy’s inexorable law will begin to act, making, I don’t know, what your campaign bus gets stuck in a world heritage roman archthat your candidate for Albacete is caught stabbing a kitten or that your candidate for economy minister confesses to one of a journalist who wants to link up with 200 million euros stolen from a Swiss bank.
And yes, these things happen.
2023-07-13 03:55:39
#campaign #tailspin..
