Darrell West

Workshop on "How to Be Successful in Election Campaigns”
September 23, 2008. The U.S. Consulate General and the Atlantic Academy Rheinland-Pfalz jointly organized an evening workshop on “How to Be Successful in Election Campaigns” at the Erbacher Hof in Mainz. The four-hour workshop was conducted by Darrell West, Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, and attracted 35 young Germans from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Rheinland-Palatinate, Hesse, Saarland, and Northrhine-Westphalia active in election campaigning for the CDU, SPD and FDP. As an authority on all aspects of modern campaigning including the role of the media and the internet, West was able to offer an analysis of the newest methods and their effects as applied in the current U.S. election campaign. First successfully used in the 2004 elections, the method of systematic micro-targeting of voters' groups was met with particular interest.