Next week, IPDI and its department at GWU, the Graduate School of Political Management, are releasing the inaugural issue of our monthly Polity & Pragmatics survey panel.  The first edition asks our panel of faculty and Council on American Politics members if conventions have outlived their usefulness. Here’s a advance look at what we will publish next week.

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It’s hard to avoid looking at poll results when you’re inside the Beltway. Next week, GW and the Graduate School of Political Management are releasing the results of the latest Battleground Poll. Nothing goes better with a cup of coffee than a discussion about what American voters are thinking and how that will affect the upcoming election.

Details:

Battleground Poll Results

August 20, 2008, 9:30-11 a.m.

National Press Club, Lisagor Room

529 14th St., NW, 13th Floor

Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, and Brian Nienaber, vice president of the Tarrance Group, will share their analyses of this public opinion poll. Ron Faucheaux, associate professorial lecturer at GW’s Graduate School of Political Management, will serve as moderator.

RSVP: Please R.S.V.P. to David Leeds at (202) 994-6467. This event is open to media. On site media check in begins at 8:30 a.m. To participate one-way via teleconference, please call (800) 331-7072 and dial 322237 when prompted. A copy of both firms’ presentation will be posted at http://www.gwu.edu/~newsctr/battleground.cfm.

More information online.

The cool thing about being at GWU is being connected to so many cool groups. Case in point: IPDI is located within GW’s Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM). The very fact that we’re in such an innovative department allows us to do what I consider to be cool, relevant, applicable research.

The GSPM is holding an Open House on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, August 6th. If you’re a intern or staffer, come and join IPDI and the GSPM for drinks and networking. If interns and young staffers work for you, bring them or send them along — just be sure to RSVP and let the GSPM know you’re coming!

Here are the details:

Politics, Government and the GSPM Open House – Wednesday, August 6

Join alumni, current students, staffers, interns and faculty for an evening of drinks, networking, and conversation about careers in politics, political communications, and legislative affairs with a special guest David Rehr, president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Wednesday, August 6, 6:00-8:00 p.m.

Gold Room

Rayburn House Office Building

Washington DC 20515

Address: Southwest of the Capitol, bounded by Independence Avenue, South Capitol Street, First Street, and C Street, S.W.

Google Map

Directions from Capitol South Metro (Blue and Orange Lines): When you exit the Metro, walk to C St SE and turn left. Walk to South Capitol Street and turn right.

RSVP at http://register.applyyourself.com/?id=gwugrad&pid=1031&eID=17611&rid=1

About David Rehr

David Rehr is President and CEO of NAB. Prior to the NAB, he was president of the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA). Under his leadership, NBWA was ranked as one of the top most influential lobbying organizations by Fortune magazine. With more than 25 years of experience on Capitol Hill and in the lobbying community, Rehr has been an outspoken advocate for entrepreneurs and small business before the federal government.

Rehr, who has a doctorate in economics from George Mason University, has been named to Washington Life magazine’s “Power 100” list, and is annually listed as a “Top Association Lobbyist” by The Hill. He has also been featured in Beachum’s Guide to Key Lobbyists, and was recently named one of the top 20 most influential people in radio by Radio Ink magazine.

About GW’s Graduate School of Political Management

The Graduate School of Political Management offers graduate programs in political management, legislative affairs, public relations, and PAC management, as well as international programs in Latin America and Europe. The school seeks to improve politics by educating its students and professionals about the tools, principles, and values of participatory democracy; preparing them for careers as ethical and effective advocates and leaders at the international, national, and local levels.

This post is guest-blogged by Justine Adelizzi, an incoming student at GWU’s Graduate School of Political Management.

If Howard Dean tapped into the potential of the internet in 2004, Barack Obama’s team mastered the medium by combining social networking, online fundraising, and customized e-mail and text communications into a revolutionary presidential bid. The excitement generated by the Obama candidacy can be found in the numbers: $350 million in fundraising since the beginning of the primary season, almost 2 million individual donors, over 1 million committed volunteers. Yet, despite the national chorus demanding change in Washington, Obamania has not quite reached the rest of the Democratic Party. The DNC’s fundraising efforts on behalf of the party’s gubernatorial, House, and Senate candidates have lagged far behind Obama’s own monthly fundraising totals, even trailing that of the RNC. It is clear that the political evolution of the internet is by no means complete, and it is never too early to look towards the next generation of internet strategies in 2012 and beyond.

A recent article by Mike Madden at Salon detailed the corporate communication and targeting techniques utilized by the Obama camp in its efforts to mobilize online supporters. The scope and breadth of voter information being collected is unprecedented in presidential politics, even dwarfing the successful Bush/Cheney operation from 2004. However, the presumptive Democratic nominee is very much operating within his own silo; while Obama has collected unprecedented information on Democratic-leaning voters in all 50 states, there is little direct benefit of his success to down-ballot candidates. There is a missed opportunity to turn the campaign’s most fervent supporters into not only grassroots organizers for the presidential race, but involved activists at every level of the Democratic Party apparatus.

The future points to party-based web synergy – a completely integrated and immersive Democratic web presence, an Amazon-esque one-stop shop for all things donkey. Interested in this year’s Democratic presidential nominee? You’ll be directed to his or her website, a hub of the main Democratic Party portal. After completing a registration form detailing your interest in environmental conservation, you’ll start getting e-mails from the party’s nominee on the campaign’s energy policies. You’ll receive news items about your Senator’s efforts to clean up your state’s polluted waterways. There will be invitations to volunteer for a local House candidate committed to reducing your city’s carbon footprint. It will be a completely customized political experience, carefully tailored with the precision of corporate America’s most cutting-edge marketing techniques to maximize enthusiasm, organization, and, most importantly, donations.

An integrated web presence is crucial to the success of the 50-state strategy advocated by Howard Dean in his role as chairman of the DNC. The creation of such a platform will require a substantial infusion of resources and imagination, but the potential rewards are great: increased Democratic influence at the state level and real workable majorities in the House and Senate.

The 300 is one of many techie/pop culture allusions Sean Tevis, candidate for Kansas State Representative uses to demonstrate why he’s the techie/pop culture/change candidate. To date, Tevis has raised money from more than 5,298 donors (well more than the 3000 donors he originally wanted to recruit from his site).

He’s also been the topic of an ongoing conversation in one of the classes at GW’s Graduate School of Political Management, where IPDI is housed. Ashley DiAna, a GSPM student, shared the piece with the class, which is taught by Chris Shank, a Maryland State Delegate. The dialog about the ad is a little more complex than my infatuation with how funny it is (and how chic geek has become), narrowing in on how effective it actually is as a campaign ad.

Travis Johnson, a GSPM student, put it this way:

The messaging is targeted directly at the sort of people that an outsider candidate really needs to engage in fundraising. I.e., people who are a bit disillusioned with politics, people who normally wouldn’t be likely to contribute to a candidate, etc. (I’m thinking of the section early on, where he’s told that if he doesn’t have name recognition, or the money to make sure he develops name recognition, then his politics don’t really matter.)

The form of the piece is also a big selling point. It intentionally evokes XKCD, http://xkcd.com, which is one of the most popular web-based comics in the world, with about 500,000 U.S.-based visitors per month. The user-profile for XKCD tends to skew towards the techie / computer-geek demographic, which conveniently also tends to include a fairly high-volume of younger, more liberal individuals with jobs that pay well enough that they can afford to donate to a campaign. That’s reinforced by the substance of the messaging, where the candidate specifically mentions issues that tend to be important to that demographic (online privacy, and the Creative Commons licensing for the site, e.g.).

Update: Tevis reportedly raised $95,162.76 after posting the cartoon, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Next Thursday (February 7^th) IPDI and GW’s Graduate School of Political Management are hosting a postmortem Super Tuesday discussion that will look at

• How has this primary session challenged and confirmed the expectations of pollsters, political analysts, and the media?
• How has technology shaped the way the primaries will unfold?
• Did Super Tuesday change the political game?

Speakers include Mike Allen (Politico), Ana Marie Cox (Time.com), Charles Ellison (BlackPolicy.org and IPDI), Frank Greer (GMMB), Mark McKinnon (Public Strategies and President of Maverick Media) and Maya Rockeymoore (Global Policy Solutions). Ron Faucheux, a faculty member at the Graduate School of Political Management, will moderate the discussion.

Details:

Thursday, February 7, 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

The Jack Morton Auditorium, located on the first floor of GW’s Media and Public Affairs Building, 805 21^st Street, NW (Corner of 21^st and H Streets), Washington, DC 20052

RSVP is required. RSVP to ipdi@ipdi.org. More details here.

Speaking of events, check out the lineup at our annual Politics Online Conference. Tickets are filling up extraordinarily fast, and we’re one month out. Register soon!