Periello is anti-children and Hurt is anti-elderly people

In his book, By Invitation Only, Schier argues that parties, interest groups, and candidates encourage particular, finely targeted segments of the population to become active in elections, demonstrations, and lobbying. Schier seems this "by invitation only" strategy of these groups as a tragedy of the commons. It would be in the publics best interest if all citizens were mobilized to vote. However, limited resources (time and money) and the ultimate goal of winning (as opposed to increasing democratic participation) incentivizes candidates to only focus on those people who can get them elected. Schier states that campaigns are most likely to target moderate-knowledge voters who are undecided.

I have seen examples of this selective activation in the recent campaign for Virginia's fifth district between Robert Hurt and Tom Perriello. Perriello is running a TV ad in which senior citizens discuss how Hurt would take away health care benefits from the elderly if he were elected. Hurt had a TV ad which features children with heavy backpacks implying that Periello is weighing down the youth of Virginia with... something to do with taxes (As Schier points out in his book, people pay more attention to the visuals in ads as opposed to the actual messages. Therefore I'm going to forgive myself for not remembering the specific message). This is a prime example of selective activation. These two ads are targeted at two different groups, the elderly and mothers (who don't want to see their children lugging around the burden that would befall them if Periello were reelected).

These two candidates are definitely not reaching out to me and other college students because of our history of low voter turn out. Instead they are reaching out to those people who are potentially undecided but who are likely to vote.