Persuasion Analysis Paper, Free Example for Students

It is bear that one of the most dramatic developments in the political campaigns in recent times is the increase in the magnitude of campaign expenditures propagated by the intense political campaigns to persuade voters to cast their votes to a particular candidate. If the primary function of a political campaign is to inform voters about the choices they should make during elections and to promote participation of citizens, then the importance of political campaigns in our democratic societies should be asked regarding how and in what ways do these political campaigns fulfil the primary goals and enhance a democratic procedure. However, in the sense of the modern campaigning practices and the increasing controversy about its impacts, this question might as well help to address the outcome of the elections, that is, whether or not political campaigns win votes for a specific political option (Bartels, 2006). It should be understood that the problems posed by political campaigns in a bid to persuade the people to vote to a particular political wing are one of the many issues that have affected our society. This is because, during these campaigns, politicians use their political might to persuade voters to their political blocks thereby making wrong choices that do not reflect a proper democratic process because of a lack of defined ideologies. It is important to argue that political campaigns in our societies are the leading platform for citizens to get relevant and essential information concerning the government to be able to evaluate the performance of the government as well as learn about the best political options. In regards to the above and because of some limitation, the paper purposes to stress on the importance of persuasion and its effects on political campaigns by focusing on the modern campaigning strategies as witnessed in our societies.

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It is important to notice that according to current studies on the public opinions and psychology, various empirical irregularities have been identified regarding how the public form beliefs in the political as well as social spheres (McNair, 2017). Firstly, it is true that beliefs are highly flexible and can therefore easily be swayed, especially in situations where people lack crucial personal involvement. Another one is that it cannot be denied that social influences like strong political persuasions shape decisions that are made by the people, especially in a political process. People are in most cases persuaded by those individuals they interact with, and this has been the case in the modern political campaigns in our societies where leaders are ensuring that they move in almost all the streets to meet voters to persuade them to vote for them. Such influence from political leaders, friends, co-workers, and others greatly affects decisions on the voting trend. Besides, in the political platform, awareness of voters regarding some issues is very low, and hence the best tool to bring this in order is by use of persuasion (Bartels, 2006).

It cannot be denied that persuasion plays a significant role in our modern politics. Politicians use different strategies to lure voters utilizing a range of persuasive tools like money, projects and even oratory competence. All these are persuasion measures used by our political leaders vying for a different post to convince citizens to vote for them. Political campaigns are the custodian of talking platforms (McNair, 2017). Be it in the rallies, in political debates, or even in commercials. It is incredible that if there is any political sensibility in all that talking, then we have always observed that political parties and the leaders would ever want to use any information in their favor to win. This can be done in majorly two serious way. First, a party sponsoring a given candidate can use various means to persuade voters that their candidate will be the best bet for their votes and is the most fantastic one at delivering what the voters desire for in their areas (Bartels, 2006). Another way that we have observed parties do this in the contemporary political campaigns is by parties convincing voters through massive propaganda that their candidate is not as bad as the candidate of opposing parties. However, it is essential to understand that the optimal strategy will highly depend on what voters themselves initially believed in concerning both candidates presented to them by different political parties and the other party's strategy. From the previous, it should be known that persuasion is a key political strategy. This is because the manner in which a political party or candidate expresses their desires is what will adequately convince the voters to vote for them. As stated earlier, persuasion can be achieved through various strategies including the use of development projects, giving handouts, and the use of language (McNair, 2017). The latter can be observed in the historic president Obama's speech which was an outstanding speech delivery that is believed to have persuaded voters to vote for him during presidential elections in the United States. It has been used to show the evidence of the power of persuasion in the modern political campaigns and debates.

It will be an overlook if I fail to state that election campaigns have gone through a transformation process in the last few years. In a bid to clearly understand these aspects, it is wise to observe some three perspectives that include; the faster development of mass media, changes in the party loyalty and finally the increase in the rate of party marketing. These factors have massive effects on how a campaign is run in recent days considering how candidates and parties use these perspectives to persuade voters (Bartels, 2006). Because of this, it is worth noting that the process of modernizing political campaigns which are mainly characterized by increasing rate of social complexity as well as growing fragmentation has led to a break in the traditional ties. In modern politics, the issue of party affiliation which was traditionally associated with class became an issue of personal preference. This is so because, as was observed earlier where voting was based on expression of solidarity with your group and the institution, today, voting is based upon expression of an individual's opinion. This is possibly the exact reason why the extent of persuasion has been a vital recipe in political campaigns (McNair, 2017). This further explains the reason as to why parties that have transformed turn to an individual voter thereby neglecting their strong ideological positions in an attempt to catch more massive voter base. Without the power to persuade such individual voters, it becomes challenging for such parties and campaigning leaders to convince the electorates (Bartels, 2006). Persuasion has become one of the surest ways to lure voters in the recent past, and this explains why campaigning process has been broadened to the extent that parties even try to adopt strategies to reach individual voters even in the most remote areas.

However, despite the fact that parties are using physical measures to persuade voters, the advent of televisions have given another persuasion platform for election campaigns. With its undoubted technological characteristics, television offered a new lease of life to parties and leaders. This is so because television enabled parties to adjust their schedule by tailoring their programs to capture the attention of a larger population. This involves persuading voters through circulating their manifestos in these television channels so that they can easily be accessed by the voter (Bartels, 2006). Alongside this, print media is also a significant platform that is currently used by parties and leaders to persuade voter by giving printed speeches that can easily be accessed and read by the voter. All these are attempts to show how persuasion has played a significant role in changing the landscape of political campaigns in modern societies. Generally, this has helped to push political spokesperson and telegenic candidates to the front, thereby enhancing their persuasion capability to produce sound bites and to promote confidence. Undeniably, this has led to improved professionalism in the field of politics by involving many experts most explicitly relying on opinion polls and believed in the power of media to convince voters.

As stated above, persuasion in an overall term for influence. It is used to attempt to convince people's beliefs, intentions, attitudes, behaviors or motivations. In political campaigns, which is the main artifact of this paper, persuasion is mostly used as a tool to enable leaders and parties to pursue personal gains. It uses spoken words, written materials, feelings, reasoning, and even visual elements to convey information (McNair, 2017). On the other hand, persuasion can be used to mean a process of using one's position or resources to change the attitude and behavior of voters in a political campaign. Persuasion can either be systematic where attitudes or beliefs are made to look the same by appeal to logic and some reasoning, or it can be heuristic whereby appeals to leverage beliefs and attitudes to emotion and habit. However, persuasion has some problems affecting our societies.

These problems are caused because a majority of the voters in the society are either illiterate or the leaders hunting for votes use persuasion mechanisms that entirely confuse and dupe the voters into believing that they are the best choices for the leadership post. Unfortunately, in the real sense, they are not. As just stated above, one of the most common problems of persuasion is deception by making the voters believe during political campaigns that a given party or candidate is the best bet for them. In this problem, candidates use questionable persuasive measures to convince the ignorant majority who are not informed of the political procedures to vote them. These include, and not limited to huge promises that are not fulfilled in the long run when they assume the offices (McNair, 2017). To give the example of the dangers and problems of persuasion is the former case of the sketchers company who persuaded the buyers using questionable data that their shoe products helped to facilitate weight loss as well as cardiovascular fitness, something that several studies disputed as it lacked accuracy and transparency. This is a typical example that can be used to back up the problem posed by persuasion mechanism to convince voters in the political campaigns in the societies.

Additionally, it cannot be ignored that persuasion comes at a cost as leaders need to get the attention of almost all the voters. In this regard, these leaders use a lot of money to traverse all the streets in society leading to misuse of public resources. Undeniably, persuasion also has led to increased corruption practices in most societies as leaders give handouts to convince opposing voters to divert their allegiance and attitude to their camps (Bartels, 2006). This has led to the election of bad leaders who do not care about the development processes of their societies.

It is worth noticing in this conclusion section that the essay has presented various ways in which political leaders and parties use to persuade voters and influence their decisions. The key item described in the paper is how persuasion is used in political campaigns to convince the voters. The argument presented in the paper is that persuasion plays a very integral role in the modern political campaigns in the societies. It further looked at how the leaders use the persuasion techniques like promises of development projects to lure the voters. Finally, the essay presents some of the problems that are posed by persuasion in the society in general.