Urban Go-Team 2014

Adventures in Elections & Voting

Day Two: Kate

I had another great day with Go-Team! We started off the morning with a really interesting and informative panel discussion with different levels of local politicians.  They talked about mainly focused on campaigning during the talk but then afterwards they stayed after to have smaller more personal conversations with each of us. I think that they were all genuine people who were all very passionate about serving their community and working on the issues that they think are important. It was also interesting to hear from the various levels of politicians. We spoke with a newly-elected city councilman, a newly-elected aldermen, two Missouri state representatives, and the county executive.  They all were so different in the their passions and what lead them to run but at the same time had a lot of similar things to say on campaigning.  They were so polite, professional and at the same time you could tell that they really wanted to be there teaching the next generation what they deemed valuable in regards to politics. I also got all of my questions answered which is always a plus!

After the panel discussion, we had a chance to enter in all our data from polling the previous day. I really enjoyed the polling process and it was cool to get to go back and reflect on each of the surveys. I am excited to see the results and how they compare to results from previous years with a similar survey because of the location change. It was interesting to hear the other Go-Team members talk about their polling experience and the different type of people they surveyed as well.

We ended the day with an introductory to political ads. I love political ads and cartoons from all time periods. Yesterday I thought it was really neat to watch presidential campaign ads in chronological order to see the progression of political ads over the years. It was also a chance to see just how different the two parties strategies are. We didn’t forget about Missouri while watching these ads because after the presidential ads we then moved on to state and local campaigns and watched a few of those.

Overall, it was a really awesome day! I am learning so many interesting things and about so many cool resources that our available to me. I’m excited to make my own political ad tomorrow!

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