The role that online campaigning plays in elections has been an increasing focus of scholarship in recent years. Largely as a result of high-profile data scandals such as that involving Cambridge Analytica, these concerns are gaining increased traction in the public consciousnesses. This book, which charts the rise of digital technology, provides an engaging, persuasive, and timely analysis of these trends.

Rachel Gibson uses a combination of quantitative analysis and more directed qualitative in-depth case study research to map the (digital) electoral battleground we now find ourselves in. The central premise of the book is, by Gibson’s own admission, “largely uncontroversial” (p. 210): “over the past two decades digital technology has moved from the margins to the mainstream of campaign operations” (p. 1). It is an observation underpinned by three additional claims, with varying degrees of contestability.

The first is that we can broadly separate the evolution of digital campaigning into four phases, with each phase “defined by a distinctive configuration of tools, goals, and organizational resources” aligned toward an end of a “power continuum—equalization or normalization” (p. 210). Equalization is a state in which there is “increased competition between a large and diverse set of candidates” and where those candidates “communicate their messages freely to voters, unfettered by centrally controlled media editors” (p. 13). Normalization, in contrast, is one in which “the level of electoral competition drastically decreases, as only the biggest and best-resourced parties can survive” (p. 13).

The second claim is only more controversial than the central claim of the book if you happen to question the four-phase heuristic of digital campaigning presented. It is that each country in the world holds a differing position in the “evolutionary cycle,” and that these differences are likely due to a “combination of system-level traits, country-specific factors, and individual party characteristics” (p. 210).

These combinations are largely set out in the third chapter of the book in which some (rightly) cautious generalizations are forwarded. Gibson suggests that a critical mass of internet users and competitive presidential elections do seem to drive digital mobilization. The data also show that the emergence of mainstream left parties as players in the digital world—alongside experimentation by prominent minor parties—tended to act as a catalyst for change.

Gibson attempts to unpack these trends in the following four chapters. The case studies are well set out, logically chosen, and add some much-needed qualitative depth to the prior analysis. In the United Kingdom we find a “slow burner,” in Australia an “early bloomer,” and in France a “late bloomer.” Finally, and it will be of no surprise for those au fait with the literature on Americanization that we find the United States as the “trendsetter.”

The book’s final claim is the most controversial: Gibson posits that the “mainstreaming” of digital campaigning has created a new kind of political operative, apoliticos, who operate in a state of hypernormality. This is a condition under which “algorithms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, along with those who have the skills to understand them, assume a stronger role in deciding campaign strategy, and in so doing, demote the role of field experience and expertise generated through long-term exposure to voters” (p. 218).

The evidence Gibson presents for this third claim is scant on the ground, such that it represents more of a hypothesis than a conclusion backed with a body of robust evidence. This is addressed in the book itself, which acknowledges that this claim is “the most speculative” made (p. 217). That there is an admitted lack of evidence for this assertion is, however, a shame—because it is the most interesting and thought-provoking element of the book.

I remain unconvinced. The state of hypernormality seems to assume a binary in which you have big data-driven apoliticos and “old school” partisan campaigners, when it strikes me you are just as likely to find “old school” apoliticos and intensely partisan data-driven campaigners. Indeed, rather than drawing on the wider literature on populism and technocracy (which feels a little like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole here), this looks far more like old sectarian debates between quantitative and qualitative analysis. Or, for fans of Moneyball, it is science versus the scouts played out on the political stage.

Therefore, the new reality of digital campaigning might not lead to an apolitical technocratic state of hypernormality, but simply to increased (metaphorical) pitched battles between the eponymous “nerds” and the “old school”—with the attendant organizational challenges that these present. Each side suggests that victory, or loss, is down to either an outsized, or not enough, focus on digital. It’s Ed O’Keefe explaining Biden’s win as “very simple—we turned off Twitter.”

But that this claim is speculative is no bad thing. Gibson draws an explicit link in her conceptualization of hypernormality to Peter Mair’s Ruling the Void (p. 218), which, of course, built on his earlier collaboration with Richard Katz in developing the cartel party thesis. That earlier argument, as opposed to Ruling the Void, is a neater analog here, because there is much in the cartel party thesis that is evident in Gibson’s reasoning. For example, I read the state of normalization—where we see the mainstream parties begin to dominate the digital sphere due to resource mobilization—as akin to the ossification of the political process that Katz and Mair theorize. Another affinity is in the way in which the cartel party thesis has been much contested (in both empirical and theoretical terms) over the past 25 years. However, even in this contestation it has provided a rich heuristic springboard for party politics scholars the world over—and remains integral to those of us working in the field.

Gibson’s claim of hypernormality may or may not be the next cartel party. But what it does show is that When the Nerds Go Marching In exists within the best tradition of academic work in that it makes one think. It provides a fertile breeding ground for further hypotheses to be drawn, assumptions to be fleshed out, and claims to be contested. It is a fascinating book that should be of interest to those in the fields of political communication, political campaigns, and party politics more generally. It is ultimately also of interest, as Gibson states in the conclusion, to all those interested in “the longer-term health and sustainability of the wider democratic project” (p. 223).