They may still be counting the votes this morning. With many electoral analysts predicting a repeat of the 2000 election debacle, we would be foolish to try and call the 2004
winner in what has been one of the tightest--and nastiest--presidential races in U.S. history.
Regardless of who emerges victorious, it will be tough to govern the country after the two parties seared one another through-out the campaign. Horse race aside, we're more
interested in how PR pros perceived the communications/PR of each candidate, and who was most successful in getting his messages out. In concert with the Counselors Academy
we conducted a nearly two-week online study to find out.
The conclusion? Both Counselors Academy members and PR News subscribers were fairly evenly split on who they thought ran the most effective communications campaign and
who "won" the presidential debates, for example. It's a testament to the how closely people are following the race (at the home stretch) that we received up to 559 responses, the
most since the Counselors Academy and PR News launched the joint Survey Monkey survey series earlier this year.
With the voting booths now closed, the election could start to take on an interminable quality a la 2000. But our guess is that whoever takes the Oval Office next January this
year's campaign will have sparked several permanent changes to the media landscape that PR execs -- whether they like it or not -- will eventually have to confront.
As part of our survey we asked respondents what they characterize as the biggest mistake of the campaign. (Total Respondents: 444)
- Not sticking to the issues. I am tired of the personal attacks being made on both sides. The truth would be refreshing. The reality is that in many of the issues the
president has no real direct effect. There are too many variables from governmental issues to world issues and everything else in between. - Thanks to the behavior of these campaigns to completely misuse the public forum by trying to manipulate public opinion, spin is now more than ever percieved as something
manipulative and decieving. No longer can it possibly be seen as a dialogue that includes feedback. - Emphasis on negative campaigning and gross misrepresentation by both parties has reduced the credibility of political advertising to that of penis enlargement ads on the
internet. The Kerry campaign made the biggest mistake by failing to develop a simple, consistent message to appeal to the hard-core clueless.
(To view entire survey, please go to http://www.prnewsonline.com.)