I confess myself baffled at a video posted to Tiktok on Friday by the Fianna Fáil candidate for Ireland South, and former RTE starlet, Cynthia NiMhurchu:
Fianna Fáil's ex-RTE candidate for Ireland South, in a post on TikTok this afternoon, declares that she wishes to go to Brussels to, amongst other things, prosecute tech executives of big platforms like "twitter and X". pic.twitter.com/QnsqZN4Zso
— John McGuirk (@john_mcguirk) May 24, 2024
The objective of elections, it is generally understood, is to win votes. And yet, everything about this video screams “voter repellent”.
First, there is the very strange presentation: Candidates generally seek to present warmth and approachability on the campaign trail – in the USA this is generally measured by the old chestnut of a polling question “which candidate would you prefer to have a beer with”. There was a way of delivering this message with warmth and approachability – perhaps by talking about how concerned the candidate was about the exposure of children to pornography and violent rhetoric online, and saying that she would be a strong voice for voter concerns.
Instead, it feels like a bit of an angry rant: The victims here are not children, but “women and minorities”. The tone is that of an angry person demanding to see the manager on their own behalf, not that of somebody articulating concern about others. There’s no connecting statement – by which I mean something connecting the voter to the anger being displayed. In other words, she comes across as angry on her own behalf, not on behalf of the electorate. The video – from a purely communications perspective – could have done with something like “I will hold these people to account on your behalf”. As it is, it’s an angry rant at the voter, rather than on behalf of the voter.
Second, there’s the weird focus on one company, and one man: This is about Elon Musk and twitter, with no mention of Mark Zuckerberg and Meta, or the Chinese Government and TikTok. This, again, reinforces the sense that the candidate is not really angry on behalf of the electorate that she represents, but is instead eager to pursue a personal vendetta against one company. After all, if it’s problematic content she’s worried about it, there’s no shortage of it on facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.
This all comes back to the biggest problem with the video: It fails the most basic of political tests – the normality test.
Election candidates the world over have the same basic objective: To present themselves as just an ordinary person, trying to represent other ordinary people. The most successful candidates are almost always those who present themselves as just a mirror image of the voters: People who share the same interests (which is why candidates pretend to love sport, or tweet about cultural events), concerns, and personalities as the people they represent. The objective of any campaign is to make the voter feel like they are voting for themselves, or at least a person as close to themselves in outlook and personality as possible.
Failing that, the objective is just to appear normal.
Ni Mhurchu starts this campaign with a number of disadvantages: Fianna Fail is needlessly and arguably foolishly running two candidates in Ireland South, where it has precisely no chance of winning two seats. Of those two candidates, Billy Kellegher is both the clear favourite of party headquarters and the party activists on the ground, and also has a better funded campaign and higher name recognition. To beat him, Ni Mhurchu clearly needs some kind of x-factor, which, I think, explains a video like this, and also her notably shouty performance in a Virgin Media television debate last week. “Get noticed and make yourself the centre of attention” is always a decent play, when you’re up against it.
The difficulty is that it can backfire.
Finally, let’s mention the substance: again, there’s a big miss here. If NiMhurchu had wished to highlight deficiencies with X, she had an ample opportunity to do so by focusing on the things that actually might concern parents: Pornography and overt racism being permitted on the platform. Whatever one’s views about free speech, there is likely an audience of people who would prefer to see that sort of stuff regulated.
Instead, she talks in politician, about things like “misinformation” – which is an unfortunate error for a candidate from a party that’s repeatedly run into trouble over its campaign in the recent referendums, which appears to have been largely built on misinformation.
Put simply, this is a candidate Fianna Fail wanted to run as a normal person coming from outside the system, representing the concerns of ordinary people. Instead, she’s consciously running as the consummate political talking points machine, sounding much more angry about the public and companies like X than she is at the political system she’s supposed to be changing.
That’s a recipe for defeat. And likely not a creditable defeat, either.