Do political parties and the news media think voters are stupid?

According to a IMRB survey, 59% of the voters feel that the primary motive of most politicians is to make money. This is no surprise. But what pisses one off is, and one is pissed easily these days, is this: do the parties think the voters are stupid? Do they think voters will be swayed by ads, sms campaigns, digital campaigns, adword campaigns and vote for the most advertised candidate? Is winning elections that simple?

A sampling from BJP’s marketing plan:

Online: 200,000 keywords, placement ads across 50,000 websites, and banner ads across 2,000 websites
Mobile: One billion SMSes to about 250 million cellphone users, who are not enrolled in the Do-Not-Call registry

All that spam.

Sauvik Mitra writes about the relentless commercialization of the elections:

They have realised that the “aam aadmi” is no longer so “aam”. A recent survey by IMRB Int. and Synovate, done across the country threw some very interesting results. 59% of the voters feel that the primary motive of most politicians is to make money.

Many of us are casteist and lazy. In return we get casteist and lazy politicians. They are our spitting image.

What pisses one further is the tendency of reporters and bloggers to write about these campaigns in wonder. They forget Ogilvy's dictum that an ad is only as good as the product. In India, sadly, no product is as blessed and hope as dope as Obama. So, stop with the Obama comparison either.