Presidential campaigns and elections provide the drama and substance of America's democratic process. As democracy in action, they punctuate our nation's history in precise intervals, capturing the issues, the ideas, and the mood of the nation every four years. Every/campaign follows a similar format: candidates jockey for selection, nominations are made, candidates and party leaders hit the trail, and voters render their decision on Election Day. Yet despite this familiar process, every campaign is unique, featuring colorful personalities and unexpected events. This fully illustrated reference is packed with facts and information on every campaign from the election of 1788-89 through the hotly contested election of 2000. Each entry traces in detail the background and results of the election, provides biographical information on every presidential and vice-presidential candidate, and offers state-by-state tallies of every election. The set also features hundreds of rarely seen documents associated with the campaigns.
In presidential elections, do voters cast their ballots for the candidates whose platform and positions best match their own? Or is the race for president of the United States come down largely to who runs the most effective campaign? It’s a question those who study elections have been considering for years with no clear resolution. In The Timeline of Presidential Elections, Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien reveal for the first time how both factors come into play. Erikson and Wlezien have amassed data from close to two thousand national polls covering every presidential election from 1952 to 2008, allowing them to see how outcomes take shape over the course of an election year. Polls from the beginning of the year, they show, have virtually no predictive power. By mid-April, when the candidates have been identified and matched in pollsters’ trial heats, preferences have come into focus—and predicted the winner in eleven of the fifteen elections. But a similar process of forming favorites takes place in the last six months, during which voters’ intentions change only gradually, with particular events—including presidential debates—rarely resulting in dramatic change. Ultimately, Erikson and Wlezien show that it is through campaigns that voters are made aware of—or not made aware of—fundamental factors like candidates’ policy positions that determine which ticket will get their votes. In other words, fundamentals matter, but only because of campaigns. Timely and compelling, this book will force us to rethink our assumptions about presidential elections.
Reporting data and predicting trends through the 2008 campaign, this classroom-tested volume offers again James E. Campbell's "theory of the predictable campaign," incorporating the fundamental conditions that systematically affect the presidential vote: political competition, presidential incumbency, and election-year economic conditions. Campbell's cogent thinking and clear style present students with a readable survey of presidential elections and political scientists' ways of studying them. The American Campaign also shows how and why journalists have mistakenly assigned a pattern of unpredictability and critical significance to the vagaries of individual campaigns. This excellent election-year text provides:a summary and assessment of each of the serious predictive models of presidential election outcomes;a historical summary of many of America's important presidential elections;a significant new contribution to the understanding of presidential campaigns and how they matter.
Seminar paper from the year 2000 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1 (A), University of Kassel (Anglistics), course: The Making of the President 2000, language: English, abstract: There is no aspect of contemporary American politics more criticized than the modern political campaign: it provides too little information for the voter, the amount of money spent is too high, there is no thoughtful discussion of issues, and campaign organizers will reach to the very edge of acceptable practices to find some way of appealing to the voters. These are some of the elements that are responsible for the growing disgust for election campaigns and the decline in political interest. However the question is if campaigns really do have consequences for the election outcome or if their effect is rather limited. This paper will focus on the development of political campaigns, their strategy and planning, as well as on issues and the presentation of the candidate. The composition will further have a look on the campaign and election in 1992, on the actual effects the campaign has on the voter and consequently on the election outcome. In the last two decades scholars perceived a change from old to new politics, including a significant modification in the nature of campaigns. In the last years the traditional partyoriented personal campaign has been largely replaced by the so-called candidate-centered, media-oriented campaign. The basic elements of campaigns changed dramatically because of increased nonvoting, the growth in the power of interest groups, and the power of the media. In national elections the expansion of the mass media campaign has led to a decline in the importance of party affiliation, while at the same time the party organizations themselves became more powerful.
Following one of the most contentious and surprising elections in US history, the new edition of this classic text demonstrates unequivocally: Campaigns matter. With new and revised chapters throughout, Campaigns and Elections American Style provides a real education in contemporary campaign politics. In the fifth edition, academics and campaign professionals explain how Trump won the presidency, comparing his sometimes novel tactics with tried and true strategies including how campaign themes and strategies are developed and communicated, the changes in campaign tactics as a result of changing technology, new techniques to target and mobilize voters, the evolving landscape of campaign finance and election laws, and the increasing diversity of the role of media in elections. Offering a unique and careful mix of Democrat and Republican, academic and practitioner, and male and female campaign perspectives, this volume scrutinizes national and local-level campaigns with a special focus on the 2016 presidential and congressional elections and what those elections might tell us about 2018 and 2020. Students, citizens, candidates, and campaign managers will learn not only how to win elections but also why it is imperative to do so in an ethical way. Perfect for a variety of courses in American government, this book is essential reading for political junkies of any stripe and serious students of campaigns and elections. Highlights of the Fifth Edition Covers the 2016 elections with an eye to 2018 and 2020. Explains how Trump won the presidency, the changes in campaign tactics as a result of changing technology, new techniques to target and mobilize voters, the evolving landscape of campaign finance and election laws, and the increasing diversity of the role of media. Includes a new part structure and the addition of part introductions to help students contextualize the major issues and trends in campaigns and elections.
"Presidential Campaigns devotes a chapter to each of America's elections, from George Washington's in 1789 to George W. Bush's in 2000, dealing with the candidates, the conventions, the party platforms, the speeches, and the reasons for the victories and defeats on election day. The book contains campaign highlights, too, singling out for special attention the gaffes, surprises, dramatic events, and novel ways of vote-chasing that turned up in each campaign. With a postscript analyzing the major changes in the ways Americans have conducted their campaigns through the years, Presidential Campaigns shows that for all their shortcomings, America's quadrennial races represent a basic feature of the American system and, for better or worse, reveal a great deal about the nature of the American people and their culture."--Jacket.
Because of its extraordinary consequences and because of Abraham Lincoln's place in the American pantheon, the presidential election of 1860 is probably the most studied in our history. But perhaps for the same reasons, historians have focused on the contest of Lincoln versus Stephen Douglas in the northern free states and John Bell versus John C. Breckinridge in the slaveholding South. In The Election of 1860 a preeminent scholar of American history disrupts this familiar narrative with a clearer and more comprehensive account of how the election unfolded and what it was actually about. Most critically, the book counters the common interpretation of the election as a referendum on slavery and the Republican Party's purported threat to it. However significantly slavery figured in the election, The Election of 1860 reveals the key importance of widespread opposition to the Republican Party because of its overtly anti-southern rhetoric and seemingly unstoppable rise to power in the North after its emergence in 1854. Also of critical importance was the corruption of the incumbent administration of Democrat James Buchanan—and a nationwide revulsion against party. Grounding his history in a nuanced retelling of the pre-1860 story, Michael F. Holt explores the sectional politics that permeated the election and foreshadowed the coming Civil War. He brings to light how the campaigns of the Republican Party and the National (Northern) Democrats and the Constitutional (Southern) Democrats and the newly formed Constitutional Union Party were not exclusively regional. His attention to the little-studied role of the Buchanan Administration, and of perceived threats to the preservation of the Union, clarifies the true dynamic of the 1860 presidential election, particularly in its early stages.
For the first time, leading political scientists and experienced campaign professionals (many instrumental in the 1992 and 1994 elections) have come together to consider the nuts-and-bolts of American campaigns and elections in conjunction with academic theories and research. Sometimes the two views correspond quite closely—as when academic Paul Herrnson's research on volunteerism reinforces grassroots campaign specialist Will Robinson's experience with field operations at the local level. Other times, theory flies in the face of practice, as William Hamilton (campaign pollster) and Raymond Wolfinger (survey research specialist) reveal in essays on the use of campaign surveys. Sam Popkin embodies the essence of the book; he is a key academic who also played an important role in advising the Clinton campaign.The essays in this volume provide a real education in practical campaign politics. Academics and campaign professionals describe the innovation and reality of election campaigns as they have evolved over time to culminate in the 1992 phenomena of town meetings, bus tours, MTV, talk radio, infomercials, and focus groups. Especially relevant to the 1994 midterm elections, we see how campaign themes and strategy are set, how they are communicated, how advanced campaign tactics are used, why mobilizing volunteers is essential, why early campaign money is worth more, how to get the media to cover a campaign without paying for it, and how to use focus groups, survey research, and media to win elections. Offering a unique and careful mix of Democrat and Republican, academic and practitioner, male and female campaign perspectives, this volume scrutinizes national- and local-level campaigns through 1994 with the 1996 elections in mind. Students, citizens, candidates, and campaign managers will learn not only how to win elections, but why it has become imperative to do so in an ethical way.Perfect for a variety of courses in American government, Campaigns and Elections American Style is borne out of the marriage of campaign professionals and academics teaching in American University's nationally televised Campaign Management Institute. This book is essential reading for political junkies of any stripe and serious students of campaigns and elections. All will be impressed by the clear portrait this volume paints of the professionalization and dramatic transformation of American election campaigns over the last 30 years.
