Pete Snyder's blog

[Promoted - Pete Snyder, a colleague of mine, combines his pollster, campaign and social marketing hats to offer this very good analysis of the 2008 Presidential campaign and election.  Jon Henke]

There is no doubt that this year presented the toughest political climate for Republicans since Watergate; indeed, this campaign has been an uphill fight for McCain or any GOP nominee. That said Barack Obama, David Axelrod and their team deserve a huge amount of respect and credit for running a nearly flawless campaign.

They didn’t fight today’s war with yesterday’s weapons and most importantly their campaign was based on a superior strategy. For the purposes of this column, let’s forget about the issues, let’s forget about the climate and let’s ignore message for a moment. The simple fact is that Obama and his campaign chiefs understood two of the most significant (but little talked about) changes of this campaign cycle:

1. The Election Timetable fundamentally shifted from being just about Election Day or even the last 72 hours (as was the rule of thumb for decades) to being decided as early as six weeks in advance.
2. Due to the seismic changes in how voters get and process information that we marketers have seen for quite some time, just like consumers, the voter is now in control and, thus, would be open to making their voting decisions earlier than ever.

Combined, these two critical assumptions that turned conventional campaign wisdom on its head, helped provide Obama with a major strategic advantage over McCain. Here’s how: