Everyone wants to know how to win an election. There are seminars about it, handbooks about it, and consulting fees charged for it. Nobody talks about what comes the morning after — when the congratulations stop, and the work begins.
Digging through my library and some old hard drives, I came across material I brought back years ago from a meeting of the EPP Campaign Managers group — the body where the heads of member parties' campaign war rooms sit, chaired at the time by Klaus Schüler, CDU's executive director and the man who ran Angela Merkel's campaigns across three election cycles. Yours truly served for a while as its vice-chair, despite not coming from an EU member state. So much for the theory that seating in those rooms follows protocol.
Among those papers was a text that has been circulating through American campaign schools for decades: the ten most common mistakes candidates make after victory. I translated it — but I also adapted it to the Western Balkans, because these mistakes recognize neither borders nor electoral systems. I have watched them with my own eyes, from municipalities in Bosnia with three thousand voters to country presidents. The script is always the same; only the names change.
Losing an election is painful. But there is something worse: winning — and then ruining everything. Here are ten ways to do it.
1. Hiring people who don't believe in what you're doing. Party patronage? Yes — because personnel is politics. A staffer who is there for the salary, not for the platform you won on, will quietly stall everything you promised. You won't even notice how — you'll simply realize, two years in, that nothing has moved.
2. Not delivering on campaign promises. Voters in our part of the world remember longer than politicians think. Trust is built over years and spent in less time than a single term lasts. Legend has it that the famous Stan Greenberg told Bill Clinton, at some meeting while they were preparing his first campaign in 1992: “Promise one apple, not a truckload of apples.” Remember that sentence when you prepare your next campaign.
3. Forgetting the people from the coalition that got you elected. I don't mean only the coalition partners. I mean everyone who pushed you forward: local boards, associations, the people who put up posters in the rain. When they need you and you're not there, next time they won't be there either.
4. Seeking love from your opponents — especially from the media that trampled you during the campaign. A classic. The newly elected official suddenly wants to be loved by everyone, including the outlets that spent three years crucifying him. It doesn't work. While you're courting your opponents, you're losing your friends. And you won't win the opponents over anyway. Just as a reminder for those who remember Serbia in 2000: on the evening of October 5th, the night Milošević fell, do you recall who was first to rush to the studios of the regime's favorite TV station?
5. Ending the constant communication with citizens. All politics, in the end, is personal. To the man who called you about a problem with his paperwork, a fast and concrete answer means more than any platform. Politics is a service — often more important than politics itself.
6. Failing the temptations that come with the office. Power tests character, marriage, and morals — everyone's, without exception. I have seen many fail that test, and they always fail the same way: convinced it won't happen to them.
7. Greed — for money or for higher office. I'd rather not have to explain this one.
8. Arrogance. When you're surrounded by people who only nod at you — and staff and party cadres do that professionally — it's easy to believe you're something special. Voters sense it before you do, and they don't forgive it at the next election.
9. Excessive collegiality with political opponents. Yes, they are now your “esteemed colleagues” across the parliamentary aisle. But if you came to power to change something, too much comfort in that club is a trap. You become part of the very system you promised to change.
10. Changing your phone number on the Monday after the election. I learned this long ago, on a campaign in Jordan. At the start of every training I would ask the parliamentary candidates: what will you promise voters you'll do on your first day in Parliament? One answer has stayed with me for sixteen years now: I will not change my mobile phone number.
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