This is a slightly modified version of a text that gained good support in the Swedish Pirate chat:
An electoral strategy for new challenger parties
As a relatively new and small party, you really want to be “seen as a party for everyone”, which you of course want to be. You want to reach the “average Joe or Jane” and look for what will reach him/her. What are the current things that people care about right now? Study polls on “the most important issues” etc. But is it the most effective to do?
Suppose that instead of trying to capture as many people as possible right now, you think about how to get the new party to grow, so that at a later stage you can become a big party with the same basic values and social outlook that your small crowd has now. How does a new movement grow? You need an established core of people that grows at a pace so that it is not watered down by new people with positions on popular issues of the day that cannot be derived from the core ideology. When you lack media access, word-of-mouth is the main method for spreading the message. The more people who can really describe one’s basic values and social outlook to others, the faster the core grows, and with it the party’s opportunities. So let’s “target” the “target group” of those who are tired of the control and surveillance society, who have not lost hope in the Internet, who trust that the culture will evolve with less lock-ins in ownership and copyright etc. Who believe that “vulnerable groups” (poor, drug users, unemployed, even crime-prone) can contribute to society if you dare to trust and support their own strengths. And more. The pirate parties of the world do not spring from the interests of social groups like the nineteenth century parties. As I see it, it is about a new basic view of progress and development that is emerging, focusing on social, cultural and individual growth, with creativity and sharing that we saw and learned especially clearly on the early Internet. The materialistic values and systems of industrial society have done their job as a guiding star for the construction of society, to be accommodated in a larger and broader perspective on man, nature, society and things. An election strategy should include telling about this.
I moved this thread to the “General” category, as I didn’t see it fit into the CEEP 2024 category. As far as I understand the text wasn’t suggested to be part of our CEEP.
well, parts of the text contains examples of f what I proposed as reasonable
contents among the pirate core values, things that to me should be traceable behind our concrete proposals.
Sen har jag lagt till lite mer kött som inte fanns i det likesuppskattade originaldokumentet. Men jag kan länka till det med denna kommentar, så…
Sen kan man ju tycka att strategin att bygga på grundvärderingarna borde vara ett rättesnöre, oavsett om man är överens om just de värden och idéer jag nämner.
It would be great if we could keep the conversation in English to avoid making people rely on translation tools to participate.
When it comes to election strategies, one key consideration is the fact that in reality the eu election is actually not one election, but 27 different parallell elections. The national context surrounding the elections is very different in the different member states, and the expectations of the pirates and of our chances of success also vary wildly from one country to another. So trying to adopt a strategy that fits all is probably not the best approach.
Having said that, there’s of course a lot to be gained from sharing our different experiences and learn from each other
I thought we had a private conversation for a while , so I used Swedish. Sorry.
The proposed strategy is really a general idea for new parties who want to grow. I put what I and the commentators to the original Swedish text consider some pirate values into it, but that was mainly as an example. The idea is to avoid trying to catch voters with statements on topical subjects of the day that are difficult to derive from the core values and perspectives you want to build the party on in the long run. Whatever these values are. You will probably want voters who can spread the core values among their friends etc.
I think it might take us all a bit to get used to the platform. There is a messaging function for private communication, but all posts on the Discourse are public. Including for people outside of the party. So we practice the transparency we promote.
I fully agree with your view on how a new/small party should behave to attract voters and build their numbers, but my point is that such a strategy wouldn’t be applicable to some of our pirate parties, such as the Czech and Luxembourgish, who at this point have grown far beyond such an approach.
I had problems reading the text and tried ChatGPT with the following prompt.
Can you reformat the following text to be easier to read and understand?
Don’t add any new information.
Only use the text provided below!"
I got the following response:
Here’s a reformatted version of the text for easier reading:
Title: An Electoral Strategy for New Challenger Parties
As a new and small party, you want to appeal to as many people as possible. However, consider how to grow the party in the long term instead of trying to capture a wide audience. To do this, you need a core group of supporters to spread your message through word-of-mouth.
To target this core group, focus on those tired of a surveillance society and believe in individual growth and creativity. These are the types of people who are likely to be interested in the party’s values and social outlook.
The pirate parties of the world are not formed around social groups like traditional parties but rather around a new view of progress and development that focuses on social, cultural, and individual growth. An electoral strategy should communicate this vision to potential supporters.
Note: I’ve further altered text with the suggestions from Grammarly, but it should have the same content and just cut out extra fluff and made it even easier to read.
I haven’t checked the modified text with the original yet, but maybe @anderserk can quickly give a thumbs up?
As a new and small party, you want to appeal to as many people as possible. However, consider how to grow the party in the long term instead of trying to capture a wide audience with the topics of the day, if these are not central to the party’s ideas… To grow in the long run, you need a core group of supporters to spread your central message through word-of-mouth.
To target this core group as pirate parties, focus on those tired of a surveillance society and believe in individual and common creativity and a sharing ethics. These are the types of people who are likely to be interested in the party’s values and social outlook.
The pirate parties of the world are not formed around social groups like traditional parties but rather around a new view of progress and development that focuses on social, cultural, and individual growth. An electoral strategy should communicate this vision to potential supporters.
