Campaigns and Voting Behavior - Higher Education | …€¦ · · 2005-02-01Understanding Campaigns and Voting Behavior 8 ... The consequences for the scope of government are also

Chapter OutlineThe Nomination Game

The Campaign Game

Money and Campaigning

Issues of the Times

The Impact of Campaigns

Whether To Vote: A Citizen’s First Choice

How Americans Vote: Explaining Citizens’Decisions

The Last Battle: The Electoral College

Understanding Campaigns and VotingBehavior

8Campaignsand Voting Behavior

Summary

■ Campaigning for any major office has become amassive undertaking in today’s political world.Consider George W. Bush’s grueling schedule forMarch 28–29, 2000, a relatively low-key period ofthe presidential campaign:

• The governor begins his day with an early-morning flight from his home in Austin, Texas,to Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia.

• Upon landing in Virginia, Bush goes to a recep-tion to raise money for his campaign. Afterlunch, he goes to the headquarters of SallieMae, a corporation that helps students finance

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Campaigns and Voting Behavior 259

educational expenses, to give a speech about hisviews on government and higher education.

• Governor Bush then boards his campaign planeagain for a flight to Newark, N.J., where he par-ticipates in another fund-raiser and gives his stan-dard campaign speech at dinner. After dinner, hegoes to Manville, N.J., to address the SomersetCounty Republican Party convention. Finally,after 15 hours of traveling and campaigning, hisday ends when he checks in at the NewarkHilton at 9:30 P.M.

• The next morning, Bush goes to the North StarAcademy Charter school in Newark to giveanother speech on education. He then rides in alimousine to New York City to give a lunchspeech on foreign affairs.

• After this quick stop in New York, Bush flies toBaltimore to meet with the local press, attend ayouth rally, and deliver his standard campaignspeech yet again at a dinner event. Finally, Bushtakes his fourth flight in two days—this time toEau Claire, Wis., where he arrives after 14 hourson the go.

It is often said that the presidency is the most diffi-cult job in the world, but getting elected to theposition may well be tougher. It is arguable thatthe long campaign for the presidency puts candi-dates under more continuous stress than they couldever face in the White House.

The current American style of long and arduouscampaigns has evolved from the belief of reformersthat the cure for the problems of democracy ismore democracy. Whether this approach is helpfulor harmful to democracy is a question that arouses

much debate with respect to American politicalcampaigns. Some scholars believe it is importantthat presidential candidates go through a long anddifficult trial by fire. Others, however, worry thatthe system makes it difficult for politicians withother responsibilities—such as incumbent gover-nors and senior senators—to take a run at theWhite House. This chapter will give you a betterunderstanding of the pros and cons of having anomination and campaign process that is so openand democratic.

The consequences for the scope of governmentare also debatable. Anthony King argues thatAmerican politicians do too little governing becausethey are always “running scared” in today’s perpet-ual campaign.1 From King’s perspective, the cam-paign process does not allow politicians the luxuryof trying out solutions to policy problems that mightbe immediately unpopular but would work well inthe long run. The scope of government thus stayspretty much as is, given that politicians are usuallytoo concerned with the next election to risk funda-mental change. Of course, many analysts argue thatofficeholders’ constant worry about public opinionis good for democracy and that changes in the scopeof government shouldn’t be undertaken withoutextensive public consultation.

As you read this chapter, consider whethertoday’s nomination and campaign process providestoo much opportunity for interaction between thepublic and candidates for office. Also, considerwhether the entire process takes too much timeand costs too much money—two very importanttopics of debate in American politics today.

With about half a million elected officials in this country, there is always someone somewhere running foroffice. One of these campaigns is for the world’s most powerful office—the presidency of the United States.This chapter will focus mainly on this election campaign, although we will explore some other campaignsas well. Chapter 10 will specifically discuss the congressional election process.

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260 Chapter Eight Campaigns and Voting Behavior

nomination

The officialendorsement of acandidate for officeby a political party.Generally, success inthe nomination gamerequires momentum,money, and mediaattention.

campaignstrategy

The master gameplan candidates layout to guide theirelectoral campaign.

There are really two types of campaigns in American politics: campaigns for partynominations and campaigns between the two nominees. These are called nominationcampaigns and election campaigns. The prize for the first is garnering a party’s nod asits candidate; the prize for the second is winning an office.

The Nomination GameA nomination is a party’s official endorsement of a candidate for office. Anyone canplay the nomination game, but few have any serious chance of victory. Generally, suc-cess in the nomination game requires money, media attention, and momentum.Campaign strategy is the way in which candidates attempt to manipulate each of theseelements to achieve the nomination.

Believe it or not, not every politician wants to run for president. One reason is thatcampaigns have become more physically and emotionally taxing than ever. As formerSpeaker of the House Thomas Foley said, “I know of any number of people who I thinkwould make good presidents, even great presidents, who are deterred from running bythe torture candidates are obliged to put themselves through.”2 Running for presidentis an around-the-clock endurance test for over a year: sleep deprivation and strangehotel beds, countless plane rides, junk food eaten on the run, a lack of regular exerciseand copious amounts of stress. As 1984 Democratic nominee Walter Mondale oncesaid, “For four years, that’s all I did. I mean, all I did. That’s all you think about. That’sall you talk about . . . That’s your leisure. That’s your luxury . . . I told someone, ‘Thequestion is not whether I can get elected. The question is whether I can be elected andnot be nuts when I get there.’”3

In most advanced industrialized countries, campaigns last no more than twomonths according to either custom and/or law. In contrast, American campaigns seemendless; a presidential candidacy needs to be either announced or an open secret forat least a year before the election. In the winter of 2003, it was already clear to mostobservers that John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman, DickGephardt, and others were laying the groundwork for a shot at the Democratic presi-dential nomination for 2004.

The road to the convention is long and full of stumbling blocks. From the con-vention, held in the summer of election years, only one candidate emerges as eachparty’s standard bearer.

Competing for DelegatesIn some ways, the nomination game is tougher than the general election game; it whit-tles a large number of players down to two. The goal of the nomination game is to winthe majority of delegates’ support at the national party convention, which functionsto formally select presidential and vice presidential candidates and to write the partyplatform.

There are 50 different roads to the national convention, one through each state.From February through June of the election year, the individual state parties busily

national partyconvention

The supreme powerwithin each of theparties. Theconvention meetsevery four years tonominate the party’spresidential and vice-presidentialcandidates and towrite the party’splatform.

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The Nomination Game 261

The New Hampshireprimary has becomeso important inrecent years thatmost presidentialcandidates spendmore time therethan anywhere else.When he ran for theDemocratic nomina-tion in 2004, JohnKerry spent overtwo months cam-paigning in NewHampshire. Here, heis shown going doorto door in Concord,New Hampshire, toask people in per-son to vote for him.

choose their delegates to the national convention via either caucuses or primaries.Candidates try to ensure that delegates committed to them are chosen to attend theconvention.

The Caucus Road. Before primaries existed, all state parties selected their delegatesto the national convention in a meeting of state party leaders called a caucus.Sometimes one or two party “bosses” ran the caucus show—often the governor of thestate or the mayor of its largest city. Such state party leaders could control who went tothe convention and how the state’s delegates voted once they got there. They were thekingmakers of presidential politics who met in smoke-filled rooms at the convention tocut deals and form coalitions.

Today’s caucuses are different from those of the past. In the dozen states that stillhave them, caucuses are now open to all voters who are registered with the party.Caucuses are usually organized like a pyramid. Small, neighborhood, precinct-levelcaucuses are held initially—often meeting in a church, an American Legion hall, oreven someone’s home. At this level, delegates are chosen, on the basis of their prefer-ence for a certain candidate, to attend county caucuses and then congressional districtcaucuses where delegates are again chosen to go to a higher level—a state convention.At the state convention, which usually occurs months after the precinct caucuses, del-egates are finally chosen to go to the national convention.

caucus

A meeting of all stateparty leaders forselecting delegates tothe national partyconvention.Caucuses are usuallyorganized as apyramid.

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presidentialprimaries

Elections in whichvoters in a state votefor a candidate (ordelegates pledged tohim or her). Mostdelegates to thenational partyconventions arechosen this way.

Since 1972 the state of Iowa has held the nation’s first caucuses. Because the Iowacaucuses are the first test of the candidates’ vote-getting ability, they usually become afull-blown media extravaganza.4 Well-known candidates like Richard Gephardt in2004 and John Glenn in 1984 have seen their campaigns virtually fall apart as a resultof poor showings in Iowa. Most important, candidates who were not thought to be con-tenders have received tremendous boosts from unexpected strong showings in Iowa. Anobscure former Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter took his first big presidentialstep by winning there in 1976. George Bush also made his first big step into thenational scene with an upset victory over Ronald Reagan in Iowa in 1980. In 2004,John Kerry’s surprise victory in Iowa gave a campaign that had been on the ropes new-found life. Because of the impact that Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus can have, can-didates spend more time during the nomination season than they do in the big stateslike California, Texas, and Florida. Howard Dean and John Edwards went to the trou-ble of visiting each one of Iowa’s 99 counties in their efforts to win Iowa in 2004.

The Primary Road. Today, most of the delegates to the Democratic and Republicannational conventions are selected in presidential primaries, in which voters in a statego to the polls and vote for a candidate or delegates pledged to that candidate. Asrecently as the 1960s, primaries played a rather small role in the process; today, withthe majority of delegates chosen in primaries, they have become essential to winninga party’s presidential nomination.

The increase in the number of presidential primaries occurred after theDemocratic Party’s disastrous 1968 national convention, which led many to rethink thedelegate selection procedures then in place. As the war in Southeast Asia raged,another war of sorts took place in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic con-vention. Demonstrators against the war battled Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago policein what an official report later called a “police riot.” Beaten up in the streets anddefeated in the convention hall, the antiwar faction won one concession from the partyregulars: a special committee to review the party’s structure and delegate selection pro-cedures, which they felt had discriminated against them. Minorities, women, youth,and other groups that had been poorly represented in the party leadership alsodemanded a more open process of convention delegate selection. The result was acommittee of inquiry, which was chaired first by Senator George McGovern and laterby Representative Donald Fraser, who took over when McGovern left the committeeto run for president.

The McGovern-Fraser Commission had a mandate to try to make DemocraticParty conventions more representative. As a result of their decisions, no longer couldparty leaders handpick the convention delegates virtually in secret. All delegate selec-tion procedures were required to be open, so that party leaders had no more clout thancollege students or anyone else who wanted to participate. One of the unforseen resultsof these new rules was that many states decided that the easiest way to comply was sim-ply to hold primary elections to select convention delegates.5 Because state laws insti-tuting primaries typically apply to selection of both parties’ selection of delegates, theRepublican Party’s nomination process was similarly transformed.

McGovern-FraserCommission

A commission formedat the 1968Democraticconvention inresponse to demandsfor reform byminority groups andothers who soughtbetter representation.

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Riots at the 1968Democratic nationalconvention led tothe creation of theMcGovern-FraserCommission, whichestablished openprocedures andaffirmative actionguidelines for dele-gate selection.These reforms havemade party conven-tions more repre-sentative than theyonce were.

Few developments have changed American politics as much as the proliferationof presidential primaries. Presidential election watcher Theodore White calls the pri-maries the “classic example of the triumph of goodwill over common sense.” SaysWhite,

delegates, who were supposed to be free to vote by their own common sense and conscience,have become for the most part anonymous faces, collected as background for the televisioncameras, sacks of potatoes packaged in primaries, divorced from party roots, and from theofficials who rule states and nation.6

Whereas once many of the delegates were experienced politicians who knew the can-didates, today they are typically people who have worked on a candidate’s campaignand who owe their position as a delegate strictly to that candidate’s ability to pull in pri-mary votes.

The Democratic Party became so concerned about the lack of a role for party lead-ers at their conventions that starting in 1984 they automatically set aside about 15 per-cent of their delegate slots for public officeholders and party officials. These politicianswho are awarded convention seats on the basis of their position are known assuperdelegates. The addition of these delegates to the Democratic national conven-tion was designed to restore an element of “peer review” to the process, ensuring par-ticipation of the people most familiar with the candidates. However, to date theprimaries have proved to be far more crucial than the superdelegates.

The primary season begins during the winter in New Hampshire. Like the Iowacaucuses, the importance of New Hampshire is not the number of delegates or how

superdelegates

National party leaderswho automatically geta delegate slot at theDemocratic nationalparty convention.

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representative the state is, but rather that it is traditionally the first primary.7 At thisearly stage, the campaign is not for delegates, but for images—candidates want the restof the country to see them as front-runners. The frenzy of political activity in this smallstate is given lavish attention in the national press. During the week of the primary, halfthe portable satellite dishes in the country can be found in Manchester, N.H., and thenetworks move their anchors and top reporters to the scene to broadcast the nightlynews. In recent years, over a fifth of TV coverage of the nomination races has beendevoted to the New Hampshire primary.8

At one time, it was considered advantageous for a state to choose its delegates latein the primary season so that it could play a decisive role. However, in recent yearsstates that have held late primaries, such as Pennsylvania and New Jersey, have foundtheir primary results irrelevant given that one candidate had already secured the nom-ination by the time their primaries were held. With so much attention being paid to theearly contests, more states have moved their primaries earlier in the calendar to capi-talize on the media attention. This frontloading of the process resulted in 71 percentof pledged Democratic delegates being chosen within six weeks of the New Hampshireprimary in 2004. For 2008, at least one big state—California—has decided to move itsprimary back to the end of the calendar, as you can read about it in “Issues of theTimes: Will the Presidential Candidates Pay Any Attention to California in 2008?”

Week after week, the primaries serve as elimination contests, as the media contin-ually monitor the number of delegates won. The politicians, the press, and the publicall love a winner. Candidates who fail to score early wins get labeled as losers and typ-ically drop out of the race. Usually they have little choice since losing quickly inhibitsa candidate’s ability to raise the money necessary to win in other states. As one veteranfund-raiser put it, “People don’t lose campaigns. They run out of money and can’t gettheir planes in the air. That’s the reality.”9

In the 1980 delegate chase, a commonly used football term became established inthe language of American politics. After George Bush scored a surprise victory overRonald Reagan in Iowa, he proudly claimed to possess “the big mo”—momentum.Actually, Bush had only a little “mo” and quickly fell victim to a decisive Reagan vic-tory in New Hampshire. But the term neatly describes what candidates for the nomi-nation are after. Primaries and caucuses are more than an endurance contest, thoughthey are certainly that; they are also proving grounds. Week after week, the challengeis to do better than expected. Learning from his father’s experience, George W. Bushjokingly told the reporters on his campaign plane to: “Please stow your expectationssecurely in your overhead bins, as they may shift during the trip and can fall and hurtsomeone—especially me.”10

To get “mo” going, candidates have to beat people they were not expected to beat,collect margins above predictions, and—above all else—never lose to people they wereexpected to trounce. Momentum is good to have, but it is no guarantee of victorybecause candidates with a strong base sometimes bounce back. Political scientist LarryBartels found that “substantive political appeal may overwhelm the impact of momen-tum.”11 Indeed, after being soundly trounced by John McCain in New Hampshire in2000, George W. Bush quickly bounced back to win the big states necessary to get theRepublican nomination.

frontloading

The recent tendencyof states to holdprimaries early in thecalendar in order tocapitalize on mediaattention.

Why ItMatters

Early Delegate ContestsIn baseball, no onewould declare a team outof the pennant race afterit lost the first two gamesof the season. But in therace for the presidentialnomination, the results ofthe Iowa caucus and theNew Hampshire primaryfrequently end the cam-paigns of many candi-dates after only a handfulof national delegateshave been selected.These contests areimportant not because ofthe number of delegatesthat are chosen, butrather that they are thefirst indicators of publicsupport. If a candidatedoes not do well in thesefirst two contests, moneyand media attention dryup quickly.

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Evaluating the Primary and Caucus System. The primaries and the caucuses arehere to stay. However, many political scientists are not particularly happy with the sys-tem. Criticisms of the marathon campaign are numerous; here are a few of the mostimportant:

• Disproportionate attention goes to the early caucuses and primaries. Take a look atFigure 8.1, which shows how critics think America’s media-dominated campaignsare distorted by early primaries and caucuses. Neither New Hampshire nor Iowais particularly representative of the national electorate. Both are rural, both haveonly small minority populations, and neither is at the center of the political main-stream. Whereas Iowa is more liberal than the nation as a whole, New Hampshireis the reverse. Although Iowa and New Hampshire are not always “make or break”contests, they play a key—and a disproportionate—role in building momentum,money, and media attention.

• Prominent politicians find it difficult to take time out from their duties to run.Running for the presidency has become a full-time job. It is hard to balance the

Iowa

Texas

Arizona

California

New Hampshire

New York

N.J.

Georgia

Florida

Ohio

Figure 8.1 The Inflated Importance of Iowa and New Hampshire

In 2004, the Wisconsin Advertising Project found that 48 percent of the money spent by candidates for the Democratic nomi-nation on TV ads were run in either Iowa or New Hampshire, even though these two small states selected only about 2 per-cent of the convention delegates. The incredible degree to which the candidates and the media focus on these two smallstates has become a regular feature of the presidential nominating process. Here you can see a map of the 50 states drawn toscale in terms of the media attention their primaries and caucuses received in 1996; note how blown out of proportion Iowaand New Hampshire are on the map.

Source: Center for Media and Public Affairs, as reported in Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi, Vital Statisticson American Politics, 6th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press), 1998, 172–174.

American Electoral Rules:How Do They Influence

Campaigns?

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266 Chapter Seven Political Parties266 Chapter Fifteen Social Welfare Policymaking

In 2004, states that failed toschedule their primary earlywere irrelevant to the nomina-tion process. Most of thesestates were stuck with dates thatwere traditional for them. Giventhe frontloading of the process,states that want to be influentialhave in recent decades movedtheir primary dates earlier andearlier. But as we look ahead to2008, our nation’s largest state—California—has surprised manyobservers by deciding to moveits primary date three monthslater than it was in 2004. Thisrepresents the first time in recentmemory that a major state hadmoved its presidential primary

By Dean E. MurphyAugust 30, 2004

SACRAMENTO—The statethat helped push the presidentialprimary season into a fast-forwardfrenzy more than a decade ago isnow abruptly shifting it intoreverse.

A bill that would move theCalifornia presidential primary toJune from March beginning in

“You would think in a democracywith a presidency which is the topgoverning officer that state legisla-tures would be working hard to seetheir citizens have as much influ-ence as possible.”

California held a June primaryfor a half-century before theLegislature voted in 1993 to movethe primary to March, largely in

2008 breezed through the StateLegislature this week with biparti-san support.

The move would amount tounconditional surrender by thecountry’s most delegate-rich statein the contest to influence the pres-idential nomination process.

“It defies logic,” said RobertD. Loevy, a professor of politicalscience at Colorado College and ascholar of presidential primaries.

California Moves To Reschedule ItsPrimary from March to June

Please see California Page 267

Issues of theTimesThe Issue: Will the Presidential Candidates Pay AnyAttention to California in 2008?

Read All About It

date backward. Whether or notthis is good or bad for California,as well as for the nation as a

whole, is likely to be debated forthe next several years.

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Think About It• After the California legislature passed this

bill, the New York Times wrote an editorialpraising California for trying to reverse thepattern of frontloading presidential primar-ies. Do you agree with the position of the

New York Times editorial board that this wasa good move on California’s part?

• Do you think other states will now move theirprimary dates back for 2008? Should they?Why or why not?

New Hampshire, which has thecountry’s first primary, state lawrequires that the primary be held atleast one week before any otherstate’s.

“It is a constant friction withother states where people want tokeep moving their primaries to anearlier date,” said Art Torres, chair-man of the California DemocraticParty, who supports moving thedate back to June. “By the timeyou are done, we will have primar-ies at Halloween. You can neverwin at that level.”

To make matters worse, theMarch elections in California havebeen a flop among voters: turnoutthis March was the lowest for anypresidential primary in the state’shistory in percentage terms, mak-ing it difficult for candidates foroffices on the same ballot to rouseinterest in their races.

“People realize the March pri-mary has been a disaster,” said SusieSwatt, chief of staff for State SenatorRoss Johnson, the Orange CountyRepublican who wrote the bill. . . .

DanSchnur,whohasworkedonfourpresidential campaigns, includ-ing thatofSenator JohnMcCain in2000, said theMarchdate remainedabig inconvenience for local andstatecampaigns,particularlybecause itmeanscandidatesmustdecidewhether to runmuchearlier.ButMr.Schnur said thebiggest losershavebeen thevoters.

“The voters’ body clocks aren’tready for politics the day after thebowl games end,” said Mr. Schnur,who favored the switch to Marchbut now prefers June.

Kathy Sullivan, chairwoman ofthe Democratic Party in NewHampshire, said part of her longs forthe old days when New Hampshireheld its primary in March (whenthere was less snow) and Californiaheld its in June (when the vote stillmattered). Ms. Sullivan said thosedays were probably gone forever,but she said the primary system hascompensated in a way that keepsCalifornia relevant.

“People have come to recog-nize in this process, and I thinkyou saw it with the Democrats inthe early states this year, that weneed to nominate a candidate whois going to be able to run an effec-tive race nationwide,” Ms. Sullivansaid. “So people were not neces-sarily choosing who is best forNew Hampshire or Iowa orMichigan or South Carolina.”

Professor Loevy said thatshould not be good enough for thecountry’s most populous state. Hesaid California’s mistake in 1993was not moving its primary evenearlier. He said a Halloween elec-tion was preferable to one in Junewith no meaning.

“Now they are going inexactly the wrong direction,” hesaid.

CaliforniaContinued from Page 266

response to the so-called SuperTuesday primaries scheduled bySouthern states in the 1980’s,which were draining the Californiavote of its influence.

For many years, the June datemade California a kingmaker inboth parties, as presidential candi-dates methodically worked their wayWest in a primary system that invol-ved far fewer contests thantoday. . . . But the last time Calif-ornia played a pivotal role was in1984, when Walter F. Mondale em-erged from a tight battle with GaryHart for the Democratic nomination.

California backers of the origi-nal June date say the three presi-dential elections with a Marchprimary—in 1996, 2000 and thisyear—show that it failed in reviv-ing California’s fortunes. In allthree of those elections, either theparties had settled on a nomineebefore the March primary here orcandidates chose to focus theirattention on other states that hadalso moved their primaries for-ward—and are much smaller andcheaper to campaign in.

Even with the move to March,California found itself behind some20 other states in a primary sweep-stakes that has states already jock-eying for advantage in 2008. In

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Televised debateshave become a reg-ular part of presi-dential primaries.Here, candidates forthe 2004 Democraticnomination areshown participatingin a TV forum.

demands of serving in high public office with running a presidential campaign.Of the six Democratic candidates for the presidency in 2004 who were serving inCongress, the average voting participation rate in 2003 was a mere 52 percent—far below the average congressional attendance rate of about 90 percent.12

• Money plays too big a role in the caucuses and primaries. Momentum meansmoney—getting more of it than your opponents do. Many people think thatmoney plays too large a role in American presidential elections.

• Participation in primaries and caucuses is low and unrepresentative. Although about50 percent of the population votes in the November presidential election, onlyabout 20 percent casts ballots in presidential primaries. Participation in caucusstates is much lower because a person must usually devote several hours to attendinga caucus. Except for Iowa, where media attention usually boosts the turnout to about20 percent, only about 5 percent of eligible voters typically show up for caucuses.Moreover, voters in primaries and caucuses are hardly representative of voters atlarge; they tend to be older and more affluent than the typical citizen.

• The system gives too much power to the media. Critics contend that the media havereplaced the party bosses as the new kingmakers. The press decides who has momen-tum at any given moment, and readily labels candidates as winners or losers.

Is this the best way to pick a president? Critics think not and have come up with a num-ber of reform proposals (see “You Are the Policymaker: National and RegionalPresidential Primary Proposals”). For the foreseeable future, however, states will con-tinue to select delegates in primaries and caucuses to attend the national conventions,where the nominees are formally chosen.

national primary

A proposal by criticsof the caucuses andpresidentialprimaries systemswould replace theseelectoral methodswith a nationwideprimary held early inthe election year.

regionalprimaries

A proposal by criticsof the caucuses andpresidentialprimaries to replacethese electoralmethods with a seriesof primaries held ineach geographicregion.

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The Convention Send-offParty conventions provided great drama in American politics for more than a century.Great speeches were given, dark-horse candidates suddenly appeared, and ballot afterballot was held as candidates jockeyed to win the nomination. Today, the drama haslargely been drained from the conventions, as the winner is a foregone conclusion. Nolonger can a powerful governor shift a whole block of votes at the last minute.

at breaking through in such a system. Big money and bigattention from the national media would become morecrucial than ever. Obscure candidates, such as JimmyCarter in 1976, would never have a chance. DoAmericans, however, really want politicians without anestablished reputation to become president?

Perhaps more feasible than a national primary isholding a series of regional primaries in which, say,states in the Eastern time zone would vote one week,those in the Central time zone the next, and so on. Thiswould impose a more rational structure and cut down oncandidate travel. A regional primary system would alsoput an end to the jockeying between states for an advan-tageous position in the primary season.

The major problem with the regional primary pro-posal, however, is the advantage gained by whicheverregion goes first. For example, if the Western states werethe first to vote, any candidate from California wouldhave a clear edge in building momentum. Althoughmost of the proposed plans call for the order of theregions to be determined by lottery, this would not erasethe fact that regional advantages would surely be createdfrom year to year.

Put yourself in the role of policymaker. Do theadvantages of the national primary or of the regionalprimary proposal outweigh the disadvantages? Wouldeither represent an improvement over the current sys-tem? Keep in mind that there are almost always unin-tended consequences associated with reforms.

The idea of holding a national primary to select partynomineeshasbeendiscussedvirtuallyever since statepri-maries were introduced. In 1913, President WoodrowWilson proposed it in his first message to Congress. Sincethen over 250 proposals for a national presidential pri-mary have been introduced in Congress. These proposalsdo not lack public support; opinion polls have consis-tently shown that a substantial majority of Democrats,Republicans, and Independents alike favor such reform.

According to its proponents, a national primarywould bring directness and simplicity to the process forthe voters as well as the candidates. The length of thecampaign would be shortened, and no longer wouldvotes in one state have more political impact than votesin another. The concentration of media coverage on thisone event, say its advocates, would increase not onlypolitical interest in the nomination decision but alsopublic understanding of the issues involved.

A national primary would not be so simple, respondthe critics. Because Americans would not want a candi-date nominated with 25 percent of the vote from amonga field of six candidates, in most primaries a runoff elec-tion between the top two finishers in each party wouldhave to be held. So much for making the campaign sim-pler, national primary critics note. Each voter wouldhave to vote three times for president—twice in the pri-maries and once in November.

Another common criticism of a national primary isthat only well-established politicians would have a shot

National and Regional PresidentialPrimary Proposals

You Are the Policymaker

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Delegates selected in primaries and open caucuses have known preferences. The lasttime there was any doubt as to who would win at the convention was in 1976, whenFord barely edged out Reagan for the Republican nomination. The parties have alsolearned that it is not in their best interest to provide high drama. The raucous con-ventions held by the Republicans in 1964 and the Democrats in 1968 and 1972 cap-tured the public’s attention, but they also exposed such divisiveness that the partieswere unable to unite for the fall campaign.

Without such drama, the networks have scaled back their coverage substantiallyand the Nielsen ratings have fallen to new lows.13 In 2000, ABC chose to air presea-son “Monday Night Football” games on two nights when they would normally havedevoted at least some time to the conventions. Even with the condensed TV coverage,the Nielsen ratings have fallen to abysmal levels.14 The highest rating received by anynetwork in 2000 for convention coverage occurred when 22 million viewers tuned into watch Al Gore’s speech to the Democratic convention. By contrast, the next weekCBS alone got 58 million viewers for its final episode of “Survivor.”

One can hardly blame people for tuning out the conventions when little news ismade at them. Today’s conventions are carefully scripted to present the party in its bestlight. Delegates are no longer there to argue for their causes, but rather to merely sup-port their candidate. The parties carefully orchestrate a massive send-off for the presi-dential and vice-presidential candidates. The party’s leaders are there in force, as aremany of its most important followers—people whose input will be key during the cam-paign. Although conventions are no longer very interesting, they are a significant ral-lying point for the parties.

The conventions are also important in developing the party’s policy positions andin promoting political representation. In the past, conventions were essentially anassembly of state- and local-party leaders, gathered together to bargain over the selec-tion of the party’s ticket. Almost all delegates were White, male, and over 40 years old.Lately, party reformers, especially among the Democrats, have worked hard to makethe conventions far more demographically representative.

The Campaign GameOnce nominated, candidates concentrate on campaigning for the general election.These days, the word campaign is part of American political vocabulary, but it was notalways so. The term was originally a military one: Generals mounted campaigns, usingtheir scarce resources to achieve strategic objectives. Political campaigns are like that,too—resources are scarce, expenditures in the presidential race are limited by federallaw, and both have to be timed and targeted. A candidate’s time and energy are also finite.Choices must be made concerning where to go and how long to spend at each stop.

Campaigns involve more than organization and leadership. Artistry also enters thepicture, for campaigns deal in images. The campaign is the canvas on which politicalstrategists try to paint portraits of leadership, competence, caring, and other imagesAmericans value in presidents. To project the right image to the voters, three ingredi-ents are needed: a campaign organization, money, and media attention.

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Organizing the CampaignIn every campaign, there is too much to do and too little time to do it. Every candidatemust prepare for nightly banquets and endless handshaking. More important, to effec-tively organize their campaigns candidates must do the following:

• Get a campaign manager. Some candidates try to run their own campaign,but they usually end up regretting it. A professional campaign manager can keepthe candidate from getting bogged down in organizational details. This personalso bears the day-to-day responsibility for keeping the campaign square on its mes-sage and setting its tone (see “Making a Difference: Mary Beth Cahill TakesCharge of the Kerry Campaign”).

• Get a fund-raiser. Money, as this chapter willsoon discuss in detail, is an important key toelection victory.

• Get a campaign counsel. With all the currentfederal regulation of campaign financing,legal assistance is essential to ensure compli-ance with the laws.

• Hire media and campaign consultants.Candidates have more important things todo with their time than plan ad campaigns,contract for buttons and bumper stickers,and buy TV time and newspaper space.Professionals can get them the most expo-sure for their money.

• Assemble a campaign staff. It is desirable tohire as many professionals as the campaignbudget allows, but it is also important to geta volunteer coordinator to ensure that en-velopes are licked, doorbells rung, and othersmall but vital tasks addressed. Many cam-paign volunteers are typically young people,who are the most likely to have the energyfor this sort of work. However, in recent yearshigh school seniors have expressed less andless interest in participating in campaigns (seeYoung People and Politics: “Declining Interest in Working in Campaigns.”

• Plan the logistics. A modern presidential campaign involves jetting around thecountry at an incredible pace. Good advance people handle the complicateddetails of candidate scheduling and see that events are well publicized and wellattended.

• Get a research staff and policy advisers. Candidates have little time to master thecomplex issues reporters will ask about. Policy advisers—often distinguishedacademics—feed them information they need to keep up with events.

The Campaign Game 271

Making a Difference

Mary Beth CahillTakes Charge of theKerry CampaignMary Beth Cahill is credited by manyobservers for turning around John Kerry’s campaign forthe 2004 Democratic nomination. When she took overthe job of Kerry’s campaign manager in November2003, the campaign had developed a reputation forbeing disorganized, with no one clearly being incharge. On her first day she laid down the law that shewould be in charge from now on and that anyone whohad a problem with this should quit immediately. A fewdid, but most stayed on. Cahill’s contribution fromthen on was not any brilliant innovative strategy, butrather simply keeping the campaign on track and stay-ing on message. Doing so in any campaign is alwayseasier said than done, and in steadily guiding the Kerrycampaign for the Democratic nomination Mary BethCahill surely made a difference.

You Are a ProfessionalCampaign Manager

You Are a PresidentialCampaign Consultant

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Young PeopleandPolitics

Walk into any campaign headquarters andchances are good that you’ll find a lot of youngpeople working away. Many of our nation’s lead-ers got their political start working in a campaignwhen they were young. If you want to getinvolved in politics as a possible career, this iswhere you begin. The work is often tedious, thehours are long, and the financial rewards are usu-ally minimal. Hence, full-time campaign work isnot really suitable for either someone with an

active career or a retired person. Campaign jobshave been and likely will continue to be filled pri-marily by young people.

Nevertheless, as you can see in the figure be-low, there has been a decline in interest in work-ing on campaigns among High School seniorsover the last quarter century. Whereas between 15to 20 percent of those interviewed in the late1970s and early 1980s said they planned to workon a campaign or had already done so, in recent

Declining Interest in Working in Campaigns

• Hire a pollster. Dozens of professional polling firms conduct opinion research totell candidates how they are viewed by the voters and what is on the voters’ minds.

• Get a good press secretary. Candidates running for major office are dogged byreporters every step of the way. The reporters need news, and a good press secre-tary can help them make their deadlines with stories that the campaign would liketo see reported.

• Establish a website. A website is a relatively inexpensive way of getting a candi-date’s message out.

Most of these tasks cost money. Campaigns are not cheap, and the role of moneyin campaigns is a controversial one.

Money and CampaigningThere is no doubt that campaigns are expensive and, in America’s high-tech politi-cal arena, growing more so. As the old saying goes, “Money is the mother’s milk ofpolitics.” Candidates need money to build a campaign organization and to get theirmessage out. Many people and groups who want certain things from the govern-ment are all too willing to give it; thus there is the common perception that moneybuys votes and influence. The following sections examine the role of money incampaigns.

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Money and Campaigning 273

years only about 10 percent have expressed aninterest in campaign work.

Questions for Discussion:• At the same time that young people have

been expressing less interest in working onpolitical campaigns, they have been volun-teering for community organizations atrecord rates. Might the decline in interest incampaign simply be because today’s youngpeople are focusing on non-political forms ofcommunity action?

• Do you think that one reason that young peo-ple may not be very interested in working incampaigns may be that the issues just discus-sed in recent campaigns just aren’t of muchinterest to young people? If so, what sort ofissues might stimulate more young people tosign up for campaign work?

• If more young people were to volunteer forwork in campaigns, what difference might itmake? Do you think the tenor of recent cam-paigns would have been changed if moreyoung people had been involved?

PLAN TO WORK ON A CAMPAIGN OR HAVE DONE SO

2002 11.32001 9.92000 11.11999 9.41998 10.21997 12.31996 12.11995 11.01994 11.71993 13.71992 10.71991 10.51990 10.71989 13.2

The Maze of Campaign Finance ReformsAs the costs of campaigning skyrocketed with the growth of television, and as theWatergate scandal exposed large, illegal campaign contributions, momentum devel-oped for campaign finance reform in the early 1970s. Several public interest lobbies(see Chapter 9), notably Common Cause and the National Committee for anEffective Congress, led the drive. In 1974, Congress passed the Federal ElectionCampaign Act. It had two main goals: to tighten reporting requirements for contribu-tions and to limit overall expenditures. The 1974 act and its subsequent amendments:

• created the Federal Election Commission (FEC). A bipartisan body, the six-member FEC administers the campaign finance laws and enforces compliancewith their requirements.

• created the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. The Federal ElectionCommission is in charge of doling out money from this fund to qualified presi-dential candidates. Money for this fund is raised via a $3 voluntary check-off boxon income tax returns, which currently only about 11 percent of taxpayers do.

• provided partial public financing for presidential primaries. Presidential candidateswho raise $5,000 on their own in at least 20 states can get individual contributions ofup to $250 matched by the federal treasury. Money received at this stage of the cam-paign is commonly known as matching funds. If presidential candidates accept fed-eral support, they agree to limit their campaign expenditures to an amount

Federal ElectionCampaign Act

A law passed in 1974for reformingcampaign finances.The act created theFederal ElectionCommission (FEC),provided publicfinancing forpresidential primariesand general elections,limited presidentialcampaign spending,required disclosure,and attempted tolimit contributions.

1988 13.41987 14.51986 13.91985 15.71984 15.01983 15.71982 14.71981 17.41980 15.81979 17.21978 18.61977 20.31976 17.8

Source: Authors’ analysis of Monitoring the Futurenational surveys of high school seniors.

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Federal ElectionCommission(FEC)

A six-memberbipartisan agencycreated by theFederal ElectionCampaign Act of1974. The FECadministers andenforces campaignfinance laws.

PresidentialElectionCampaign Fund

Funded by the $3check-off on IRS taxforms, this fundprovides a source ofmoney for matchingfunds in theprimaries andcomplete financing ofDemocratic andRepublicanpresidential nomineesin the generalelection.

prescribed by federal law. For 2004, this amounted to approximately $45 million inthe primaries. Because of this limit, President Bush, Senator Kerry, and GovernorDean all decided not to accept matching funds during the 2004 primaries.

• provided full public financing for major party candidates in the general election. Forthe general election, each major party nominee gets a fixed amount of money tocover their campaign expenses. For 2004 this amounted to $75 million. Unlike inthe primaries, the FEC pays all the costs of general election campaigns, therebymaking the offer too good for anyone to turn down. Thus, although George W.Bush and John Kerry each decided not to accept federal support in the campaignfor their party’s nomination, they followed the practice of all previous major partynominees in taking federal money for the fall campaign.

• required full disclosure. Regardless of whether they accept any federal funding, allcandidates for federal office must file periodic reports with the FEC, listing whocontributed and how the money was spent. In the spirit of immediate disclosure,some 2004 presidential candidates regularly posted updated campaign contribu-tion information on their websites.

• limited contributions. Scandalized to find out that some wealthy individuals hadcontributed $1 million to the 1972 Nixon campaign, Congress limited individualcontributions to presidential and congressional candidates to $1,000. TheMcCain-Feingold Act increased this limit to $2,000 as of 2004, and provided forit to be indexed to rise along with inflation in the future.

Although the 1974 campaign reforms were generally welcomed by both parties,the constitutionality of the Federal Election Campaign Act was challenged in the 1976case of Buckley v. Valeo. In this case the Supreme Court struck down the portion of theact that had limited the amount individuals could contribute to their own campaignsas a violation of free speech. This aspect of the Court ruling made it possible for RossPerot to spend over $60 million of his own fortune on his independent presidentialcandidacy in 1992, and for John Kerry to loan his campaign over $7 million for the2004 Democratic nomination contest.

Another loophole was opened in 1979 with an amendment to the original act thatmade it easier for political parties to raise money for voter registration drives, to distrib-ute campaign material at the grassroots level, and for generic party advertising. Moneyraised for such purposes is known as soft money and is not subject to any contributionlimits. In 2000, an unprecedented amount of money flowed into the coffers of thenational parties through this loophole. Nearly half a billion dollars was raised by the twoparties in 2000 via soft money contributions, with many of the contributions coming inincrements of hundreds of thousands of dollars. AT&T alone gave over $3 million in softmoney, as did the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russell Feingold (D-WI) crusaded for years toremove the taint of large soft money campaign contributions from the political system.Their efforts finally came to fruition in 2002 when their bill was passed by the Congressand signed into law by President George W. Bush. The McCain-Feingold Act: (1) ban-ned soft money contributions; (2) increased the amount that individuals could give tocandidates from $1,000 to $2,000 and indexed the latter amount to rise in the futurealong with inflation; and (3) barred groups from running “issue ads” within 60 days of a

matching funds

Contributions of upto $250 fromindividuals arematched for qualifiedpresidentialcandidates in theprimaries.

The Debate OverCampaign Finance Reform

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general election if they refer to a federal candidate and are not funded through a PAC(i.e., with funds regulated by the campaign finance system). These provisions were chal-lenged in the Courts, and in the 2003 case of McConnell v. Federal Election Commissionthe Supreme Court ruled in favor of the new law by a 5-4 margin.

Overall, there is little doubt that campaign finance legislation since 1974 hasmade campaigns more open and honest. Small donors are encouraged and the rich arerestricted. A campaign’s financial records are now open for all to examine, and FECauditors try to make sure the regulations are enforced. As Frank Sorauf writes, thedetailed FEC reports have “become a wonder of the democratic political world. No-where else do scholars and journalists find so much information about the funding ofcampaigns, and the openness of Americans about the flow of money stuns many othernationals accustomed to silence and secrecy about such traditionally private matters.”15

The Proliferation of PACsThe campaign reforms also encouraged the spread of Political Action Committees,generally known as PACs. Before the 1974 reforms, corporations were technically for-bidden from donating money to political campaigns, but many wrote big checks any-way. Unions could make indirect contributions, although limits were set on how theycould aid candidates and political parties. The 1974 reforms created a new, more open,way for interest groups like business and labor to contribute to campaigns. Any interestgroup, large or small, can now get into the act by forming its own PAC to directly chan-nel contributions of up to $5,000 per candidate. Because Buckley v. Valeo extended theright of free speech to PACs, they can spend unlimited amounts indirectly, that is, if suchactivities are not coordinated with the campaign.

soft money

Political contributionsearmarked for party-building expenses atthe grass-roots level orfor generic party ad-vertising. For a time,such contributionswere unlimited, untilthey were banned bythe McCain-FeingoldAct.

political actioncommittees(PACs)

Funding vehiclescreated by the 1974campaign financereforms. Acorporation, union,or some other interestgroup can create aPAC and register itwith the FederalElectionCommission (FEC),which willmeticulously monitorthe PAC’sexpenditures.

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Why ItMatters

Money and ElectionsAs the 2004 primariesapproached, most pun-dits argued that anyserious candidate forthe presidency neededto raise $15 million bythe end of 2003 in orderto be classified as aserious contender.Raising money is oneconcrete indicator ofsupport before the firstvotes are cast. In addi-tion, money provides acampaign with the abil-ity to hire sufficient staffand advertising time toget its message out. Acampaign that is shorton money can hardly getits message out.

As of 2004, the FEC reported that there were 3,868 PACs. In the 2002 congres-sional elections, PACs contributed over $258 million to House and Senate candidates.Many believe that this expansion has led to a system of open graft.16 Few developmentssince the Watergate crisis have generated so much cynicism about government as theexplosive growth of PACs over the last three decades.

A PAC is formed when a business association, or some other interest group,decides to contribute to candidates it believes will be favorable toward its goals. Thegroup registers as a PAC with the FEC, and then puts money into the PAC coffers. ThePAC can collect money from stockholders, members, and other interested parties. Itthen donates the money to candidates, often after careful research on their issue standsand past voting records. One very important ground rule prevails: All expendituresmust be meticulously reported to the FEC. If PACs are corrupting democracy, at leastthey are doing so openly.

Candidates need PACs because high-tech campaigning is expensive. Tightly con-tested races for the House of Representatives can sometimes cost $1 million; Senateraces can easily cost $1 million for television alone. PACs play a major role in payingfor expensive campaigns. Thus there emerges a symbiotic relationship between thePACs and the candidates: Candidates need money, which they insist can be used with-out compromising their integrity; PACs want access to officeholders, which they insistcan be gained without buying votes. Justin Dart of Dart Industries, a close friend offormer President Reagan, remarks of his PAC that “talking to politicians is fine, butwith a little money, they hear you better.”17

There is an abundance of PACs willing to help the candidates. There are bigPACs, such as the Realtors Political Action Committee and the American MedicalAssociation Political Action Committee. There are little ones, too, representing smallerindustries or business associations: EggPAC, FishPAC, FurPAC, LardPAC, and—forthe beer distributors, SixPAC.18 Table 8.1 lists the business, labor, and ideologicalPACs that gave the most money to congressional candidates in 2000 and shows whichparty each favored.

Critics of the PAC system worry that all this money leads to PAC control over whatthe winners do once in office. Archibald Cox and Fred Wertheimer of CommonCause write that the role of PACs in campaign finance “is robbing our nation of itsdemocratic ideals and giving us a government of leaders beholden to the monied inter-ests who make their election possible.”19 On some issues, it seems clear that PACmoney has made a difference. The Federal Trade Commission, for example, oncepassed a regulation requiring that car dealers list known mechanical defects on thewindow sticker of used cars. The National Association of Automobile Dealers quicklybecame one of the largest donors to congressional incumbents, contributing just over$1 million to candidates of both parties. Soon afterward, 216 representatives cospon-sored a House resolution nullifying the FTC regulation. Of these representatives, 186had been aided by the auto dealers’ PAC.20

It is questionable, however, whether such examples are the exception or the rule.Most PACs give money to candidates who agree with them in the first place. Forinstance, the antiabortion PACs do not waste their money supporting pro-choice can-didates. Frank Sorauf’s careful review of the subject concludes that “there simply areno data in the systematic studies that would support the popular assertions about the

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‘buying’ of the Congress or about any other massive influence of money on the leg-islative process.”21

The impact of PAC money on presidents is even more doubtful. Presidentialcampaigns are, of course, partly subsidized by the public and so are less dependentupon PACs. Moreover, presidents have well-articulated positions on most importantissues. A small contribution from any one PAC is not likely to turn a presidential can-didate’s head.

Money matters in campaigns and sometimes also during legislative votes.Although the influence of PACs may be exaggerated, the high cost of running for officeensures their continuing major role in the campaign process.

Does Money Buy Victory?Money is, of course, absolutely crucial to electoral victory; important offices are rarelywon these days by candidates who spend virtually nothing. One of the last of this non-spending breed was Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin. He was succeeded by

Table 8.1 The Big-Spending PACs

According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data by the Center for Responsive Politics,here are the largest business, labor, and ideological/single-issue PAC contributors to congressionalcandidates for the 1999–2000 election cycle and the percentage that they gave to Republicans.

PERCENTAGEAMOUNT GIVEN TO

CONTRIBUTED REPUBLICANS

BusinessMicrosoft $3,942,435 53Goldman Sachs Group $3,546,432 32AT&T $3,510,391 62National Association of Realtors $3,298,100 58Association of Trial Lawyers $2,951,500 12United Parcel Service $2,919,584 74Philip Morris $2,830,985 80

LaborAmerican Federation of State/County/Municipal Employees $6,500,889 1Service Employees International Union $4,724,664 4Communication Workers of America $3,687,614 1International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $3,369,840 3United Food and Commercial Workers Union $3,242,057 1

Ideological/Single-IssueNational Rifle Association $2,884,127 92Emily’s List $1,979,829 0

Source: Center for Responsive Politics.

PACs and the Money Trail

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wealthy businessman Herbert Kohl, who funded his multimillion-dollar campaignentirely out of his own pocket. As Kohl said, he was so rich that no one had to worryabout him being bought by special interests.

Perhaps the most basic complaint about money and politics is that there may be adirect link between dollars spent and votes received. Few have done more to dispel thischarge than political scientist Gary Jacobson. His research has shown that “the moreincumbents spend, the worse they do.”22 This fact is not as odd as it at first sounds. Itsimply means that incumbents who face a tough opponent must raise more money tomeet the challenge. When a challenger is not a serious threat (as they all too often arenot), incumbents can afford to campaign cheaply.

More important than having “more” money is having “enough” money. HerbertAlexander calls this “the doctrine of sufficiency.” As he writes, “Enough money must bespent to get a message across to compete effectively but outspending one’s opponent isnot always necessary—even an incumbent with a massive ratio of higher spending.”23

One case in point is that of the late Paul Wellstone, a previously obscure political sci-ence professor who beat an incumbent senator in 1990 despite being outspent 8 to 1.Another example is the 1994 California Senate race, in which incumbent DemocratDianne Feinstein prevailed even though she was outspent 2 to 1 by Republican chal-lenger Michael Huffington.

The Media and the CampaignMoney matters, and so does media attention. Media coverage is determined by two fac-tors: (1) how candidates use their advertising budget, and (2) the “free” attention theyget as newsmakers. The first, obviously, is relatively easy to control; the second isharder, but not impossible. Almost every logistical decision in a campaign—where toeat breakfast, whom to include on the rostrum, when to announce a major policyproposal—is calculated according to its intended media impact. About half the totalbudget for a presidential or senatorial campaign is used for television advertising.

No major candidate these days can do without what political scientist DanNimmo calls “the political persuaders.”24 A new profession of political consultants hasemerged, and for the right price, they can turn a disorganized campaign into a well-run, high-tech operation. They can do it all—polling or hiring the pollster, molding acandidate’s image, advising a candidate on his or her spouse’s role, handling campaignlogistics, managing payrolls, and so forth. Incumbents as well as challengers turn toprofessional consultants for such help.

All this concern with public relations worries some observers of American politics.They fear a new era of politics in which the slick slogan and the image salesperson willdominate, an era when Madison Avenue will be more influential than Main Street. Mostpolitical scientists, however, conclude that such fears are overblown. Research has shownthat campaign advertising can be a source of information about issues as well as aboutimages. Thomas Patterson and Robert McClure examined the information contained inTV advertising and found it impressive. In fact, they concluded, viewers could learn moreabout candidates’ stands on the issues from watching their ads than from watching thenightly news. Most news coverage emphasizes where the candidates went, how big their

Television andPresidentialCampaigns

You Are a MediaConsultant

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The Impact of Campaigns 279

crowds were, and other campaign details. Only rarely do the networks delve into wherecandidates stand on the issues. In contrast, political ads typically address issues; a study of230,000 candidate ads that ran in 1998 found that spots that emphasized policy outnum-bered those that emphasized personal image by a 6-to-1 ratio.25 Most candidates appar-ently believe that their policy positions are a crucial part of their campaign, and they arewilling to pay substantial sums to communicate them to voters.

Candidates have much less control over the other aspect of the media, news cover-age. News organizations seem to believe that policy issues are of less interest to votersthan the campaign itself. The result is that news coverage is disproportionately devotedto campaign strategies, speculation about what will happen next, poll results, and otheraspects of the campaign game.26 Once a candidate has taken a policy position and it hasbeen reported on, it becomes old news. The latest poll showing Smith ahead of Jones isthus more newsworthy in the eyes of the media. Republican media consultant RogerAiles calls this his “orchestra pit” theory of American politics: “If you have two guys onstage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guyfalls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?”27

The Impact of CampaignsAlmost all politicians figure that a good campaign is the key to victory. Many politicalscientists, however, question the importance of campaigns. Reviewing the evidence,Dan Nimmo concluded, “Political campaigns are less crucial in elections than mostpoliticians believe.”28 For years, researchers studying campaigns have stressed that

Television has beenthe primary waythat candidates fornational office havegotten out theirmesssage sinceabout 1960. Here,President GeorgeW. Bush and FirstLady Laura Bushare shown beinginterviewed for ajoint appearance onthe CNN program“Larry King Live”during the 2004campaign.

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campaigns have three effects on voters: reinforcement, activation, and conversion.Campaigns can reinforce voters’ preferences for candidates; they can activate voters,getting them to contribute money or ring doorbells as opposed to merely voting; andthey can convert, changing voters’ minds.

Five decades of research on political campaigns leads to a single message:Campaigns mostly reinforce and activate; only rarely do they convert. The evidence onthe impact of campaigns points clearly to the conclusion that the best laid plans ofcampaign managers change very few votes. Given the millions of dollars spent on polit-ical campaigns, it may be surprising to find that they do not have a great effect. Severalfactors tend to weaken campaigns’ impact on voters:

• Most people pay relatively little attention to campaigns in the first place. Peoplehave a remarkable capacity for selective perception—paying most attention tothings they already agree with and interpreting events according to their own pre-dispositions.

All political campaigns need volunteers, and cam-paign work is fun. You will meet all sorts of people fromall over your city, your state, or the nation and make lotsof new friends. You will do things like go door-to-doordistributing campaign literature, put up yard signs, stuffenvelopes, and answer telephones at campaign head-quarters. You’ll play an important role in helping electsomeone who will work for your ideals. Many collegesand universities offer credit for campaign work. Ask atyour school. You can be an intern on a campaign, do auseful bit for democracy, earn college credits, andmaybe even get paid.

What you can do:

• Call your local political party office (Democratic,Republican, Green, etc).

• Contact a candidate you support and volunteeryour services.

• Contact your school’s political science departmentto see whether you can receive internship credit foryour work.

In order to change how government operates or to main-tain a desired policy, you generally have to get involved.Personal involvement in politics and the political systemis important.

One way to do this is to volunteer on a political cam-paign. You may wish to help out at a local level by help-ing a candidate in a race for school board, city council,or mayor. For most local elections you can call the can-didate yourself and offer your services. You may wish towork on a race for the state legislature. If you are inter-ested in assisting a candidate for a major office, call thecandidate’s campaign headquarters and ask to talk withthe volunteer coordinator. The campaigns for top tierpolitical offices such as state governor, U.S. senator, U.S.congressperson, or president are generally huge opera-tions that require the assistance of numerous volunteers.Candidates for these offices will usually have a big cam-paign organization somewhere in your state and maybesmaller campaign headquarters in regional cities. Youcan find these by calling the candidate’s local party officeand asking where the election headquarters is locatedand how to contact it. Then talk with the volunteer coor-dinator at headquarters.

Volunteering for Political CampaignsHow You Can Make a Difference

selectiveperception

The phenomenonthat people often paythe most attention tothings they alreadyagree with andinterpret themaccording to theirown predispositions.

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Whether To Vote: A Citizen’s First Choice 281

• Factors such as party identification—though less important than they used to be—still influence voting behavior regardless of what happens in the campaign.

• Incumbents start with a substantial advantage in terms of name recognition andan established track record.

Such findings do not mean, of course, that campaigns never change voters’ mindsor that converting a small percentage is unimportant. In tight races, a good campaigncan make the difference between winning and losing.

As the campaign nears its end, voters face two key choices: whether to vote and, ifthey choose to, how to vote. The following sections investigate the ways that votersmake these choices.

Whether To Vote: A Citizen’s First ChoiceOver two centuries of American electoral history include greatly expanded suffrage—the right to vote. Virtually everyone over the age of 18 now has the right to vote. Thetwo major exceptions concern noncitizens and convicted criminals. There is no fed-eral requirement stating that voters must be citizens, and it was quite common in thenineteenth century for immigrants to vote prior to attaining citizenship. However, nostate currently permits residents who are not citizens to vote. In contrast, state lawvaries widely when it comes to crime and voting: 46 states deny prisoners the right tovote, 32 states extend the ban to people on parole, and 10 states impose a lifetime banon convicted felons.

Interestingly, as the right to vote has been extended, proportionately fewer of thoseeligible have chosen to exercise that right. In the past 100 years, the 80 percent turnoutin the 1896 election was the high point of electoral participation. In 2004, only 55 per-cent of the adult population voted in the presidential election, and in the 2002midterm elections only 39 percent took part.

Deciding Whether To VoteRealistically, when more than 100 million people vote in a presidential election, asthey did in 2004, the chance of one vote affecting the outcome is very, very slight.Once in a while, of course, an election is decided by a small number of votes as wasthe case in Florida in 2000. It is more likely, however, that you will be struck by light-ning during your lifetime than participate in an election decided by a single vote.

Not only does your vote probably not make much difference to the outcome, butvoting is somewhat costly. You have to spend some of your valuable time becominginformed, making up your mind, and getting to the polls. If you carefully calculateyour time and energy, you might rationally decide that the costs of voting outweigh thebenefits. Indeed, the most frequent response given by nonvoters in the 2000 CensusBureau survey on turnout was that they could not take time off from work or schoolthat day.29 Some scholars have therefore proposed that one of the easiest ways toincrease American turnout levels would be to move Election Day to Saturday or tomake it a holiday.30

suffrage

The legal right tovote, extended toAfrican Americans bythe FifteenthAmendment, towomen by theNineteenthAmendment, and topeople over the ageof 18 by the Twenty-sixth Amendment.

The Prepared Voter Kit

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political efficacy

The belief that one’spoliticalparticipation reallymatters—that one’svote can actuallymake a difference.

civic duty

The belief that inorder to supportdemocraticgovernment, a citizenshould always vote.

voterregistration

A system adopted bythe states thatrequires voters toregister well inadvance of ElectionDay. Although a fewstates permit ElectionDay registration forpresidential elections,advance registrationdampens voterturnout.

Economist Anthony Downs, in his model of democracy, tries to explain why arational person would ever bother to vote. He argues that rational people vote if theybelieve that the policies of one party will bring more benefits than the policies of theother party.31 Thus people who see policy differences between the parties are morelikely to join the ranks of voters. If you are an environmentalist and you expect theDemocrats to pass more environmental legislation than the Republicans, then youhave an additional incentive to go to the polls. On the other hand, if you are trulyindifferent—that is, if you see no difference whatsoever between the two parties—youmay rationally decide to abstain.

Another reason why many people vote is that they have a high sense of politicalefficacy—the belief that ordinary people can influence the government. Efficacy ismeasured by asking people to agree or disagree with statements such as “I don’t thinkpublic officials care much what people like me think.” Those who lack strong feelingsof efficacy are being quite rational in staying home on Election Day because they don’tthink they can make a difference. Yet even some of these people will vote anyway, sim-ply to support democratic government. In this case, people are impelled to vote by asense of civic duty. The benefit from doing one’s civic duty is the long-term contribu-tion made toward preserving democracy.

Registering To VoteA century ago politicians used to say, “Vote early and often.” Largely to prevent cor-ruption associated with stuffing ballot boxes, states adopted voter registration lawsaround the turn of the century, which require individuals to first place their name onan electoral roll in order to be allowed to vote. Although these laws have made it moredifficult to vote more than once, they have also discouraged some people from votingat all. America’s unique registration system is, in part, to blame for why Americans aresignificantly less likely to go to the polls than citizens of other democratic nations.

Registration procedures currently differ from state to state. In sparsely populatedNorth Dakota there is no registration at all, and in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Wyoming,Idaho, New Hampshire, and Maine voters can register on Election Day. Advocates ofthis user-friendly procedure are quick to point out that these states all ranked near thetop in voter turnout in 2004. For many years, some states—particularly in the South—had burdensome registration procedures, such as requiring people to make a trip totheir county courthouse during normal business hours. As a result of the 1993 MotorVoter Act, this is no longer the case. The Motor Voter Act made voter registration eas-ier by requiring states to allow eligible voters to register by simply checking a box ontheir driver’s license application or renewal form. Nevertheless, its impact on turnouthas thus far been largely disappointing.

Who Votes?When just over half the population votes, the necessity of studying nonvoters takes onadded importance. Table 8.2 displays data regarding the turnout rates of various groups

Motor Voter Act

Passed in 1993, thisact went into effectfor the 1996 election.It requires states topermit people toregister to vote at thesame time they applyfor a driver’s license.

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Whether To Vote: A Citizen’s First Choice 283

in the 2000 presidential election. This information reveals numerous demographicfactors that are related to turnout:

• Education. People with higher than average educational levels have a higher rateof voting than people with less education. Among all factors affecting turnout, thisone is the most important. Highly educated people are more capable of discern-ing the major differences between the candidates. In addition, their educationaltraining comes in handy in clearing the bureaucratic hurdles imposed by registra-tion requirements.

• Age. Older people are far more likely to vote than younger people. Younger citizensare less likely to be registered, but even just analyzing turnout patterns among reg-istered voters yields wide differences by age. For example, Georgia’s secretary of statereported that of those on the registration rolls under 25 years of age only 22 percentvoted in 2002 as compared to 68 percent among those over 65 years of age.32

• Race. African Americans and Hispanics are underrepresented among voters rela-tive to their share of the population. This finding can largely be explained by theirgenerally low levels of education. African Americans and Hispanics with high lev-els of education have a higher turnout rate than Whites with comparable educa-tional achievement.

• Gender. In an earlier period many women were discouraged from voting, buttoday women actually participate in elections at a slightly higher rate than men.

• Marital status. People who are married are more likely to vote than those who arenot. This pattern is true among all age categories and generally reflects the factthat married people are more tied into their community.

Table 8.2 Reported Turnout Rate in 2000 by Social Groups (in Percents)

Age18–20 2921–24 3525–44 5045–64 6565 and over 68

EducationNo HS diploma 31High school 49Some college 60College 72

GenderMen 53Women 56

Source: Authors’ analysis of 2000 U.S. Census Bureau survey through FERRETT(http://ferrett.bls.census.gov/).

RaceWhite 56African American 54Hispanic citizen 45Asian American 43

Marital StatusMarried 61Single 45

Union MembershipMember 65Not member 53

Voter Turnout: Who Votes?

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Why ItMatters

Youth TurnoutVoter turnout rates in theUnited States have beendeclining for quite sometime. The very low partic-ipation rate of young peo-ple has been one of thebiggest reasons for thisdecline. Who votes mat-ters not only becausethese individuals decidewho wins elections, butalso because politicianspay attention primarily tovoters. The fact that sofew young people votemeans that politiciansare not likely to pay toomuch attention to theiropinions or to promotepolicies that will particu-larly help them.

• Mobility. People who have lived at the same address for a while also are more tiedinto their community, and hence more likely to vote. Those who have movedrecently have to deal with the task of registering to vote at their new address,which, although easier due to the Motor Voter Act, still requires some effort.

• Union membership. Unions have long been active in the political process andoften devote considerable resources to encouraging their members to vote. Peoplewho live in a household with a union member do indeed have higher than aver-age turnout levels.

These differences in turnout rates are cumulative. Possessing several of these traits (say,being elderly, well educated, and very religious) adds significantly to one’s likelihoodof voting. Conversely, being young, poorly educated, and not religious is likely to addup to a very low probability of voting. If you possess many of the demographic traits ofnonvoters, then the interests of people like you are probably not drawing a great dealof attention from politicians—regardless of whether you personally vote or not.Politicians listen far more carefully to groups with high turnout rates, as they knowtheir fate may well be in their hands. Who votes does matter.

How Americans Vote: Explaining Citizens’ DecisionsA common explanation of how Americans vote—one favored by journalists andpoliticians—is that people vote because they agree more with the policy views ofCandidate A than with those of Candidate B. Of course, the candidates have gone

Young people haveone of the lowestrates of electionturnout. Music starslike P. Diddy havetried to change thisby actively partici-pating in events thatencourage youngpeople to vote.

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How Americans Vote: Explaining Citizen’s Decisions 285

mandate theoryof elections

The idea that thewinning candidatehas a mandate fromthe people to carryout his or herplatforms andpolitics. Politicianslike the theory betterthan politicalscientists do.

to a lot of time and trouble to get those views implanted in the public mind. Becausecitizens vote for the candidate whose policy promises they favor, say many journalistsand politicians, the election winner has a mandate from the people to carry out thepromised policies. This idea is sometimes called the mandate theory of elections.

Politicians, of course, are attracted to the mandate theory. It lets them justify whatthey want to do by claiming public support for their policies. As President Clinton saidduring the final presidential debate in 1992: “That’s why I am trying to be so specificin this campaign—to have a mandate, if elected, so the Congress will know what theAmerican people have voted for.” Even though President George W. Bush failed to winthe popular vote in the 2000 election, during his first year in office he regularly arguedthat the voters had endorsed a particular program he advocated by electing him.

Political scientists, however, think very little of the mandate theory of elections.33

Whereas victorious politicians are eager to proclaim “the people have spoken,” politi-cal scientists know that the people rarely vote a certain way for the same reasons.Instead, political scientists focus on three major elements of voters’ decisions: (1) vot-ers’ party identification, (2) voters’ evaluation of the candidates, and (3) the matchbetween voters’ policy positions and those of the candidates and parties—a factortermed “policy voting.”

Party IdentificationParty identifications are crucial for many voters in that they provide a regular perspec-tive through which they can view the political world. “Presumably,” say Niemi andWeisberg, “people choose to identify with a party with which they generally agree. . . .As a result they need not concern themselves with every issue that comes along, but cangenerally rely on their party identification to guide them.”34 Parties tend to rely ongroups that lean heavily in their favor to form their basic coalition. Even before an elec-tion campaign begins, Republicans usually assume they will not receive much supportfrom African Americans, Jews, and Hispanic Americans. Democrats have an uphillstruggle attracting groups that are staunchly Republican in their leanings, such as con-servative evangelical Christians or upper-income voters. As you can see in Table 8.3,there have been substantial changes in how various groups have voted for president overthe last four decades.

With the emergence of television and candidate-centered politics, the parties’hold on the voters eroded substantially during the 1960s and 1970s, and then stabi-lized at a new and lower level.35 In the 1950s scholars singled out party affiliation asthe best single predictor of a voter’s decision. “My party—right or wrong” was themotto that typified strong party identifiers. Voting along party lines is still quite com-mon, but considerably less so than it was several decades ago. Many voters now feelthat they no longer need the parties to guide their choices, given that modern tech-nology makes it possible for them to evaluate the candidates and make their own deci-sions. Thus American voters have become increasingly individualistic. Voting choiceshave become largely a matter of individual choice, and many voters are up for grabs ineach election (the so-called “floating voters”). In such an individualistic political envi-ronment, the characteristics of each candidate for office play an important role.

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Table 8.3 Changing Patterns in Voting Behavior: 1960 and 2004 Compared

The demographic correlates of presidential voting behavior have changed in a number of importantways since 1960. When Kennedy was elected in 1960 Protestants and Catholics voted very differently,as Kennedy’s Catholicism was a major issue during the campaign. Although John Kerry was the firstmajor party nominee since Kennedy to be of the Catholic faith, Catholics were only slightly more likelyto support him than Protestants. Today, the major difference along religious lines involves how oftenone attends religious services, with those who attend regularly being substantially more likely to sup-port Republican presidential candidates. The least likely group to support Republicans these days isAfrican-Americans. As you can see in data below, Kerry clearly drew more support from AfricanAmericans than did Kennedy. Another advantage that Democrats now enjoy is with female voters,who preferred Kerry by 7 percent more than men. Interestingly, women were actually slightly lesslikely than men to have supported the handsome JFK in 1960. Finally, the rapidly expanding Hispanicpopulation in the United States has reshaped the electoral scene with their tendency to supportDemocratic candidates. Hispanics numbered only about 1 percent of voters in 1960—too small to becaptured accurately in any survey—but by 2004 they accounted for 8 percent of Americans whovoted for president.

KENNEDY NIXON KERRY BUSH

Protestant 36 63 40 59Catholic 83 17 47 52Jewish 89 11 74 25

Regularly attend religious services 49 50 39 60Often attend religious services 36 64 49 50Seldom attend religious services 55 44 54 45Never attend religious services 51 49 62 36

White 48 52 41 58African American 71 29 88 11Hispanic NA NA 57 40

Male 52 48 44 55Female 47 53 51 48

18–29 53 47 54 4530–44 51 49 46 5345–64 50 50 47 5265+ 39 61 47 52

No HS diploma 55 45 50 49High school diploma 52 48 47 52Some college 33 67 46 54College degree 38 62 49 50

Source: 1960 National Election Study and 2004 National Voter Exit Poll.

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Candidate Evaluations: How Americans See the CandidatesAll candidates try to present a favorable personal image. Using laboratory experiments,political psychologists Shawn Rosenberg and Patrick McCafferty show that it is possi-ble to manipulate a candidate’s appearance in a way that affects voters’ choices.Holding a candidate’s policy views and party identification constant, they find thatwhen good pictures are substituted for bad ones, a candidate’s vote-getting ability is sig-nificantly increased. Although a laboratory setting may not be representative of the realworld, Rosenberg and McCafferty conclude that “with appropriate pretesting and ade-quate control over a candidate’s public appearance, a campaign consultant should beable to significantly manipulate the image projected to the voting public.”36

To do so, a consultant would need to know what sort of candidate images votersare most attuned to. Research by Miller, Wattenberg, and Malanchuk shows that thethree most important dimensions of candidate image are integrity, reliability, and com-petence.37 In 2000, one of the key factors that helped George W. Bush was that he wasrated fairly positively on integrity whereas Gore scored rather poorly on this dimension.In addition to honesty and integrity, a good candidate should also be seen as depend-able and decisive—traits that Miller, Wattenberg, and Malanchuk label as “reliability.”When George Bush broke his “no new taxes” pledge prior to the 1992 campaign, hisimage of reliability clearly suffered. The personal traits most often mentioned by vot-ers, though, involve competence. Incumbent presidents typically score much higheron competence, as they have proven experience in dealing with national and interna-tional crises. This is one of the biggest reasons why it is so difficult to defeat a sittingpresident who is running for a second term.

Such evaluations of candidate personality are sometimes seen as superficial andirrational judgments. Miller and his colleagues disagree with this interpretation, argu-ing that voters rely on their assessments of candidates’ personalities to predict how theywould perform in office. If a candidate is too incompetent to carry out policy promises,or too dishonest for those promises to be trusted, it makes perfect sense for a voter topay more attention to personality than policies. Interestingly, Miller and his colleaguesfind that college-educated voters are actually the most likely to view the candidates interms of their personal attributes. They argue that better educated voters are able tomake important issue-oriented inferences from these attributes (for example, that acandidate who is unreliable may not be the right person to be the commander in chiefof the armed forces).

Policy VotingPolicy voting occurs when people base their choices in an election on their own issuepreferences. True policy voting can only take place when four conditions are met.First, voters must have a clear view of their own policy positions. Second, voters mustknow where the candidates stand on policy issues. Third, they must see differencesbetween the candidates on these issues. And finally, they must actually cast a vote forthe candidate whose policy positions coincide with their own.

Given these conditions, policy voting is not always easy—even for the educatedvoter. Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde analyzed responses to nine questions about policy

policy voting

Electoral choices thatare made on the basisof the voters’ policypreferences and onthe basis of where thecandidates stand onpolicy issues.

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issues in the 2000 National Election Study. They found that 51 percent of the respon-dents met the first three informational criteria for policy voting on the average issue.About 68 percent of the time, when someone knew the candidates’ stances and saw dif-ferences between them, they voted for the candidate closest to their own position.38 Ofcourse, we should never expect all votes to be consistent with policy views, as many peo-ple will prefer one candidate on some policies and another candidate on other policies.

One regular obstacle to policy voting is that candidates often decide that the bestway to handle a controversial issue is to cloud their positions in rhetoric. For example,in 1968 both major party candidates—Nixon and Humphrey—were deliberatelyambiguous about what they would do to end the Vietnam War. This made it extremelydifficult for voters to cast their ballots according to how they felt about the war. Themedia may not be much help, either, as they typically focus more on the “horse race”aspects of the campaign than on the policy stands of the candidates, as discussed inChapter 6. Voters thus often have to work fairly hard just to be informed enough topotentially engage in policy voting.

In today’s political world, it is somewhat easier for voters to vote according to poli-cies than it was in the 1950s or 1960s. The key difference is that candidates are nowregularly forced to take clear stands to appeal to their own party’s primary voters. As lateas 1968, it was still possible to win a nomination by dealing with the party bosses;today’s candidates must appeal first to the issue-oriented activists in the primaries.Whatever the major issues are in the next presidential election, it is quite likely thatthe major contenders for the Democratic and Republican nominations will be takingstands on them in order to gain the support of these activists. Thus, what has changedis not the voters, but the electoral process that now provides much more incentive forcandidates to draw clear policy distinctions between one another.

2004: The Ratification of a Polarizing PresidencyIn 2004, George W. Bush became the fourth Republican president since WilliamMcKinley to win a second term. Unlike twice-elected Republicans in the interimyears—Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan—George W. Bushwas the first to repeat William McKinley’s feat of winning two consecutive electionswhile leading the Republicans to majorities in both the Senate and the House ofRepresentatives. The completeness of the Republican victory in 2004 led many pun-dits to talk of George W. Bush’s presidency as ushering in a new era of Republicandominance reminiscent of the McKinley era. Whether or not this proves to be the case,only time will tell. But certainly the reelection of George W. Bush will go down in his-tory books as one of the most important and hard-fought presidential elections ever.

The intensity of the battle over the presidency in 2004 was at least partially due tothe controversial way Bush gained the presidency four years earlier. Election Night2000 provided a wild night of entertainment, full of ups and downs for everyone. Thenetworks first reported that Al Gore had won the crucial state of Florida, but within anhour they rescinded this call. Early in the morning, they at last called Florida for Bushand declared him the president-elect. But just as Gore was ready to give his concessionspeech, the word broke that the networks were again rescinding their call, as the mar-gin had narrowed to less than a thousand votes.

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Because Bush’s lead over Gore in the initial count was less than one-tenth of 1 per-cent, Florida law mandated an automatic recount. Few novelists would have daredimagine the scene of a nation watching transfixed as county by county recount figurescame in from a state where 6 million people voted. Ultimately, with the marginbetween Bush and Gore down to 537 votes, the election hinged on whether or not theundervotes (ballots that showed no vote for president) would be examined by hand.The Gore campaign pointed out that in counties that used punch-card systems (suchas Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, and Broward), that 1.5 percent of the ballots showed nopresidential vote whereas only 0.3 percent of the ballots in counties that used scantronswere recorded as blank. The reason offered for this difference was that some peopledo not punch holes all the way through the card, thereby not fully removing theindentation—the now-famous “chad.” The Gore campaign was hoping to find enoughchads to turn the vote count in Gore’s favor. Naturally, the Bush campaign realizedthis and opposed any manual recount. They argued that such a review of the ballotswas inherently arbitrary, and subject to manipulation and differing standards.

As with any legal dispute, this one ended up in the courts, which played a pivotalrole in deciding the presidential election. The Florida Supreme Court ultimatelyruled in favor of Gore’s request, ordering counties to apply the standard of “the clearintention of the voter” in evaluating ballots. However, the U.S. Supreme Court inBush v. Gore (2000) overruled the Florida Supreme Court and held that more pre-cise and consistent standards for evaluating ballots would have to be applied in allcounties. Most importantly, they ruled that there was not enough time to recount allthe ballots in an orderly fashion by the time the electors were to vote. Thus, the U.S.Supreme Court ultimately determined that George W. Bush would emerge the winner.

Despite winning office by the narrowest of margins, Bush governed boldly, mak-ing numerous consequential decisions that reshaped American public policy. Many ofhis decisions further polarized his political allies from his political opponents. On thedomestic side, his tax cuts were praised by his supporters as stimulating the economy,whereas Bush opponents frequently denounced them as a boon for millionaires thatturned a budget surplus into a record budget deficit. The Bush doctrine of strikingpotential enemies first before they could use weapons of mass destruction was praisedby supporters as keeping America safe from further strikes like those that occurred onSeptember 11th. But many opponents charged this was a reckless go-it-alone foreignpolicy that had alienated America from its traditional allies.

Into this maelstrom stepped John F. Kerry, a Democratic Senator fromMassachusetts since 1984. Kerry was used to being in the thick of battle, as both a deco-rated Vietnam War hero and subsequently as head of the controversial Vietnam VeteransAgainst the War. No sooner had Kerry wrapped up the Democratic nomination for pres-ident than George W. Bush’s campaign launched a set of negative TV ads against him inorder to try to define him in the public mind before he could define himself. Never beforehad a new nominee been attacked so early or so often. But Kerry soon raised ampleresources to fight back, as his campaign raised far more money than any Democraticcampaign had ever done before—$243 million, compared to $286 million for the Bushcampaign. Some critics of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill worriedthat it would be hard to raise sufficient campaign funds once soft money was banned. Butsuch fears were unfounded due to the high level of interest in the 2004 campaign.

“And the Winner Is . . .”Close Calls in

Presidential Elections

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The Kerry campaign sought to portray President Bush as a reckless leader who hadrushed the country into an unnecessary war in Iraq. But it faced the problem ofexplaining how the senator had voted to authorize the president to use force in Iraq.When asked whether he would vote the same way again now that he knew that Iraqdid not possess weapons of mass destruction, Kerry seemed to undercut his criticism ofthe war by saying that he would indeed. And Kerry put his foot in his mouth when hesaid that he initially voted for a supplemental appropriation of $87 million to fund fur-ther military operations in Iraq before he voted against it on final passage. Statementslike these led the Bush campaign to charge that Kerry was a “flip-flopper” who couldnot be trusted to lead America in a dangerous time.

According to exit polls, strong leadership in the war on terrorism ended up being oneof people’s major reasons for voting for Bush. Many Bush voters also said that “moral val-ues” was the most important issue to them. Bush’s strength with evangelical whiteChristians was clearly instrumental in his victory, with 78 percent supporting his reelec-tion. Voters whose top concern was taxes also favored Bush, who promised to stay thecourse with his tax-cutting agenda. On the other hand, Kerry won votes among those whowere most concerned with the war in Iraq, the economy, health care, and education.

As shown in the Electoral College results displayed in Figure 8.2, there were sharpregional divisions in the vote in 2004. Bush ran strong in the South and Mountain West,whereasKerry turned inagoodshowing in theNortheast and thePacificCoast states.Likethe2000election, theElectoralCollegewinnerhingedonjustonebigbattlegroundstate.This time it was Ohio, whose 20 electors gave Bush a victory of 286 to 252 in the ElectoralCollege, but only by a narrow margin of about 135,000 votes out of 5.5 million votes cast.Unlike in 2000, when Bush lost the popular vote to Gore by about one-half of one percent,this time he won the popular vote by about 3 percent (51 percent to 48 percent).

The results of the 2004 election show how important it is to understand how theElectoralCollegeworks. Inpresidential elections,oncevotersmake theirdecision it isnotjust a simple matter of counting the ballots to see who has won the most support nation-wide. Instead, the complicated process of determining Electoral College votes begins.

The Last Battle: The Electoral CollegeIt is the electoral college, not the popular vote, that actually determines who becomespresident of the United States. The electoral college is a unique American institution,created by the Constitution. The American Bar Association once called it “archaic,undemocratic, complex, ambiguous, indirect, and dangerous.”39 Many—but certainlynot all—political scientists oppose its continued use, as do most voters.

Because the Founders wanted the president to be selected by the nation’s elite, notdirectly by the people, they created the electoral college, a body of electors who arecharged solely with the task of voting for the president and vice president. Fortunately,political practice since 1828 has made the vote of members of the electoral collegeresponsive to popular majorities. Today the electors almost always vote for the candi-date who won their state’s popular vote. Occasionally, though, electors will exercise theright to vote their conscience, as did one West Virginia elector in 1988 who voted forBentsen for president and Dukakis for vice president.

electoral college

A unique Americaninstitution created bythe Constitution,providing for theselection of thepresident by electorschosen by the stateparties. Although theelectoral college voteusually reflects apopular majority, thewinner-take-all rulegives clout to bigstates.

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The Last Battle: The Electoral College 291

WA

11

OR

7

NV

4

AZ

8NM

5

TX

32LA

9

AR

6

MO

11

IA

7

ND

3

MT

3

ID

4

UT

5

WY

3

SD

3

NE

5

KS

6

OK

8

MS

7

AL

9

FL

25

GA

13

SC

8

NC14TN 11

KY 8

IL

22

OH

21

PA 23

ME

4

MA 12

RI 4

CT 8

NJ 15

DE 3

MD 10

DC 3

MI

18

AK

3

HI

4

NH 4

VT 3

VA13

MN

10 WI

11

NY

33

WV5

IN

12CO

8CA

54

2000

WA

11

OR

7

NV

5

AZ

10NM

5

TX

34LA

9

AR

6

MO

11

IA

7

ND

3

MT

3

ID

4

UT

5

WY

3

SD

3

NE

5

KS

6

OK

7

MS

6

AL

9

FL

27

GA

15

SC

8

NC15TN 11

KY 8

IL

21

OH

20

PA 21

ME

4

MA 12

RI 4

CT 7

NJ 15

DE 3

MD 10

DC 3

MI

17

AK

3

HI

4

NH 4

VT 3

VA13

MN

10 WI

10

NY

31

WV5

IN

11CO

9CA

55

2004

Figure 8.2 The Electoral College Results for 2000 and 2004

These two maps show the number of votes each state had in the electoral college in 2000 and 2004, and which states werecarried by the Democrats (green) and Republicans (rose) in 2004.

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Table 8.4 Presidential Vote in 2000 by State Representationin the electoral college (in Percents)

States with less than seven electoral votes are overrepresented in the Electoral College. Therefore,the fact that George W. Bush did especially well in these states, as shown in this table, helped him towin the presidency without winning the popular vote—the first time a candidate accomplished thisfeat since 1888.

BUSH GORE NADER OTHERS

Electoral Votes � 7 52.5 42.3 3.7 1.57–18 48.9 47.6 2.5 1.0�18 45.7 50.7 2.7 0.9

Source: Calculated by the authors from official election returns.

This is how the electoral college system works today:

• Each state, according to the Constitution, has as many electoral votes as it has U.S.senators and representatives.40 The state parties select slates of electors, positionsthey use as a reward for faithful service to the party.

• Aside from Maine and Nebraska, each state has a winner-take-all system.41 Electorsvote as a bloc for the winner, whether the winner got 35 percent or 95 percent of thepopular vote.

• Electors meet in their states in December, following the November election, andthen mail their votes to the vice president (who is also president of the Senate).The vote is counted when the new congressional session opens in January, andreported by the vice president. Thus, Dick Cheney had the duty of announcingthe reelection of George W. Bush in January of 2005.

• If no candidate receives an electoral college majority, then the election is throwninto the House of Representatives, which must choose from among the top threeelectoral vote winners. An interesting quirk in the House voting is that each statedelegation has one vote, thus giving the 1 representative from Wyoming an equalsay with the 52 representatives from California.

The electoral college is important to the presidential election for two reasons.First, it introduces a bias into the campaign and electoral process. Because each stategets two electors for its Senators regardless of population, the less populated states areoverrepresented. One of the key reasons that George W. Bush won the electoral col-lege vote in 2000 without winning the popular vote was that he did better in thesmall states, as shown in Table 8.4. Secondly, the winner-take-all rule means that can-didates will necessarily focus on winning the states where the polls show that thereappears to be a close contest. Thus, Bush and Kerry paid a great deal of attention toFlorida and Ohio during the last month of the 2004 campaign but spent no time ormoney on states where the outcome seemed to be a foregone conclusion, such asNew York and Texas.

The Electoral College

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Understanding Campaigns and Voting Behavior 293

Understanding Campaigns and Voting BehaviorElections serve many important functions in American society. They socialize andinstitutionalize political activity, making it possible for most political participation tobe channeled through the electoral process rather than bubbling up through demon-strations, riots, or revolutions. Because elections provide regular access to politicalpower, leaders can be replaced without being overthrown. This feature gives electionslegitimacy in the eyes of people; that is, elections are accepted as a fair and free methodof selecting political leaders.

Throughout the history of American politics, election campaigns have becomelonger and longer as the system has become increasingly open to public participation.Reformers in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries held that the solution todemocratic problems was more democracy—or, as John Lennon sang, “Power to thepeople.” In principle, more democracy always sounds better than less, but it is not sucha simple issue in practice.

Are Nominations and Campaigns Too Democratic?If one judges American campaigns solely by how open they are, then certainly theAmerican system must be viewed favorably. In other countries, the process of leadershipnomination occurs within a relatively small circle of party elites. Thus politicians mustwork their way up through an apprenticeship system. In contrast, America has an entre-preneurial system in which the people play a crucial role at every stage, from nomina-tion to election. As a result, party outsiders can get elected in a way virtually unknownoutside the United States. By appealing directly to the people, a candidate can emergefrom nowhere to win the White House. For example, former one-term governor JimmyCarter was scarcely known outside of his home state a year before his election to the pres-idency. After serving a number of terms as governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton was only ina slightly better position than Carter in terms of name recognition when he announcedhis first campaign for the presidency in 1991. In this sense, the chance to win high officeis open to almost any highly skilled politician with even a small electoral base.

There is a price to be paid for all this openness, however. The process of selectingAmerican leaders is a long and convoluted one that has little downtime before it revsup all over again. George W. Bush had scarcely been elected when potential candi-dates for 2004 started to schedule visits to Iowa and New Hampshire. Some have evencalled the American electoral process “the permanent campaign.”42 Many analystswonder if people would pay more attention to politics if it did not ask so much of them.Given so much democratic opportunity, many citizens are simply overwhelmed by theprocess and stay on the sidelines. Similarly, the burdens of the modern campaign candiscourage good candidates from throwing their hats into the ring. One of the mostworrisome burdens candidates face is amassing a sufficient campaign war chest. Thesystem may be open, but it requires a lot of fund-raising to be able to take one’s case tothe people.

Today’s campaigns clearly promote individualism in American politics. The currentsystem of running for office has been labeled by Wattenberg the “candidate-centered

Comparing Voting and Elections

Comparing PoliticalCampaigns

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age.”43 It allows for politicians to decide on their own to run, to raise their own cam-paign funds, to build their own personal organizations, and to make promises abouthow they specifically will act in office. The American campaign game is one of indi-vidual candidates, by individual candidates, and for individual candidates.

Do Elections Affect Public Policy?Whether elections in fact make the government pay attention to what the people thinkis at the center of debate concerning how well democracy works in America. In thehypothetical world of rational-choice theory and the Downs model, elections do in factguide public policy; however, over a generation of social science research on this ques-tion has produced mixed findings. It is more accurate to describe the connectionbetween elections and public policy as a two-way street: Elections, to some degree,affect public policy, and public policy decisions partly affect electoral outcomes. Therewill probably never be a definitive answer to the question of how much elections affectpublic policy, for it is a somewhat subjective matter. The broad contours of the answer,however, seem reasonably clear: The greater the policy differences between the candi-dates, the more likely voters will be able to steer government policies by their choices.

Of course, the candidates do not always do their best to clarify the issues. Oneresult is that the policy stands are often shaped by what Benjamin Page once called“the art of ambiguity,” in which “presidential candidates are skilled at appearing to saymuch while actually saying little.”44 Learning how to sidestep controversial questionsand hedge answers is indeed part of becoming a professional politician, as you canobserve at any presidential press conference. As long as politicians can take refuge inambiguity (and the skimpy coverage of issues in the media does little to make themclarify their policy stands), the possibility of democratic control of policy is lessened.

When individual candidates do offer a plain choice to the voters (what 1964Republican nominee Barry Goldwater once called “a choice, not an echo”), voters aremore able to guide the government’s policy direction. The voters’ clear preferences forLyndon Johnson’s policies over Goldwater’s in that election led to the enactment ofmany liberal-supported measures such as Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to educa-tion, and the Voting Rights Act. A change of course followed in the 1980s when RonaldReagan made clear his intention to cut the growth of domestic spending, reduce taxes,and build up American military capability. Once elected, he proceeded to do just that.

Do Campaigns Lead to Increases in the Scope of Government?Today’s long and vigorous campaigns involve much more communication betweencandidates and voters than America’s Founders ever could have imagined. In theirview, the presidency was to be an office responsible for tending to the public interestas a whole. They wished to avoid “a contest in which the candidates would have topose as ‘friends’ of the people or make specific policy commitments.”45 Thus theFounders would probably be horrified by the modern practice in which political can-didates make numerous promises during nomination and election campaigns.

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Summary 295

Because states are the key battlegrounds of presidential campaigns, candidatesmust tailor their appeals to the particular interests of each major state. In Iowa, forinstance, promises are typically made to keep agricultural subsidies high, federal pro-grams to help big cities are usually announced in New York, and in Texas, oil industrytax breaks are promised. To secure votes from each region of the country, candidatesend up supporting a variety of local interests. Promises mount as the campaign goeson, and these promises usually add up to new government programs and money. Theway modern campaigns are conducted is thus one of many reasons why politiciansoften find it easier to expand the scope of American government than to limit it.

Elections also help to increase generalized support for government and its powers.Because voters know that the government can be replaced at the next election, they aremuch more likely to feel that it will be responsive to their needs. When people havethe power to dole out electoral reward and punishment, they are more likely to see gov-ernment as their servant instead of their master. As Benjamin Ginsberg writes,“Democratic elections help to persuade citizens that expansion of the state’s powersrepresents an increase in the state’s capacity to serve them.”46

Therefore, rather than wishing to be protected from the state, citizens in a democ-racy often seek to benefit from it. It is no coincidence that “individuals who believe theycan influence the government’s actions are also more likely to believe, in turn, that thegovernment should have more power.”47 Voters like to feel that they are sending a mes-sage to the government to accomplish something. It should be no surprise that as democ-racy has spread, government has come to do more and more, and its scope has grown.

SummaryIn this age of high-tech politics, campaigns have become more media oriented and farmore expensive. There are really two campaigns of importance in presidential (andother) contests: the campaign for nomination and the campaign for election.

There are two ways by which delegates are selected to the national partyconventions—state caucuses and primaries. The first caucus is traditionally held inIowa, the first primary in New Hampshire. These two small atypical American stateshave disproportionate power in determining who will be nominated and thus becomepresident. This influence stems from the massive media attention devoted to theseearly contests and the momentum generated by winning them.

Money matters in political campaigns. As the costs of campaigning have increased,it has become more essential to raise large campaign war chests. Although federal cam-paign finance reform has lessened the impact of big contributors, it also allowed the pro-liferation of PACs. Some believe that PACs have created a system of legal graft incampaigning; others say the evidence for this view is relatively weak.

In general, politicians tend to overestimate the impact of campaigns; political scien-tists have found that campaigning serves primarily to reinforce citizens’ views as opposedto converting them. Voters make two basic decisions at election time; the first is whetherto vote. Americans’ right to vote is well established, but many citizens, particularly youngpeople, do not exercise this right today. The 2004 presidential election was another in a

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INTERNET RESOURCESwww.fec.govThe Federal Election Commission’s reports on campaignspending can be found at this site.

www.fundrace.orgThis site allows one to look up donations from particularindividuals and to map contribution patterns for particu-lar areas.

www.umich.edu/~nesThe National Election Studies are a standard source ofsurvey data about voting behavior. You can find informa-

tion about these studies, as well as some of the results fromthem, at this site.

www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/voting.htmlThe Census Bureau’s studies of registration and turnoutcan be found at this address.

www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/naes/A good source of information on public views during the2004 presidential campaign.

GET CONNECTED

The Delegate Selection Process and Presidential NominationsRunning for president is a very demanding job. It begins years before the election. An importantpart of the process for each candidate involves getting delegates pledged to him or her at thenational party conventions. The nomination process involves a complex procedure that is neatlyoutlined on a web page called “The Green Papers.”

Search the WebGo to the Green Papers page on the nomination process for 2004 http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P04/. Find your state and examine the number of delegates selected for the Democratic andRepublican national conventions in 2004. Also, look at neighboring states, and then find whenyour state selected the delegates.

Questions To Ask• How many delegates did your state send to the Democratic and Republican national con-

ventions in 2004? Were they selected through a primary or a caucus or some combinationof methods?

• How does your state compare with neighboring states? How about states with more or lesspopulation than yours?

• Considering your state’s vote for president in 2004, will your state have more or fewer del-egates to the national conventions in 2008?

long string of low-turnout elections. Second, those who choose to vote must decide forwhom to cast their ballots. Over a generation of research on voting behavior has helpedpolitical scientists to understand the dominant role played by three factors in voters’choices: party identification, candidate evaluations, and policy positions.

Elections are the centerpiece of democracy. Few questions are more important inunderstanding American government than this: Do elections matter? Under the rightconditions, elections can influence public policy, and policy outcomes can influenceelections. Elections also legitimize the power of the state, thereby making it easier toexpand the scope of the government. For better or worse, American election cam-paigns are clearly the most open and democratic in the world.

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For Further Reading 297

FOR FURTHER READINGAbramson, Paul R., John H. Aldrich, and David W.Rohde. Change and Continuity in the 2000 Elections.Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2002.A good overview of voting behavior in the 2000 elections,which also focuses on recent historical trends.

Bimber, Bruce, and Richard Davis. Campaigning Online:The Internet in U.S. Elections. New York: Oxford, 2003.An interesting study of how candidates use websites andhow voters react to them.

Bartels, Larry M. Presidential Primaries and the Dynamicsof Public Choice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1988. An excellent analysis of voters’ decision-making process in the nominating season.

Campbell, Angus, et al. The American Voter. New York:John Wiley, 1960. The classic study of the American elec-torate in the 1950s, which has shaped scholarlyapproaches to the subject ever since.

Farnsworth, Stephen J., and S. Robert Lichter, TheNightly News Nightmare: Network Television’s Coverage ofU.S. Presidential Elections, 1988–2000. Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. An interesting study of thecontent of TV news coverage of four recent presidentialelection campaigns.

Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, and Paul Waldman, eds. Electingthe President 2000: The Insiders’ View. Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. The campaignmanagers for all the 2000 presidential candidates gatheredat the University of Pennsylvania to discuss their experi-ences in the primaries and the general election.

King, Anthony. Running Scared. New York: Free Press,1997. King argues that American politicians campaign toomuch and govern too little.

Mayer, William G., ed. The Making of the PresidentialCandidates 2004. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,2004. A good set of current readings on the presidentialnomination process.

Niemi, Richard G., and Herbert F. Weisberg. Classics inVoting Behavior. Washington, D.C.: CongressionalQuarterly Press, 1993. An excellent set of readings on vot-ing that have stood the test of time.

Polsby, Nelson W., and Aaron Wildavsky. PresidentialElections, 11th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little-field, 2004. The classic text on the subject.

Smith, Bradley A. Unfree Speech: The Folly of CampaignFinance Reform. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 2001. A provocative book that argues that most reg-ulations concerning donations to political campaignsshould be eliminated.

Sorauf, Frank J. Inside Campaign Finance: Myths andRealities. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992. Adefinitive work on the impact of money on elections, animpact that Sorauf thinks is often exaggerated.

Wattenberg, Martin P. Where Have All the Voters Gone?Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. A goodreview of the reasons for declining voter turnout, as wellas what can be done about it.

Wolfinger, Raymond E., and Steven J. Rosenstone. WhoVotes? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980. Theclassic quantitative study of who turns out and why.

Why It MattersPresidential candidates spend much time, energy, and money trying to accumulate delegatespledged to their candidacy who will attend the national convention. The media also focus on“delegate count” as an important measure to determine which candidate is leading the presi-dential race. It is important for you to understand how the delegate selection process works.

Get InvolvedAs we get closer to the 2008 presidential election, find out how you can become a delegate fromyour state to your party’s national convention. The political parties are particularly interested ingetting younger people involved.

To see more Get Connected exercises for Chapter 8, go to http://www.ablongman.com/ edwards.

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Campaigns and Voting Behavior - Higher Education | …€¦ · · 2005-02-01Understanding Campaigns and Voting Behavior 8 ... The consequences for the scope of government are also

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