U.S. Presidential Elections: The Biggest Game Show in the World

U.S. Presidential Elections: The Biggest Game Show in the World

By Richard Van Slyke
March 30th, 2008

“Who is your favorite candidate?” Sounds familiar?
Phrased in many different ways, that question is probably one of the most frequently asked in the U.S., and for a good reason. America has for long been in love with game shows. But when asked in times of elections, the question takes a special meaning. Elections are a serious matter that goes right to the heart of most of us; so when a presidential nomination is at stake it is very difficult to bring ourselves to the realization that we are, in fact, unwittingly participating in the biggest game show in the world.

It might seem trivial to compare elections to a game show, but when one looks at all the elements that they have in common, the similarities cannot be dismissed.

Over the years, game shows have used all kinds of variations on every possible theme. But in the natural evolution of entertainment, there is one element that show business knows to be very important: interactivity. It is one thing to have viewers root for their favorite contestant; but when they can be part of the show by influencing the outcome, or believing that they do, that element of participation brings the game to a whole new level. The merger of elections and game show was only natural.

First, as we often say, only in America is this possible.
And it’s made possible by a very unusual feature in our election system that we do not share with any other democracy: the Electoral College. In every other industrialized country, elections mean popular vote. But our long drawn-out process of choosing delegates makes for an entertainer’s dream. With the Electoral College, all the ingredients of a good game show are in our elections process.

The Elections Game Show has something special. The contestants are not just vying for a mere refrigerator or the latest minivan. The prize is one of the most coveted on earth: Superpresident! The leader of the richest country in the world and Commander in Chief of hundreds of thousands of real live GI Joes!
But if we take our eyes off the glitter and the limelight, we are looking at a behind-the-scenes organization on par with the value of the prize, and undoubtedly the most elaborate and well-financed show in the history of show business. It’s also getting bigger and more profitable every year.
The major difference with other game shows is that it’s not the product of just one television station. All the media are involved, reaching out to the whole population. And, in principle, anybody can be a contestant.
Anybody? Well, maybe not!
And that’s where it becomes interesting to look at the show’s structure, its rules, and the whole industry that flourishes around it.

The show sponsors.
They are the political parties acting as “talent agents” and promoters with the financial backing of major corporations.
The first thing that the sponsors do is to make sure that they have full control of the game and that they set the rules. It’s not possible to copyright elections, but they are ways around it. For that purpose, satellite organizations were created.
The Federal Election Commission is a legal entity set-up by the two major parties and its main role is to make it very difficult for any outsider to enter the game. It also makes up and supervises all the rules regarding the show financing.
The Commission on Presidential Debates is a private, corporate-financed organization. Its role is to decide who will be allowed in the debates, who will be allowed in the audience, and the format of the debates (game host, position of the candidates on stage, and types of questions asked).
Amazingly, while we criticize Iran and Russia for allowing only government-anointed candidates to run for elections, this is perfectly legal.

With this taken care of, the political parties are presented as two separate teams, the Blue team and the Red team. Each team associates itself with an array of values carefully crafted to appeal to as many members of the audience as possible in order to win points. This is called a “platform”.
The game is then divided in two periods. During the first period, members of each team compete against each other to elect a team leader. In the second period, the captains of each team compete against each other for the Grand Prize.

During the whole process, called “campaigns”, each contestant is allowed to hire his or her own support cast of advisors, public relations, tour organizers and fundraisers.

Fundraisers are definitely the most important members of the team, as they are primarily responsible for the contestant’s success. The same way as, in some other shows, contestants have a lit panel in front of the podium to show how much money they have accumulated, elections contestants are constantly judged on the amount of funds they have raised. Democracy and other items in the “platform” take second place, and there is no shame in it. The show sponsors know that money is ingrained in the American psyche as the barometer of success, and they “bank” on it.
They also know why Las Vegas is so successful.
And this is where the fun really starts.

The bookies.
The financing of the show is very complex and supposedly very regulated but most rules have weaknesses, called “loopholes”, that allows to circumvent them.
The main sources of financing can be divided in two categories: “major donors”, and “small donors”.
The major donors represent the bulk of the financing. They are big corporations and their employees who work in conjunction with the talent agents and the media to promote their favorite team. They usually finance both teams, often favoring one over the other, but sometimes giving equally to both.
The small donors are members of the audience who hope to influence the outcome of the contest by supporting their favorite contestant (either directly, or through independent promoters). Although their contributions are outweighed several folds by the larger contributors (about 5 to 1), they sustain a slew of satellite organizations revolving around the larger organization.
It really is a bookie’s dream: legal betting. To make it perfect, they don’t even have to redistribute the pot. It stays in the “family”.
There are mainly two types of organizations that take in the bets:
The "Political Action Committees”(the PACs), and the “can you chip in” 527s.
The PACs are official team agents. They are allowed to wear the official team caps and T-shirts.
The 527s are the holes in the loop. They are unregulated and can only wear bootleg caps and T-shirts. In other words, they are not officially allowed to root for a particular contestant. But, somehow, they do. That’s probably why they are loopholes.

Most of the members in the game’s audience do not know much about these organizations and trust them blindly because they wear their favorite team’s colors. But one thing is for sure: they know everything about the audience. First of all, they know every audience member’s team preference (it’s called “party affiliation”). But they also know a lot more.
It starts with mass emails (sometimes even old-fashioned letters) designed to find out what motivates the public. Once they know what makes their members or potential members tic, they follow-up with the outrage messages: “You wouldn’t believe what the other team is doing! This is horrific! We have to stop that!”.
Then come the “can you chip in” messages.

This is pure genius in marketing. It plays on all human emotions and uses both the public’s good sides and bad sides: the desire to belong to a group, the desire to do the right thing, the guilt of not acting on an issue viewed as important, the artificially built hate of the other camp, and the love of gambling.

The amounts of money generated by the bookies are not easy to track.
Parts of the funds are funneled to the political parties and the candidates; some funds only sustain the organizations themselves; but the biggest share goes to the show promoters in the form of advertising and show promotion.

The Media.
The revenues for the U.S. media for he 2007-2008 elections cycle are estimated to be around $3 Billion. Approximately 75% of it goes to television. There is no doubt that the Elections Show is big business. In addition to the profits it engenders for the media outlets, it also supports a whole industry of analysts, reporters, production companies, and creative content agencies.

Some members of the audience who actually believe that the whole process is about electing a president complain that the content of the show is too superficial and that the real issues are not being discussed. There just might be a reason for that: it’s show business!
The methods used are similar to the ones in most game shows. It starts with the search for the perfect candidate. Either handpicked by the sponsors or screened according to preset rules of admission, a selection of contenders is presented by each team. The favorites are easy to spot. The contestants are rated by the media on the “electibility” factor, which is purely subjective. As stated earlier, the major item for electibility is how much money a contestant has raised. But, just to make sure that there is no ambiguity about the purpose of the game, the next important thing is how they spend that money. During the whole “campaign”, candidates are scrutinized on how much advertising they purchased, how much they have left compared to other candidates, and how they will manage to raise more money to outspend them. A very important agenda for democracy!

Parallel to the fundraising contest, the show goes on.
During the process of elimination, the personalities of the favorite candidates are built-up until the list of contenders windles down to the “top” candidates. At that point, a reverse process starts in order to create drama. Soap opera becomes the rule. The media is well versed in creating these kinds of situations. Every word, every action of the remaining contestants are scrutinized for opportunities to stir “things” up; and make mammoth dung out of mouse droppings…

I said, he said, are the engines of gossip. And there is something about gossip that grabs us humans at heart, transcending all reasoning. But to maximize the effect, it is best if the viewer is in tune with the media he or she is receiving the “information” from. For that purpose, the media use a trick known in the business as segmentation. Each outlet focuses on a segment of the population and builds up trust by inserting in its programming elements aimed at that part of the population’s tastes or beliefs. The audience can then choose its source of news in full confidence that it is the most reliable.

But at the end of the Elections Show, when the Grand-Prize is to be awarded, all the major media suddenly regroup in one single organization called the National Election Pool. And this organization gets its results of the vote tabulation from one single source, Associated Press.
Has anyone seen an Associated Press vote tabulator lately?

About the author:
Richard Van Slyke is the publisher of OrganizedPolitics.com and the producer of the documentary on electronic voting “The Right To Count”.