Top US Republican pollster Frank Luntz was on RTE's Week in Politics programme on Sunday night. Luntz is a lively and engaging figure and this focus group was prodded and cajoled to give its gut reactions to the video clips of Irish political leaders presented to them. Terry Prone, a panelist in the studio watching and commenting on all of this, has a good piece in the Irish Examiner describing the dynamics of the encounter. Luntz gave his audiences electronic gadgets whose dial could be turned to indicate approval or disapproval of what was being said. This sort of thing has been practiced for years in the US although it has some novelty value here.
Before I watched the show I thought I would probably get annoyed at RTE for hiring this American conservative GOP spin doctor, in the same way as this British blogger was ticked off by BBC's Newsnight for hiring someone considered to have given David Cameron's bid for the Tory leadership a decisive boost over a year ago. But what's the harm in a little distraction on a stormy Sunday night? The professional political pundits, especially in RTE, were probably getting worried that the forthcoming election would not be much of a contest given the recovery of Fianna Fáil in the polls and the apparently doomed position of the opposition. But Frank Luntz has reassured us that "the election isn't over yet" and that the government "can still be taken out".
RTE will be delighted that its programme has sexed up the pre-election campaign. There was much interest among the panel - Noel Whelan and Ivan Yates were alongside Prone - in the fact that Pat Rabbitte came across very strongly and that the preferred choice for government of the group was a Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition. Luntz was adamant that the group - a third of which had voted for the governing parties the last time, the rest had voted for other parties - "the people are clearly looking for a change". Furthermore, "the people are clearly looking for change and looking for politicians that don't sound political. Bertie Ahern has not won the election yet. He has got a way to go to convince the electorate".
The fact that Luntz appears to have a relationship with RTE probably means that no party will be hiring his services this side of an election. Luntz is probably too controversial a figure for any Irish party to handle right now. Curiously, he is out of favour with the Republicans at the moment which might explain why he is spending some time in these island as well as in Canada. There are many more like Luntz that could be engaged by parties. What such pollsters do is to use focus groups to test political marketing strategies.The point is that if parties want to sell something - whether out of conviction or opportunism or the pursuit of power for its own sake - they need to use the necessary means to persuade the voters. That's where Luntz and his ilk come in to their own.
Those who would embrace the techniques of political marketing do not suggest that pollsters should determine the policy. Much of what political communications experts do is to pay attention to how the agenda is set and issues are framed for debate. Indeed a central battle in politics is over the use of language or framing. Luntz would be happy with the description of what he does as "political reality construction" even though he has been heavily criticised for the way he does it. The right have figured this out a long time ago and the left have to realise that the facts do not simply speak for themselves.
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