The United States presidential election of 2016, scheduled for Tuesday, November 8, 2016, marks the 58th quadrennial U.S. presidential election. With several sources depicting the polls for possible match ups, renowned candidates like Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton etc., from the Democrat and Donald Trump, Rafael Ted Cruz from the Republican seem to be dominating and receiving raving reviews from media. The fact that election campaigns pave the cardinal path to victory, each campaign has the need to be organized in the most efficient and secured manner.

Who is a campaign manager?

A campaign manager is a volunteer or a paid individual, whose primary task is to coordinate the operations pertaining to the campaigns such as polling,fundraising, advertising, taking the vote to the public and other pertinent activities to bolster support. Apart from the presidential candidate, the managers are often the campaign’s most conspicuous leaders.

Especially for enormous, well-funded campaigns, campaign managers often handle a great number of staffs and volunteers from various departments, while also coordinating closely with the candidate.In the United States, campaign management has been a specialty occupation and is preferred by many for a career.

These are the campaign managers of the leading election candidates:

• Robby Mook (Hilary Clinton)
• Corey Lewandowski (Donald Trump)
• Jeff Weaver (Bernie Sanders)
• Jeff Roe (Ted Cruz)
• Terry Sullivan (Marco Rubio)
• Ben Carson (Barry Bennett)

Why campaign managers are central to election results?

It requires the synchronized effort of all the staffs to run a successful campaign for office. The staff is headed by the campaign manager who oversees personnel, allocates expenditures, and develops strategies. A campaign manager has a number of herculeantasks.  He has to deal with the candidate, who quite often knows less than the staff about the technical aspects of running campaigns, but still likes to dominate staff and consultant decisions.  On the other hand, campaign managers have to deal with the campaign staff who are usually underpaid and overworked in the highly pressurized environment of a political campaign. He has to be a politician himself apart from the election candidate, so as to experience and fulfill the requirements of the campaign.

The most interesting fact about the way campaign managers go about with conducting the campaign is that they mostly run the campaign like a business. The best campaigns are run like efficient corporations. They plan on the budget, return on investment (ROI) etc., with utmost efficacy. They are literally a political entrepreneur; they can create a big vision for a campaign, delineate a plan to achieve that vision, and then manage the implementation of that plan which leads to the vision.

The date of the election results is not too far and expectations are in the rise.  So the million dollar questions are: Who will be replacing the incumbent president, Barack Obama? Will the diligent efforts from the campaign managers construe success for their respective candidates?