Do political stickers work? (2020)

One other use of political symbols such as bumper stickers or flags etc is to "mark your territory" to make sure that people know whether they are welcome or not.

As an Irishman driving through some parts of Northern Ireland the best/worst case of that was some small towns and villages that more or less literally, had every available space covered in the British flag. I mean every building and many windows had a flag on or it it, every lamppost was covered in both flags and bunting of even more flags. It looked like there was some sort of British flag bomb that had coated the town.

Do you think me with my Irish reg car, and Irish accent stopped in that town while I was driving through?

I can think of two reasons for political stickers and posters, neither of which is among the ones listed in the article linked here.

1. Putting them up cements the loyalty of the person putting them up. You're less likely to consider switching away from the Purple Party to the Orange Party when you've already spent a lot of time and effort putting up Purple posters and when you've publicly declared your affiliation by plastering your property with Purple stickers.

2. Having a lot of them up demonstrates that your party has enough support to be worth bothering with. Few people like the idea of voting for a likely loser, especially in places where elections are first-past-the-post. So having lots of Purple partisans put up Purple posters lets everyone see that Purple are in with a chance and therefore not feel as if a vote for the Purple candidate would be thrown away.

#1 is a reason why parties should produce these things, though not a reason why individuals should put them up. #2 seems to me a more plausible reason for putting them up than the ones in the article.

If my theory about #2 is right, we might expect to see more political posters in places whose electoral systems make votes for minority parties less valuable. I don't know whether that's actually so.

[For the avoidance of doubt, "Purple" and "Orange" here are arbitrary labels and aren't intended to suggest any actual parties or movements that might use those colours.]

This is missing at least one thing. Bumper stickers and stickers placed on public property differ in one important respect: a bumper sticker is on an identifiable person's private property. That means you know who put it there. The woman who lives across the street from me has her car absolutely plastered, totally covered with political stickers. She is advertising very loudly to the entire neighborhood anywhere she ever parks her car what she cares about. So that is a 4th purpose not covered in this article that cannot be served by stickers on stop signs.

There's more, perhaps more relevant in countries with more than 2 mainstream parties. There's a "hey this is a viable idea, look at how many people are supporting it" kind of thing.

For example in local elections in the UK, plenty of people put up a little poster thing for their candidate. I definitely had my attention drawn to candidates I considered no-hopers and gave them a second look. I wouldn't have if I thought they have no support otherwise.

I think this is a bit different to simply repeated advertising. There is also a component of "join us, we're a cool community [of people voting for X], it's OK". Think about, more so in the past, people were often reluctant to admit they are voting for a populist candidate. Stickers can bring such "uncool" candidates into the mainstream.

In Wales you can't go anywhere without seeing Yes Cymru stickers, to the point that unionist politicians complain about them; I'd say they're working here.

I think the OP misunderstands the purpose of many of these stickers, especially the ones used by the independent left or the alt-right. Their purpose is not to convince you to vote for a particular party. The main purpose is often to mark a certain territory, based on the stickers, it is often easy to determine how strong the antifascist left or the alt-right or neo-fascist right is in a particular district of a major city.

Yes and:

Stickers (logos, yard signs, t-shirts, etc) are:

- expressions of identity, virtue signaling

- source of revenue for the cause

The stuff about marketing, loyalty, branding, and such is all still true. It's just that the underlying core motivators are even more basic, primal, simple.

Source: Ran for office, worked on many campaigns, did fund raising. I'm still flabbergasted. Many contribute $200 and will be very grumpy if they don't get a yard sign. They're paying you to promote you.