Mark Mellman: Flawed campaign

Flawed strategy and faulty polling combined to produce a surprise outcome for many in Israel’s elections last week.

While 10 parties carved out seats in the parliament, there were only two contenders for prime minister: incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud and Isaac Herzog of Labor.

{mosads}Both opted for the same core strategy, making the election a choice between the two of them. However, when both candidates have the same strategy, someone is probably making a mistake. In this case, it was Labor and Herzog.

Polls revealed that some 65 percent did not want Netanyahu to serve as prime minister again, but at the same time, voters preferred him to Herzog by a 20-point margin.

Netanyahu rightly sought to frame the election as a choice between him and Herzog, not a referendum on his own performance.

That same data should have convinced Labor to take the opposite route — to make the election a referendum on the incumbent, rather than a choice between Herzog and Netanyahu. 

Instead, Labor followed Netanyahu’s lead in telling voters it was a choice. Labor’s slogan, “It’s us or him,” was almost identical to Netanyahu’s “It’s us or them.” 

Asked by both parties to choose one or the other, voters did what they said they would do. They chose Netanyahu. 

Of course, faulty polls meant Labor probably had little idea its strategy was failing. 

As was reported in the Israeli media, polls conducted by our firm revealed a consistent Likud lead. But we were nearly alone in that. Days before the election, Labor told the press that its survey forecast a 10-seat lead for its party. In the last two weeks of the campaign, 21 different polls conducted by at least nine different firms were used by media outlets. Just one of them showed what we did: a Likud lead. 

Among those released on the final day polling was permitted, all but one had Labor four seats ahead, with the “outlier” projecting a three-seat Labor lead. 

On Election Day it was Likud by six seats, reflecting a large and consistent error on the part of public polls.

Why?

The explanation offered by the pollsters is that there was big movement toward Netanyahu in the final days. 

That might make sense if it weren’t for our polls and those of one other firm that recorded consistent Likud leads. (It also does not account for the inaccurate exit polls, which are beyond my scope here.)

Israeli media provide little information about their polling methodology, but let me offer just one possible source of error among many.

Most of the Israeli media polls are done in one night. That provides researchers not with a random sample of the electorate but with a random sample of easy-to-reach voters. Easy-to-reach folks can have different views than those who are more difficult to find. It’s only by recalling numbers over and over, at different times on different days, that one can reach those who don’t sit at home waiting for a pollster’s call. 

Before concluding, let’s consider the flawed strategy of one other actor: the Obama administration. It’s quite possible, even reasonable, that the White House had no strategy for the Israeli elections, but if its goal was to hurt — or least not help — Netanyahu, then it erred. 

Raising the stakes on his congressional address through a series of cold shoulders only enhanced Netanyahu’s standing with his constituency. Recall, he never needed a majority to win, and his party got just 23 percent of the vote. But his 23 percent was delighted to see him stand up to President Obama, and the tougher it got for him, the more that 23 percent cheered — and moved into his corner. 

Would wiser strategies or better polling have changed the outcome meaningfully? Hard to say, but the results may have been less of a surprise. 

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has worked for Democratic candidates and causes since 1982. Current clients include the minority leader of the Senate and the Democratic whip in the House.