I tell every campaign team the same thing after every election: “Now comes the detailed analysis.” Winners announce it at the very press conference where they declare victory, to show they are serious people. Losers announce the same thing, to show they have drawn the lessons from defeat and that there is a plan for next time. It sounds logical, like standard procedure, something that goes without saying — like the campaign silence period or a properly completed polling board record. Yes, I tell everyone. And almost nobody actually does it. What usually happens is called an analysis but is in fact either a celebration or a wake, depending on the outcome. The winning team scatters and everyone goes on holiday, because why analyse something that, by definition, worked. The losing team dissolves even faster, because nobody wants to sit in a room and count their own mistakes out loud. I have told both sides, in vain, that every campaign of mine was better than the one before it precisely b...

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, beca...

    How It Really Works: Fast Response After years in this business, I've learned that one thing leads to defeat faster than anything else: your team deciding to wait. Fast response isn't a skill. It's a duty. This scene plays out in every campaign I've ever run. Bad news breaks. The opponent drops something: an attack, a piece of disinformation, footage, a quote ripped out of context. Journalists start calling. Social media catches fire. You call an emergency war room meeting. People talk, people analyze. And almost without fail, the first suggestion I'd hear was:  "Let's wait and see how this develops."  Right behind it comes someone who wants to loop in the lawyers. A third person thinks you should reach the candidate, but everyone knows he's unreachable until the afternoon, he's in a meeting, no phone. So the worst possible decision gets made: you push everything to tomorrow morning, once things settle down. Two days later, your response fi...

  I think the public, analysts, journalists, and political commentators are almost always asking the wrong question when they talk about kamikaze candidates. Instead of  “Can he win?”  the right question is:  “What is his candidacy actually supposed to achieve?” In nearly three decades of watching campaigns, the kamikaze candidate — or kamikaze party, movement, civic group, take your pick — keeps showing up, and keeps getting misread. They’re not just attention-seekers with no path to victory. Far more often, they’re a precisely calculated piece of a winning electoral strategy. In imperfect electoral systems — which the Balkans has in abundance, but hardly has a monopoly on — this model works like a Swiss watch. My interest in kamikaze candidates started with the documentary  The Great Hack , still available on Netflix. It briefly mentions the Trinidad and Tobago elections and the ‘Do So’ movement, which flipped the script back in 2010. Here’s what actually happ...

  Wherever people are headed next, politicians are attempting to establish a presence and a foothold. TikTok for politicians is all the rage nowadays. The wager is that those who use it as their preferred social media will be the voters and contributors of the ensuing five to ten years. But how do you execute it correctly? According to many authors, the most difficult challenge is passing the teen eye-roll test. Other obstacles include the need to be completely authentic and to keep videos brief.   You can connect with old friends on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, take pictures with new ones, follow the tweets of people you know or celebrities you sort of know, or look at curated images from everyone's best Insta-lives. TikTok is an entirely different platform. You go there to enjoy the company of strangers. Watching videos made by people you don't know or have any connection with is typically a passive experience. Rather than bringing you closer to your own community, it i...

Understand the political landscape: Do your research and learn about the political climate and the issues that matter to your target.   Develop a strategy: Make a strategy that includes your plan, tactics, and goals.   Identify your target audience: Determine the age range, gender, income level, and political affiliation of your target group.   Develop a message: Craft a message that resonates with your target audience and is consistent with your strategy.   Use modern tools: be on proper digital and social media platforms to reach your target audience.   Build political party relationships: Develop relationships with key stakeholders, including elected officials, political parties, and media outlets.   Monitor the competition: Keep tabs on what your competition is doing and adapt your approach as necessary.   Engage in grassroots activities: Get involved in activities at the ground level, like door-to-door canvassing and phone banking, to raise awaren...

  1.      No internal digital department   Any modern political party would be remiss to not have its in-house digital section. In the age of ever-growing digital media, political parties need to have a staff of digital professionals that can help them stay ahead of the competition. All of the party's online activities, including outreach to voters and content creation, should be managed by this team. They must also be adept at using digital tactics to further the party's agenda. Political parties in the modern day need to develop digital sections if they want to compete. This team needs to be able to come up with interesting material for party members and think of fresh ways to reach out to potential voters. They should also be able to track the success of their digital marketing campaigns and adjust as needed. When a political party has its digital department, it can better adapt to the rapidly shifting nature of online discourse. This team needs the ability t...