hey there and welcome back to heimlich's history now we've been going through unit 5 of the ap government curriculum and this video is time to talk about modern campaigns and it is a juicy one so if you're ready to get them brain cows milk then let's get to it so in this video here's what we're trying to do explain how campaign organizations and strategies affect the election process now i should start by telling you that over time political campaigns in america have increased in complexity by at least three metric buttloads in fact in the early days of the republic it was considered uncouth to say anything about your own candidacy george washington was like if the people want me to preside they shall have to make that decision by their own wisdom and lights but today politicians and election seasons are like hey do you like me hey look over here look over here please say that you like me and to be honest i think i like the old system better but unless we have a hot tub time machine we are not getting the old system back so let's talk about how campaigns are run today so let's talk about political fundraising and i cannot express to you how much of an increase in spending has occurred on elections in the last 30 years for example in the 1996 presidential election between bill clinton and bob dole a little over 87 million dollars was spent then in 2004 george w bush and john kerry spent a combined total of 513 million and you're like dang that's a lot of money that is until you compare it with the spending that occurred in the 2020 election between donald trump and joe biden it was the most expensive campaign in history ringing up a bill of 14.4 billion dollars to which i say what now what on god's green earth is costing so much well there's a few things first is the increasing length of the election cycle like in many countries it's not unusual for campaign seasons to run 10 weeks or less and that's because they have laws mandating it but there are no such laws in the u.s and with states competing for earlier and earlier primaries because you know those who go first often have a bump in tourism dollars the election season has gradually gotten longer for example in 2015 when joe biden was asked if he would run for president in the 2016 election he said no because it was too late to start campaigning and that was 384 days before election day like in his mind starting over a year from the election left him with no chance of winning so the longer campaigns become the more expensive they are second is the increasing complexity of campaigns modern campaigns have become so complex that candidates now have to hire professional consultants to run them they hire a campaign manager a public relations expert dedicated fundraiser social media consultants and on and on these people are hyper focused on making sure that the candidate's messaging is clear and that the opponent is defined in less than favorable terms and that the candidates performed well in televised debates etc etc in addition to all of these experts each candidate has an army of paid and volunteer positions for people who call and visit voters in order to raise funds for the candidate and the term for that is canvassing now another factor has increased the complexity of modern campaigns is their reliance on social media big social media platforms like facebook have dedicated staff that help political candidates reach voters by helping them use the platform to its maximum benefit and that's a nice way of saying that because facebook knows everything about all of its users they know how to target political ads to people who will be receptive to them now on that note presidential candidates have always worked hard to exploit new communication technologies in order to communicate with their constituencies fdr used the radio jfk used television and it was barack obama in 2012 who was the first to use social media to its full extent using demographic information and psychographic information his campaign crafted highly targeted messages to the public through social media and as a result garnered massive amounts of donation and while there were more factors than just his use of social media this technology had a massive impact on his re-election in 2012. anyway back to the question what are political candidates spending all of this money on and let's get a little more specific by far the biggest chunk of a candidate's funds goes towards advertising and this can be anything from billboards to social media ads to television ads and if you've been alive for one of these election cycles you know the ads i'm talking about what kind of person is steve heimler his third cousin twice removed is a cannibal and yet heimler claims he's never eaten another person in his life what is he hiding this november you have to ask yourself do i want my child eaten by the president it is so worrisome and yet the reason why we see many of those ads is that they work i don't know what that says about the american people but they work so all this to say modern campaigns have gotten way more complex and way more expensive and they are not likely to decrease in complexity and cost anytime soon okay thanks for watching click right here to grab my view packet which is gonna help you get an a in your class and a five on your exam in may if this video helped you and you want to send me the signal to keep making them then by all means hit that subscribe button and i shall oblige heimler out