Background

Imagine you are a presidential candidate. You have a potential winning policy idea. Now is time to finesse the details. Your fundamental goal is persuade as many people as possible about your policy idea.

Now, you know that some people will be turned off by it, but you believe your messaging can help outnumber those that are turned off. Maybe you could say that this is all intentional at this point. You know what kinds of people you will never receive their support from, and you know what people could join you. This seems all intentional so far.

Question

My question deals with the unintentional losses. Maybe you chose an incorrect word or phrase. Turns out you lost people. Maybe gaffes would fall under a similar idea, but they aren't my main focus (just to help explain the idea).

Your goal was to persuade people, but you did the opposite, unintentionally.

What is a word that means that? This can be a word or phrase.

What I did

I thought a good word was dissuade, and I used that. But the more I think about it, it appears that dissuade is an intentional act. You are intentionally persuading someone to not do something. That is what dissuade appears to mean. However, that is intentional, and I am looking for unintentional.

In particular, I wrote something like this, "...add just one word and you can dissuade many, but you also persuade many others." Just to reiterate, I was going for intentionally to unintentionally as concise as possible.

Solution 1:

The word often used for this is alienate:

cause (someone) to become unsympathetic or hostile. —Oxford Dictionaries/Lexico

It is used extremely often to describe the act of accidentally losing voters:

• How to Alienate Voters and Lose Elections
• Trump's alienation of younger voters is a generational gamble for GOP
• Alienated voters 'don't feel Brexit will help them retake control' over decision making

Solution 2:

"A gaffe is when a politician unintentionally tells the truth."
——Michael Kinsley