The Party Story: Storytelling for Political Party Leaders
Storytelling is a central piece of political advocacy, because the issues elected officials and political parties talk about are rooted in an individual and community experience: our story. As a campaign professional, one of the responsibilities I had working with candidates is to help them tell their story to voters, and make the case for why voters should elect them. But are political party leaders doing it too? Are they doing enough of it??
Here are 3 Steps to build story-driven campaigns that tell the Party Story - how a political party reflects - and advocates for - the interests of their community.
Before that: Some Background…
Parties, like campaigns, employ two types of messages to voters:
Candidate and party campaigns use a wide array of short-form sound-byte messaging, backed up by polling and focus groups, to convince voters to support them. On too many occasions, I see many party leaders lean heavily on sound-byte campaigning, or recycle the sound-bytes of MSNBC, cable news channels, independent news and journalistic sources, and social media sourced information. Party leaders (and even candidates) miss opportunities to have deeper conversations with their voters, connecting the issue with their personal stories and experiences to build stronger lasting relationships. In short, they forget to tell their Party Story.
Along the way, I want to share an on-going Party Story as a Democrats Abroad Party Leader in Türkiye. I got involved in the organization when I stepped up to organize the country party committee in the lead up to the 2024 Election. The American Community in Türkiye (estimated at 25,000 according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program in 2020) had one of the lowest turnout rates compared to peer country communities. Only 2.8% of voters cast ballots successfully in the 2020 election. Doing the math, that is about 700 votes. Even a movement of 3 to 5% points could have affected elections in swing district US House of Representatives races, and those further down the individual US state ballots. Given I needed to teach myself how to vote from abroad, I decided to reach out to see how I could help other voters cast their ballots in 2024.?
Step 1: Find Stories that Reflect Members
As a Party Leader, do you wonder if or why your messages are no longer connecting with voters? Let's go back to learning their stories - and crafting our new Party Story.
Unfortunately, many Party Leaders find it easier to lean on broadly supported, often controversial, issues that resonate with the party writ-large rather than finding ones more relatable to their members and related communities. Some Party leaders, especially ones who come from long established and stable organizations, may feel blessed with legacy brands and relationships that allow them to coast on their party platforms and the charisma of their candidates. But if you are a new party leader seeking to start (or re-start) your party committee, you have to build a story that justifies to your current membership and the future membership why they should support your organization.
Through organized outreach to your members (such as surveys), focus grouping (whether formal or through events), party leaders build greater buy in from their members and their broader stakeholders. It allows you to personalize the relationship between the Party and the people, the Party Story, whether or not members or non-members have that official connection to the organization. Finally, it is the basis for both direct political organizing and supportive efforts, such as fundraising and communications.
In Türkiye, I connected with many disengaged Americans to gauge whether they wanted to participate in a re-organized party committee. I learned voting access was the most important issue to them, and they felt disconnected from the larger Democrats Abroad party organization. Most members could not answer if their vote even counted or made it back to the US. Most were so discouraged by the perceived lack of assistance, they tuned the party out. Their stories contradicted the presumptions of several overseas party leaders that their outreach was regular and consistent in the 10 years since a party committee existed in the country. Perceptions of reality were different between those living the voting experience in Türkiye and those in the more global party organization.
Taking the stories and survey data from my outreach, I launched a messaging campaign centered on the voting experience - that the local committee should be reformed on the basis of providing access and assistance to the vote for overseas Democrats. We made their ability to vote the story.?
Step 2: Adapting Stories to all Mediums
Party leaders should adopt the entrepreneurial mindset of candidate campaigns, and tell their Party Story everywhere!
Following the decline of the party as a vehicle for mass participation in politics (as articulated by Gergo Papp in PartyParty), party leaders need to utilize the large number of mediums to build relationships with their voters. Being able to tell Party Stories that humanize our issues and connect people to desired political outcomes is the most important way party leaders break through the proverbial “political noise.” That means using all the mediums of communications, from traditional sources like volunteer driven door-to-door canvasses and direct mail to the old and new audio/visual sources like television, digital ads and automated texting (to name a few).?
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Collecting and using personal stories to form the party platform/manifesto makes campaign messages – and by extension the committee’s marketing strategy – more personal and participatory. In Democrats Abroad Türkiye, I used a combination of traditional organizing techniques and digital mobilization strategies that helped me connect with, and expand, our membership based on that voting access message. Such strategies included:
The campaign brought together members around the common goal - to help voters exercise their voice in the 2024 Election. Bringing people together around this community story of voting access inspired lapsed and new members to participate, and fostered the growth of the committee's institutional leadership as a group, as well as local individuals. The strength of our core message even helped us acknowledge our range of ideological disagreements on controversial wedge issues while staying focused on our common goals.
Step 3: Building institutions through storytelling-driven campaigning
To effectively tell our story-driven platform, the campaigns we run have to be metrics-driven and accountable to results - making effective use of monetary and non-monetary resources.?
Party leaders need to design metrics and key performance indicators that measure the impact of their Party Story campaign. In the US, field and community organizers run campaigns using field surveys - tracking metrics at voter’s doors and over the phones - always testing how messages resonate with their audience. In several campaigns I worked in, we assessed the direct impacts of mediums like digital ads, direct mail and television through those surveys, observing shifts in the voters' intention to act. Over the course of the campaign, we assessed what was happening, saw what messages most resonated (and with whom), and adjusted resource allocation based on those metrics. Not only should party leaders be implementing this same metrics-driven, flexible mindset - but attention also should be given to the after-action report process, to better understand what worked and what did not, and how it informs connecting the party's message to the community it operates in. The case study by Campaign Workshop from California's "Say No to Prop 8" campaign is a great example of post-campaign performance reviews.
Returning to our on-going party driven campaign in Türkiye, demonstrating results based on this metrics driven party campaign helped us demonstrate the importance of linking story and action to outputs and outcomes. Since the first community call campaign to the Overseas Primary (7 months), we:?
The results represent what happens when party leaders tell their Party Story and bring people together to campaign on that story. By designing campaigns and building up party leaders to run candidate-style campaigns around them, party leaders run more successful political organizing campaigns in their community, fostering more action and creating greater opportunities for change.
In conclusion...
If members of the community believe in the message of the Party, they will stay for the people that made the issues relevant to them. Building party driven campaigns, and empowering party leaders to act more like candidates in action, expands the opportunities for people to participate in politics. But only when parties, especially local and regional ones, build a Party Story that is reflective of their communities. Getting that story out in a professional, metrics driven program that is accountable to results will help party leaders better understand how to make themselves constantly relevant in our always shifting political environment.