What can the United States teach Scotland about campaigning?

“Ladies and gentlemen, that has to be the most unique beginning to any debate, not only in Florida, but I think anywhere in the country,” moderator Eliott Rodriguez said to an audience gathered for the second of three televised debates for state governor last October. It was an apt assessment given the cameras had captured Republican Governor Rick Scott refusing to take to the stage because a small cooling fan was at Democratic challenger Charlie Crist’s feet, a purported violation of debate rules.

How fitting, then, that US pollsters, Jason Boxt and Robert Moran – Democrat and Republican strategists respectively – arrived in Edinburgh in a week when televised general election debates, long a feature of US polls, returned to the fore in the UK.

The Prime Minister is refusing to participate unless the Green Party is included, a demand seen as a blatant attempt to mitigate any damage UKIP might inflict from a high-profile platform. Plans have since been altered to allow places for the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP in two seven-strong debates, though David Cameron suggested last week that political parties from Northern Ireland should be included too.

“Absolutely, the more the merrier,” says Boxt. “I would hold out until… I mean really, cattle call. ‘You want to get on there too? Them too. Bring them down from Northern Ireland, bring them out from Wales... the more the merrier.’ And while they’re debating all of that I’m spending my however many millions the party has allocated for outreach and targeting and I’m making progress under the waves. 

“Go back and look at the primary debates in 2007, it was great. You had like 12 people on stage – you learned nothing but nobody got hurt. What Cameron is doing right now, a little bit of public ridicule today versus adopting a bad campaign strategy, I’ll take the ridicule today because there’s no way he should be on that debate stage if everybody is not.” The PM is “doing what everybody would do in American politics,” claims Moran.  

After all, the consensus seems to be that the Conservative leader’s hopes of a majority in 2010 were hampered by the introduction of TV debates, although both commentators question just how big a factor they tend to be.

“They can be but they usually aren’t,” says Boxt. ”If you go back, I think the classic example is the Kennedy-Nixon debates and you could make the argument that in 2012, Mitt Romney made up ground in one of the debates. But elections are rarely won or lost in debates… Only losers want debates. I don’t mean that [in the sense] I’m judging somebody’s character; I’m saying if you perceive that you are winning then you have absolutely no interest in a debate because you’re playing out the clock.”

Timing was certainly pivotal in last September’s independence referendum, claims Boxt.

The message discipline of Better Together felt very American. They had their messages and they pounded away

“That is the baby that is now going through adolescence and I think it’s probably causing more problems,” says Boxt of the ‘Vow’, the promise of further powers by the three UK party leaders two days prior to voters going to the polls. “People laughed about it at the time but that’s exactly why they won.”

Its impact in terms of a percentage swing is likely immeasurable, he acknowledges, though both men agree that the Daily Record’s 16 September splash served to slow the lead momentum of the Yes campaign of just a week previously. 

“I think it gave people who were thinking about voting Yes but were very much on the fence some reassurance in their undecided position to vote No,” adds Moran. “Look, the Yes side criticised Better Together for how it was running, but the fact is, that’s what you do on the No side, you run by raising fear, uncertainty, doubts, raising questions. That is your job – you’re almost like an advocate in court – and it works. The problem is you can win ugly and it still doesn’t help you down the road. That’s my big question.”

Barack Obama’s desire to retain a “strong, robust, united and effective partner” – expressed at a joint press conference with Cameron three months before the referendum – had little impact beyond providing fodder for the news cycle, they suggest. That said, US influence over the campaign was there to be seen.

“I would say the way it was done was very uniquely Scottish, but there are elements that seemed like they were more American,” says Moran. “Saturation advertising, number one. A lot of work on digital, number two. A bottom-up campaign, interesting; bottom-up digital, that makes sense. The message discipline of Better Together felt very American. They had their messages and they pounded away. They’re like a winning American football team – they’ve got their game-plan, they’re not going to deviate from the game-plan.”

Currency, for one, proved a well-worn tactic the No camp relied upon to undermine their opponents’ case. “It’s really counterintuitive for an elected official, or an aspiring elected official, to just say the same thing over and over again,” adds Boxt, “because what they keep saying is, ‘I’m bored with this’, and the consultant’s response is, ‘you may be bored with it but most of the people you’re talking to have never heard it’.”

Message discipline is one thing, though certain questions were asked over campaign discipline in general, especially in the latter stages. “The tone was very Scottish and in terms of nastiness, that’s nothing,” laughs Moran. “Come to the United States. We have civil politics but it’s hard, hard debate.”  

'What Jim Murphy has to do is hold a magnifying glass to policies that show a differentiation factor between Scottish Labour and the SNP'

An Ipsos Mori survey out last month predicted the SNP could – Boxt underlines “could” when our discussion turns to polling numbers – gain as many as 55 seats at Westminster, with Scottish Labour decimated to a tenth of their current representation. “They have time before the next election here [in 2016] to get it back together but Jim Murphy has a tall order ahead of him,” Boxt adds. “What’s the term? Putting out a dumpster fire a little bit.

“I personally believe that legislating from the opposition is a much more attractive place to be, it’s much easier to legislate from the opposition, it’s much easier to hold the governing party’s feet to the fire. Obviously, Scottish Labour is wounded. I don’t think it’s mortally but I think they’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do. And the best way to do that is to cherry-pick those SNP policies moving forward. The SNP has to govern.

"What Jim Murphy has to do is hold a magnifying glass to policies that show a differentiation factor between Scottish Labour and the SNP and he has to be patient because you don’t just come back from this kind of situation quickly. The party faithful have to be patient and give him time because it would be unrealistic to think that Scottish Labour gets back to a position of leadership in the next five years.”

As for the SNP – a party that, if polls are to be believed, looks set to go from a paltry group of six MPs to a potential coalition partner – a two-track strategy is now paramount, according to Moran, focusing on “governing and governing well” as well as a targeted turnout of their base.

“Politically, the mechanics of this are fascinating,” he says, turning the clock back to the referendum. “If you’re the SNP, if you’re any good at politics, you’re building a house file [where] you can start to really create a model of the 43/44 per cent that you can rely on. Politically, once you build that list, you now have sort of a power list and a very high turnout in elections. You just need to turn out those voters again and again and you get to control locally for a very long time. You don’t need to run a persuasion campaign – you just need to turn out the people you’ve identified.”

Axelrod v Messina

The next thirteen weeks will not only see the Conservatives and Labour go head-to-head to claim 10 Downing Street, it will see two former Barack Obama aides and colleagues pitted against one another.

The Conservatives recruited Jim Messina, who managed President Obama’s campaign for a second term, to work on its General Election team in August 2013.

Eight months later, Labour brought in election strategist David Axelrod, who has been widely hailed as the architect of Obama’s rise from first-term Illinois senator to the White House.  

Enlisting such transatlantic services is nothing new, though, Boxt and Moran argue. “That horse is out of the barn,” says Boxt. “It’s a growth industry and you guys have already imported the American stock,” adds Moran.

“What’s screwed up is it is never good to get between your client and the footlights. You should never be the story, ever. People on the street should never know your name at all... I guess it’s unavoidable because they’re big names, but you don’t really ever want to be the story.”

“Unless you want to be taken seriously,” continues Boxt. “For example, when Better Together hired Blue State Digital, that was fairly public knowledge and I think – I wasn’t in the room when they made this decision – it was put out there to show we are serious, this is a serious campaign. 

“Now, obviously, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party don’t need to do that, they’re serious, in and of themselves, so I don’t know what the newsworthiness is of bringing in Axelrod and Messina except that they are basically the same.”