Opposition research
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Opposition research often referred to as oppo is the section of an election campaign designed to investigate the life and record of the opposing candidate.
Opposition research differs immensely depending on the size of the campaign. A local election will generally have a desk dedicated to reading through all of the opponents statements in Hansard to the press and their voting record. This investigation might go so far as finding high school yearbooks but significant resources are rarely applied.
A larger campaign, such as that for the American Presidency will have many dozens of workers doing opposition research scanning through vast amounts of information, searching through judicial records, all public statements, youthful writings. These will also include interviews with people who knew the candidate.
In recent years the task of opposition research has been privatized in many areas. Full time companies with a permanent staff have replaced volunteers and campaign officials.
The information gathered in opposition research goes into attack ads and other forms of negative campaigning. In most countries a candidate's personal life and family are largely viewed as off limits in a personal campaign. It is still seen as important to have any such information on affairs or embarrassing siblings as a deterrent against the other side releasing its own opposition research. Research also tends to gather huge amounts of rumour and innuendo, some of which is true but much of which is not. On occasion such information which cannot be verified is leaked to the press or used in push polls which cannot be linked back to the candidate.
More often than finding truly scandalous information is finding changes of opinion by the opponent from year to year and quotes that may not have been fully thought through or which when used out of context can seem damaging.
The most sophisticated opposition research does not just release any negative information it can find, it tries to build a complete picture of the opponent in the voter's mind. A noted example of this was George W. Bush's campaign against Al Gore in 2000. The election cycle began with voters viewing Gore as a competent if drab leader. The Bush team rebuilt that image convincing even many Democrats that Gore was an extremely ambitious and was willing to bend the truth or outright lie to achieve his goal of the presidency. By November most Americans were questioning Gore's honesty. The Gore campaign to portray Bush as inexperienced and unintelligent largely backfired when it lowered expectations to such a degree that if Bush properly remembered his own name during the debates he would be seen to have been doing well.
The most important skill in opposition research is not gathering data but convincing the media to use your information.
Most opposition research is done in the months before a campaign. During an election what has been discovered is slowly released so that each piece of information gets its full airing in the press. As the opponent will almost constantly be in the public eye during the election they make a vast number of comments on the record each day and these are analyzed by the research team.
External link
- The Atlantic- Playing Dirty (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/06/green.htm)