Every time presidential campaigns see the end of the quarter coming, and they know that all the political reporters will be focusing on who raised what, the campaigns start playing the expectations game.
It goes like this: campaign staffers tell key reporters — on background — that their guy is doing well with fundraising, but not as well as they’d like. The candidate, the aide says, will raise about $3 million, which is in line with earlier projections. Stories run in the media using this number as a baseline.
The staffer knows full well that the campaign will actually raise at least $4 million. So why not just say so? Because if everyone’s expecting $3 mil, the media will perceive $4 mil as a sudden and impressive boost, perhaps even due to a late surge of support.
John Edwards played this game perfectly in Q1. His campaign leaked word that Edwards would raise about $5 mil, which was widely considered to be a solid take for the North Carolina Senator. The quarter ended and Edwards announced the “updated” tally — which was $7.4 million and best of the field.
The establishment was amazed and Edwards got good press and some very positive buzz for a few days. His campaign got an “A” for playing the expectations game correctly.
Q2 was a little different for everyone. The conventional wisdom for the last couple of weeks was that Dean, Edwards, and Kerry would each raise about $5 mil, Gephardt and Lieberman would take in about $4 mil each, and Graham would end up around $3 mil.
Kerry did a little better than expected, raising about $6 mil, but the big news was Dean’s $7.5 mil. It was such a shockingly strong quarter, people couldn’t believe it, nor could they stop talking about it.
Then there was Lieberman. His camp said the target was $4 mil for the quarter, but they weren’t sure that they’d make it. In reality, they knew better, but they were rolling the dice in the expectations game. Unfortunately, they played poorly and got burned.
There was too much buzz that Lieberman would have a weak quarter, and word leaked from the campaign that he’d struggle to get to $4 mil only reinforced that perception. Stories were published on Monday that were already questioning the campaign about another lackluster quarter.
Surprise, surprise, Lieberman’s campaign announced yesterday. Their man Joe actually raised over $5 million. Isn’t that impressive, they said.
But when the Lieberman campaign apparently decided to play down expectations, they didn’t expect Dean to have such an impressive quarter.
So what happened when Lieberman proudly boasted of his $5 million Q2? The political establishment didn’t care — they were still overwhelmed by Dean’s $7.5 mil. Besides, the reporters said, Lieberman’s $5 mil was only the third best of the quarter and his cumulative $8 mil for the year puts him way behind Dean, Kerry, Edwards, and Gephardt, making the former vice presidential candidate look even worse.
Instead of getting a big boost from a better-than-expected quarter, Lieberman ended up looking worse by playing with expectations too much and then falling too far behind. Oops.