Political Parties in the Digital Age

Guy Lachapelle, Philippe Maarek

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9783110423730
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Parties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Internet and "social media" may initially have been understood as just one more instrument politicians could employ to manage without political parties. However, these media cannot be reduced to being a tool available solely to politicians. The electronic media make reinforcement of the "glocalization" of the public and political sphere, a process already set in motion with the advent of television, and they can develop the trend even further.

Political parties are therefore once again becoming indispensable; they are in an unparalleled position to recreate social and political bonds, for only they stand both at the center and on the periphery of the new sphere encompassing public and political life.

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Part I: The Integration of Technological Innovations in the Practices of Parties and Citizens

Kenneth Janda2

Innovations in Information Technology in American Party Politics Since 19603

By definition, the English word, “innovation,” means change – a new way of doing something. It also connotes improvement – that the change is beneficial. The term “technology” by itself connotes “improvement to something already existing.”4 Hence, the English phrase, “innovations in information technology in party politics,” implies that the changes result in progress. Progress is customarily defined as a positive advance toward some higher goal or standard. Deciding whether technological innovations in party politics results in progress, however, depends on the values of the observer.

Most political observers in the United States have concluded that innovations in information technology constitute progress, almost unqualified progress, toward democracy and good government. Consider computer communications over the Internet. Political scientist Matthew Hindman’s 2009 book, The Myth of Digital Democracy, reviewed the prevailing optimistic arguments:5

Those arguing that the Internet is transforming politics come from the upper echelons of politics, journalism, public policy, and law. [The 2004 Democratic presidential hopeful] Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi effuses that “the Internet is the most democratizing innovation we’ve ever seen, more so even than the printing press.”6 The Internet’s increasing importance may be the only thing that Trippi and [President George W.] Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman agree on. The key lesson of the 2004 campaign, according to Mehlman, is that “technology has broken the monopoly of three [television] networks, “and instead of having one place where everyone gets information, there are thousands of places.”7

Hindman cited similar comments over two more pages before concluding, “It may be comforting to believe that the Internet is making U.S. politics more democratic. In a few important ways, though, beliefs that the Internet is democratizing politics are simply wrong.”8

Writing in 1997, over a decade before Hindman’s book, physicist-turned- political scientist Gene Rochlin voiced similar concerns in Trapped in the Net: Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization.9 According to Rochlin, “The enduring myth is that extensive computerization and networking will distribute power as well as information and technical capacity more evenly through industry, offices, bureaus, and the society at large.”10 More generally, Rochlin reminds us that unanticipated and undesirable consequences lurk among the promises of technological innovations.

In contrast to Hindman’s concern with the Internet’s impact on democracy and Rochlin’s with computerization’s effects on society, my essay is decidedly limited. It chronicles the evolution of technological innovations in party politics in the United States. What were the noteworthy innovations in how information is collected, analyzed, and utilized? How have the American political parties, founded more than 150 years ago, adapted to these innovations since the use of mainframe computers in the 1960 campaign for president? While not an exhaustive report on the evolution of technology in American party politics since, this paper – in its trip through time – provides a fairly comprehensive survey of developments over the last half-century.

Technological innovations alter relationships among individuals and groups in all societies. The development of automobiles took jobs away from blacksmiths and carriage makers. Television ended what was called the “golden age” of radio in the United States. U.S. newspaper sales fell with the rise of the Internet. Thus too, technological innovations in politics have altered the relationships between party organizations and candidates. Initially, American national party organizations gained power because they could afford expensive computer facilities while candidates could not. As the cost and complexity of computing lessened, however, candidates surged past party organizations in applying the technology to their election campaigns. In recent years, as politicos realized the importance of high-quality political data and the difficulty in obtaining such data, central party organizations recovered some of their power. At least our national party organizations have become more important concerning presidential campaigns in general elections. Concerning primary election campaigns – which are largely peculiar to the United States, aspiring candidates still campaign independently of party organizations.

The essay concludes by judging in broad terms the effects on party politics of innovations in information technology. Note its focus on party politics rather than on election campaigns. As the historical review will demonstrate, most innovations originated not within the parties but outside of them. They came from candidates operating independently of the party organization. At least in the American political system, new techniques for collecting and processing information have served to underscore – if not to accentuate – the long-standing decentralization of power in American party organizations. But new demands for more comprehensive and more accurate data on voters have produced centralizing tendencies.

In places, this survey draws heavily from my other writings on computer technology and from personal experiences dealing with both parties.11 I footnote text extracted from sources for which I own the copyright. I do not set that text off as quoted material, but I do show quotation marks when the material comes from copyrighted sources held by others. Although focusing on information technology in American party politics, this survey begins by describing how today’s information technology first appeared in American government. The technology appeared much earlier than many people think.

1 Data Processing Before the Dawn of Computers

In the late 19th century, long before electronic computers came along, information technology exploited electro-mechanical manipulation of holes punched in paper forms called punchcards. In 1885 the U.S. Census Bureau was still compiling data collected in the Census of 1880. “It was obvious,” writes Herbert Hyman, “that if the country's rate of growth continued, the time would not be far off before a new census would have to be undertaken before the previous one had been published.”12 The punchcard was invented by Dr. Herman Hollerith of the U.S. Census Bureau to cope with anticipated problems of compiling information on large numbers of cases for the 1890 census.13

In Hollerith’s invention, metal brushes made electronic contact with metal rollers through holes punched into paper cards. As the cards – which acted as insulators – passed between the brushes and the rollers, electronic impulses tripped electro-magnetic counters, converting holes into numbers depending on the timing of the impulses when contact was made.14 The cards could also be sorted into piles according to specific holes punched in specific locations. Hollerith built the card readers for the 1890 U.S. Census, and in 1896 founded the Tabulating Machine Company. It merged with others in 1911 to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CRT) – whose name changed in 1924 to the International Business Machines Corporation, inspired by the name of CRT’s Canadian operation.15

In addition to the company that became IBM, various firms (e.g., Remington Rand) developed equipment to count and sort punchcards. As these devices appeared at American colleges and universities in the 1930s, students of politics employed the technology.16 As early as 1931, Charles Samenow began recording information on punchcards in a study that eventually involved more than 35,000 court cases.17 Not long afterwards, Charles Hyneman published his classic comparative studies of 7,500 legislators serving in thirteen states during all legislative sessions from 1922 to 1935.18 In the late 1930s, IBM introduced a sorting machine that, with some modifications, was widely used over the next five decades to the end of the punchcard era.19 So scholars employed mechanical forms of information technology prior to the advent of computers.

More importantly for the history of technology in party politics, counting-sorters were the mainstay of the new industry of public opinion research. In the 1930s, George Gallup, Elmo Roper, and other polling pioneers began taking national surveys of public opinion using sample surveys involving a thousand respondents. Interview responses were coded into numbers, recorded on punchcards, and tabulated by running the cards through a counting-sorter. Polling companies often stored their punchcards to keep as historical records and to re-analyze them if needed. In 1947, Elmo Roper founded the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research to collect, archive, and redistribute punchcard collections of opinion survey data from various survey organizations.20 Polls stored at the Roper Center were used in the first major use of computing technology in political campaigns.

Early versions of computers were built in Britain in 1948 at the University of Manchester and the next year at Cambridge University.21 Soviet scientists also built the BESM ƃэCM) series in the early 1950s.22 In the United States, the first commercial computer, UNIVAC I, was marketed in 1951. The next year, IBM built its first commercial “high-speed” computer, the 701. The University of Illinois appears to have been the first university in the United States to make a computer (ILLIAC I) available for general research purposes.23 The IBM 650 – said to be the first mass-produced computer – was marketed in 1953 and soon appeared on university campuses. Indiana University had its 650 (about the size of an SUV) in the basement of the astronomy building when I began graduate study in 1957 as a research assistant to Charles Hyneman, who told me to learn how to use it. The 650 generated punchcard output from punchcard input, had very limited memory (2k), and had few programs suitable for political research, but it was a thrill to turn it on, sit at the controls, and operate it alone in the basement.

2 The 1960s: The First Light of Dawn

The U.S. Democratic Party was the beneficiary of an ambitious, pioneering application of computer technology to electioneering in the 1960 presidential election. Technologically out-flanked in that election, the Republican Party recovered and surged ahead of the Democrats for the 1964 election.

Democratic Party

Although it may not have been the first application of computer technology to party politics, the attempt to simulate the outcome of the 1960 presidential election was the most fascinating. The story of the Simulmatics Project is told in Candidates, Issues, and Strategies: A Computer Simulation of the 1960 Presidential Election, by Ithiel de Sola Pool, Robert P. Abelson, and Samuel L. Popkin, its creators.24 Their idea to simulate the 1960 election was hatched in early 1959 and proposed in May to leaders of the Democratic Party, including Paul Butler, Chairman of the National Committee.25 It envisioned analyzing 50 polls prior to the 1952, 1954, 1956, and 1958 elections on 100,000 respondents that were stored on punchcards in the Roper Public Opinion Research Center.26 (Another 15 polls prior to the 1960 election representing 30,000 citizens were added later.) A group at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) agreed to support the effort, pending further review.

The principals organized themselves as The Simulmatics Corporation and began to prepare the data for analysis. As described by Pool, Abelson, and Popkin:

In essence, the data available to us were reduced to a 480 × 52 matrix. The number 480 represented types of voters, each one being defined by socioeconomic characteristics. One voter- type might by “Eastern, Metropolitan, loser-income, white, Catholic, female Democrats.” Another might be “Southern, rural, upper-income, white Protestant, male Independents.” Certain types with small numbers of respondents were reconsolidated, yielding the total of 480 types actually used.

The number 52 represented what we called in our private jargon “issue-clusters.” Most of these were political issues, such as foreign aid, attitudes toward the United Nations, and McCarthyism […].

One can picture the 480 × 52 matrix as containing four numbers in each cell. The first number stated the total number of persons within a voter-type who had been interrogated on that particular item of information. The other three numbers trichotomized those respondents into the percentages pro, anti, and undecided or confused on the issue.27

The 480 voter types inspired the political scientist and successful novelist, Eugene Burdick, to write a fictional book, The 480, about a computer simulation of the 1964 campaign.28 In his Preface, Burdick acknowledged having access to reports from the Simulmatics Corporation but said that his novel “is entirely a projection by the au- thor.”29

From the beginning, The Simulmatics Corporation decided not to try to predict the outcome of the 1960 election – described as “the number one question at the Democratic National Committe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Guy Lachapelle and Philippe J. Maarek: New Technologies: Helping Political Parties and the Democratic Processes or Threatening Them?
• Part I: The Integration of Technological Innovations in the Practices of Parties and Citizens
• Part II: The Consequences of New Technologies on Activism
• Part III: The New Role Played by Social Networks
• Part IV: The Resilience of the Printed Press in the United Kingdom
• Part V: New Technologies and Leadership Evolution
• Endnotes
• Index of Proper Nouns