Why Judy Baar Topinka Lost

This is in response to the Alan Keyes vs. Judy Baar Topinka numbers post below. I started to write this as a comment, but it became quite long so I thought better of it. Also, I think that these numbers are very telling of "what went wrong with Judy" and can spark a constructive conversation.

The only thing that the Keyes vote can ever tell me (as a political organizer) is the number of hardcore Republican or conservative voters in any given area. In other words, the folks who would rather not vote than vote for a Democrat. There's really not many other reasons why people would have voted for Keyes. Sure, you'll have a few people who may have voted for him for other reasons (such as a friend's recommendation or a personal connection), but those numbers are insignificant. My first question to myself upon speaking with a Democratic candidate in an area outside of Chicago is "What's the Keyes vote?". Pretty useful. Thanks for that, A.K.

The big difference between Keyes and Topinka is that Keyes was as conservative and religious as they come, while Topinka was quite moderate, especially on the wedge issues. While Keyes was everything movement conservatives could hope for on the issues front (I'm sure they weren't happy about his wackiness), Topinka failed to shore up that base because she ran against the grain of conservative issues, mainly of the wedge variety (guns, God, gays). I would be willing to bet that you'll find a larger amount of Stufflebeam write-in and Whitney "right to carry" voters in the Keyes voter base areas.

Rule number one in campaigns is to shore up your base first. The question then comes up as to who Topinka's base really was and how they worked to support her. We know it wasn't the Keyes voters or the hard D voters, so those can be immediately eliminated from the equation. The trouble for Judy was that these bases tend to be more politically involved, experienced and motivated. They are the people that are far more likely to act as evangelists on behalf of their preferred candidates. They are the people that influence the "5 minutes a week of thinking about politics" voters. They will likely log many unpaid hours knocking on doors and making calls. Topinka did not appeal to either of them.

So now we are left with the elusive "middle voter" base, which is really not a base at all. This is a generic term for a large group of voters that do not fit neatly into a little box and are motivated by a wide variety of issues. They are actually a huge number of very specific subgroups. It is difficult to get a handle on these people and "shore them up" because they are incredibly diverse. A campaign would need to shore up each of the specific subgroups without ticking off the others in order to do that, which is difficult to do within the timeframe of a campaign. We all know that campaigns have three very limited resources (time, people, and money) and these resources can be depleted in no time trying to get a handle on "the middle".

Add to this the fact that "middle voters" tend to care much less about the political process, a campaign then has the feat of trying to get these people to listen and actually care about what the candidate has to offer. And should the campaign actually manage to do this, the likelihood is slim that these people would act as evangelists and advance the campaign. The whole process of working on the middle and not at least throwing bones to each of the hard bases is altogether inefficient as a strategy to win.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that ALL voters, especially the middle, tend to vote for people they like and identify with as a person. So, the fact that Judy is who she is didn't work well to create a broad base of support. What may have worked for Judy to shore up a good-sized chunk of the "middle vote" would have been if she was...not Judy! Her funky look with the lime green suits, flaming red hair, and heavy makeup was essentially out of the mainstream. And the average person would never dream of saying things about someone like "he has slick, beady eyes" in public. Changing her image never would have worked as she has been in the public eye for a long time. If she had, it would have been seen as disingenuous and would have worked against her.

Judy lost for a variety of reasons, but mainly because she tried to appeal to the middle (when she herself was not part of the middle) and because she wrote off the conservative base. If she had thrown a bone to the conservative base, perhaps relying on the ultra-conservative Birkett to do it, she may have won.

My two cents. Please discuss.