Ginn, Hannah

Title:
Political Campaigning During a Pandemic

Abstract:
I explore the challenges and implications of political campaigning during the COVID-19 pandemic through my own experiences interning for two different Congressional campaigns. I describe my responsibilities as a campaign finance intern in order to demonstrate how the pandemic forced campaigns to shift their tactics, messaging, and organizing. In my experience, campaigns struggled with adapting to new outreach methods as well as faced increased fatigue from donors and voters. Alternatively, the pandemic encouraged campaigns to creatively employ new technological capabilities and broadened the scope of who could be involved with the campaign. In conclusion, I present how pandemic campaigning may impact campaigning in the future by increasing the reliance on technology and importance of money in politics.