The Coronavirus Effect
It goes without saying that Coronavirus has put an unbelievable strain on the whole country this year. COVID-19 has changed every facet of our lives. We’ve all suffered through lost jobs, store closings, and lockdowns, just to name a few challenges. These times have been cruel, brutal, and utterly painful both physically and mentally. This pandemic has no discrimination. It has affected all of us to varying degrees. No matter your occupation, we understand. Coronavirus has put a beatdown on janitors, salespeople, even politicians.
The Political Campaigning Landscape
Political candidates have had to find unique and creative ways to get their messaging out. Typical methods have gone out the window. Politicians have been going the route of using email, social media, and Robocalls to connect with voters. Trying to win re-election or earn enough votes to unseat an incumbent has been quite the challenge. Money is beyond tight this election year, and money is the lifeblood of every campaign. In my research, I pulled numbers from five districts of candidates running for a state representative position here in Florida where our headquarters are located. I looked at 5 random candidate financial contribution records. The total number of dollars less for their campaigns this year as compared to the 2018 election…stunning. The candidates from these five districts received $317,000 less in campaign contributions in this COVID-dominated election year. Making political yard signs is one of the big things we at Good Guys Signs do, so we know full well what candidates are going through monetarily. No candidate in the U.S. has ever battled for their political life during such unsettling times. None of us has ever had to deal with navigating our existence through a pandemic like this.
Campaign Sign Comeback
We have been afraid to leave our homes, and some of us still are. We all fear exposure to a virus we don’t know much about. We are all scared what the repercussions of catching it could entail. There is no vaccine. We don’t know what will happen to us. We can’t see the virus. The only tangible thing available to us is the increasing number of deaths each and every day. This is all taking place in an election year. We have wanted to go see our local candidates at a town hall meeting. We wanted to shake their hands. We wanted to learn more about their policies in face-to-face discussions. But the underlying concern for us has been our safety. Again, we have been, and continue to live, in uncertain times. We wanted to get out, to return to the normalcy we had before the coronavirus. Once shops and restaurants opened up, cars were back on the road in droves. And as election season really started to kick in during June, those political yard signs were visible again. Thinking about it from a psychological view, those campaign signs that might not have gained the attention of drivers passing by during elections in previous years – they began to be seen, perhaps like never before. Instead of looking at the walls inside our homes for what seemed like an eternity, we were now outside. We were using all our senses at a heightened level. We were taking it all in. With it, our eyes began to hone in on things in a different way. Reflex blue was brilliant. Fire red rocked. All those election signs that candidates bought and distributed were getting the attention they wanted, and name recognition began to take hold, maybe like never before.
There aren’t any statistics on this. I’m going on a hunch. I just know how I felt to enter the outside world again, and I assume most people have felt the same way.