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In politics, we sometimes miss the trees for the forest.
Election analysis is usually about the three "Ms": money, media, and maps: what campaigns are spending on, what hot stories news outlets are covering, and what polls are saying in the places that matter.
That wide-angle view is valuable. But it tends to gloss over the micro scale look at a fourth and even more fundamental "M": minds. Isn't that where the real action is?
Democratic elections are unlike any other conflict because they are fought on a hidden battlefield inside our brains. Winning means changing the way people behave—getting people to vote, not vote, or vote the way you want. Looking at campaigns from the perspective of the psychological techniques, tricks, and principles that change people's minds can tell you a lot about each side's choices (if you're interested in how the 2024 political ads are using psychology, I'm doing a video miniseries/pod about it).
For instance, why is Vice President Kamala Harris running what Republicans have derided as a "vibes campaign," light on proposals, policy details, and even media interviews, but heavy on uplift, biographical storytelling, and "yes we can" energy? Because that's exactly what psychology says she should be doing.
Psychologists have described two pathways into our brains: central and peripheral. The central route involves logic and facts. It's effective, but only if people are motivated to put in the effort to process what they're hearing. If they're not, the message (almost) literally goes over their heads. That's when the peripheral route using emotion and associative cues becomes the best way to get a bit of brain traction. In other words, the science says give active, engaged listeners details (think Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-MA) mountain of policy papers for primary voters); and give passive listeners vibes (like videos replete with biographical stories, callouts to "freedom" and Beyonce bangers).
Voters these days are not putting in the effort: they're radically tuned out, and certainly in no mood to engage their brains on details. Only one third of Americans even claim to follow any kind of news closely, and most go out of their way to avoid hearing political messages. And ads? People hate them. So, if you're the Harris campaign, you have to take the peripheral route to get where you're trying to go, not the central route which is jammed with mental traffic. And definitely don't take the Republican bait to sit for a lot of media interview deep dives.
What about the ads the campaigns are running? There's a lot to pull apart here too. One of the most well-established ideas in persuasion is the "liking principle": we tend to be much more easily persuaded by the people we already view positively.
So, how do you use that to help your candidate?
The Harris campaign has a candidate who voters can find quite likeable, especially with a few mental nudges. So, their first ad shows lots of scenes of Harris giving hugs and warm two-handed handshakes (8 in 60 seconds) with different types of supporters. Since we tend to like people who like us, Kamala is making clear that she likes people like us.
But the "liking principle" can be a double-edged sword for women and people of color, because as one of the fathers of persuasion science, Robert Cialdini, said "we tend to like people who are similar to us." And let's face it, human beings tend to see similarity in terms of surface qualities. That's why Kamala's convention speech was chock full of other kinds of similarities: "It was mostly my mother who raised us. Before she could finally afford to buy a home, she rented a small apartment in the East Bay... a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses and construction workers, all who tended their lawns with pride." Message: Kamala was raised like you, thinks like you, shares values like yours.
For the Trump campaign, it's the opposite. Donald Trump is one of the most disliked candidates in American history. And definitely not a hugger. So, he's a virtual no-show in his ads. Even in his 2020 campaign launch video he was like the shark in "Jaws"—you don't even see an image of him for the first half.
Instead, his campaign leans on another core persuasion principle: social proof. Repeated clips of regular people saying they like and support Trump supply the mental lever that the candidate can't. Saturday Night Live even picked up on this move back in 2016, with hilarious results.
Here's one more: what does psychology tell us about why the Harris campaign switched from the "Trump is scary" theme a la Biden 2020 to the "Trump is weird" meme introduced by vice-presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz? The answer is there can be a big gap between what we say and what an audience hears. A classic example is a misbegotten Alka Seltzer ad from 1969, in which an actor in a fake commercial struggles to say "that's a spicy meatball!," has to do repeated takes, and so gets indigestion. Audiences thought it was hilarious. They also thought it was an ad for meatballs.
The "Trump is a threat to democracy" theme worked in 2020 because the chaos and dysfunction of Trump's term was fresh in voters' minds. In 2024, with fuzzier memories, reminding them that Trump represents a radical break from the system runs the risk of backfiring. You might be selling Alka Seltzer, and people might decide they like the meatballs. Better to say "these guys are a couple of meatballs."
Don't get me wrong: it's worth watching the polling averages and bus tours. But don't sleep on how the candidates are trying to get into our heads.
Matt Robison is a writer, podcast host, and former congressional staffer.
The views in this article are the writer's own.
