Campaigns Course, lecture 4

Our final lecture was devoted to a discussion of how to apply these "best practices" from U.S. campaigns here in Moldova

Before talking about how some of these techniques could be applied by the parties here in Moldova and whether this course increased students' interest in participating in one of the campaigns here, I thought I'd ask about something more basic. Voting.

When I asked how many students planned to vote in the upcoming parliamentary elections about 2/3 of the hands went up. (Then, for comparison, I asked how many students had voted during the constitutional referendum back in Sept, and about 1/3 of the hands raised went down. Along the lines of what I would have expected. (The constitutional amendment, which would have changed the selection process for President from selection by parliament to selection directly by the people, failed because it lacked requisite voter turnout.)

Students were asked to complete an evaluation about the course, in which I asked them to tell me about their expectations for the course (and whether those expectations were met), what was the most important thing(s) they learned about campaigns and elections in the U.S. during the course, whether they learned any skills that they could put to use during the upcoming parliamentary elections in Moldova, and whether the course increased their interest in working on campaigns (why or why not).

As always, I appreciated student feedback (for this course, I received feedback in 3 languages!).

90% of the students responded that this course increased their interest in working on campaigns. While a few said they wanted to work on a campaign in the U.S. (and not Moldova), most replied that they felt more confident working on a campaign now that they know more about the organization/techniques, because it sounded exciting, and because "our future is in our hands."

It was gratifying to read responses to the questions about what specific things the students learned about campaigns. Quite a lot!