Bill James Quotes

Voters are looking for credibility and are wary of polish. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter which candidate can more deftly read a teleprompter.

In politics, you have a one-day sale. You have every customer allowed in the store for one or two minutes on that day, and you have to sell a majority or plurality of the market or you are out of business.

Voters don't have to love him, Romney advisers say, but they will respect him.

I know I can serve Hawaii and our country well in the U.S. Senate, know we can mount a solid statewide campaign, know we have a good chance of prevailing.

If you can't be a populist in Arkansas, you ain't going to be a populist in Washington.

In the run-up to the 1992 Democratic convention, Clinton's campaign realized that voters thought the young governor had a privileged upbringing. They didn't buy his alleged concern for the middle class.

Memo to White House: Calling voters stupid is not a winning strategy.

The fact that the Conservatives are losing voters to UKIP while struggling to attract those who voted for other parties in 2010 suggests they have still not successfully shown what a Conservative government is for. This needs to be done on a broad front in a way that encompasses the economy and public services.

In terms of the ability to go out and win - this is why you have campaigns. You go out, and you take your issues to voters, and you put them out there, and people respond, or they don't.

To be a statesman, you must first get elected.

Of course we are looking to win support across every section of society. We win support by speaking to voters on the issues they most care about.

I just think, you know, when we talk about a politician, I think a person has to be themselves. Let the voters see the real you.

What is the primary purpose of a political leader? To build a majority. If voters care about parking lots, then talk about parking lots.

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.

It's hard running as an independent. I wouldn't have won the Senate election if I hadn't been governor. I had credibility. The hard part is getting voters to the point where they think it's thinkable and not a waste of time.

We have to say now we think the character of the party has changed so far it will take something very exceptional, something really out of the ordinary line to make us be convinced there's a chance of winning back the party.

Politicians do not like to alienate voters no matter how lofty the goals.

Every election is a matter of definition.

Practical politics is the politics of the coming election.

How a candidate runs shapes how a president governs.

Microtargeting, as its name implies, is a way to identify small but crucial groups of voters who might be won over to a given side, and which messages would do the trick.

We must invest in and empower our state and local parties by creating effective field operations, an enhanced and advanced voter file, and a culture of collaboration between candidates at every level. Let's put the voters first.

In the U.S. - and elsewhere - successful parties need a storyline that voters can relate to, an intelligible plot of some sort, especially now that so many older, formal ideologies have lost force. For proof of this, one has only to look at Margaret Thatcher's career and ideas.

After Mitt Romney's defeat, the RNC released its official assessment of what happened - a failure to reach younger voters, nonwhite voters, women - but was met with a counter-narrative that, in fact, it was Romney's failure to be conservative enough that led to a depressed Republican base.

To defeat Donald Trump, the Democrats must run a stellar cast of all-stars in their primary.