Handbook of Political Marketing...


A book that updates itself through usage

The Political Marketing Handbook is already ten years old. I wrote the first chapter of this book in 1989, bringing together the voter analysis experience I had gathered from taking part in studies carried out on François Mitterrand and the French Socialist Party’s campaign. Three years later I set out to finish it. But it was not until a year later, in 1994, that it was finally published. For a long time it was a set text for political science and communications students. It reached a wide audience, especially in South America.

Two years ago I decided to publish it on the Internet. So I converted it to .html format in separate chapters so that the variety of tasks and disciplines that make up an election campaign would stand out more clearly. Since then the ‘Handbook’ has taken on a decisive role as a tool for action. I have received a huge number of messages from every country in America and from many European countries, letting me know how useful this book has been when it comes to organizing an election campaign. Many local candidates with low budgets who cannot afford to pay for professional consulting services, and party members with the most varied political tendencies, have paid us the same compliments.

Lastly, not long ago, the spokesman of the Catalan Socialists posted our Handbook on their website, in .pdf format, with slight changes of expression to adapt it to Castilian Spanish  figures of speech. I have decided to use this PSC-PSOE version, to make our site more compact and to show that things improve with use, especially when it comes to books.

Luis Costa Bonino

    Handbook of Political Marketing