The ground game vs the digital game: a new era of political campaigning

When the Justice and Development (AK) Party was founded and came to power in the 2002 elections, the most powerful communication media were television channels and newspapers. The internet was not widespread, and social media had not been invented, so the public had not yet been “enslaved”.

Those aged 40 years and over will remember very well, a week before the Nov. 3 elections, AK Party leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal came face to face on Uğur Dündar’s television program. Dündar, who is a strong supporter of the now-CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu now, was a strong Baykal supporter then. Yet, even though Erdoğan was one against two on that program, he convinced the audience with his performance on that broadcast.

A television broadcast had become a “political communication project” that would influence election results. I was among those who personally crosschecked on the ground. The company for which I worked as a pollster wanted me to ask at Mecidiyeköy Square on the morning after that broadcast, about the effects of the Erdoğan-Baykal showdown on television. It was a one-page form. The survey was conducted with those who said, “Yes, I watched it.” I spoke with more than 100 people, and the vast majority said Erdoğan defeated Baykal. Some said the television program changed their voting preference. Erdoğan had influenced especially the hesitant voters, and those who did not yet know him well enough. Dündar confessed years after the panel discussion that Baykal did not do his homework.

The television program in question went on record as the last panel discussion that leaders running to rule the country joined together. Those aged 40 years and over will also remember well that in broadcasts on which leaders settled their accounts, preparations would be towards finding one another’s shortcomings rather than presenting what they will do if they are elected. President Erdoğan, on the other hand, would explain during every election period, everything he did, guaranteeing what he will do. He carried polemic politics not to the screen but to the squares. He preferred bilateral interaction with the public on the ground instead of one-sided interaction via screens – and he succeeded too.

However, communication mediums evolved over time. The influence of newspapers shifted first to internet news sites, and currently to social media. Newspapers are now continuing their presence as the producers of main, true, and quality content, while also supporting social media. Meanwhile, television broadcasting shifted first to YouTube, and today to digital platforms. Similar to newspapers, though they have low viewer ratings, television channels serve as the content lines that support social media. In other words, content is largely produced by newspapers and television channels, and interaction is achieved through social media. This vicious and temporary cycle will persevere for a while longer.

Social media platforms’ aim of use in Türkiye bears great problems. These platforms serve manipulation and disinformation through fake users, and a copy-and-paste web of obsecurity, which lacks originality. Going back to the current election process, leaders and parties are carrying on their political communication activities through two channels: On the ground, and mostly on social media.

While Erdoğan and the AK Party are meeting with the public through meetings and direct contact, the opposition is using social media actively to achieve mindblowing interaction figures. While Erdoğan travels across the country and speaks publicly in city squares, Kılıçdaroğlu shares a post saying, “let’s meet tonight at 10:00 PM,” and when the time comes, he broadcasts live videos from the kitchen in his home. Kılıçdaroğlu probably reaches 50 times more views this way than the crowds gathering in the squares. But how much does this interaction impact political preferences – or how much will it impact political preferences?

It would be wrong to say, “it won’t have any impact,” because social media has the power to motivate and consolidate voterbases. However, Twitter data is quite unlikely to reflect on the ballotbox. According to the content and interaction rate on Twitter – which is believed to represent only 10 percent of Türkiye’s electorate – ahead of the 2018 presidential election, Muharrem İnce would win in the first round. But the ballot box revealed a completely opposite great disappointment.

The picture today is similar, and the opposition seems dominant on Twitter. According to Fatih Portakal’s Twitter poll, it is believed that Kılıçdaroğlu will win the elections with 56.4 percent of the votes, and Erdoğan will get as low as 14 percent of the votes. The confidence in social media polls, which can be manipulated, and have no scientific or sociological reality, the trust in desktop graphics, has already doomed the opposition into echo chambers. Hence, they are disregarding the squares, and do not believe that 80,000 people came to hear Erdoğan at the openings in İstanbul’s Bağcılar district. The opposition wing is carried away by the “we are winning anyway” feeling spreading from social media.

This virtual belief is the reason why AK Party organizations’ visit to 1 million homes in Istanbul last week was not taken into consideration or discussed on Twitter. The confirmation of the labor that goes into conventional political communication methods and the “cost of volunteers,” doomed the opposition’s confirmation on social media to impossible virtual interaction figures. If they fail to save themselves and continue to disregard the ground, it will take days again before they can believe the result at the ballot box on the night of May 14.