The position of president of the United States is an important one, but how does a person get elected president? First, people have to know who they are. To do that, candidates must announce their plan to run for a nomination and the presidency, and then they campaign. A perfect introduction for young readers, this book covers the details of the campaign trail, from grassroots organization to winning delegate support. Readers will learn about key historical figures in U.S. presidential elections. They will also learn how campaigns function today and the debates people have about whether they work well.
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.
In this book, a distinguished group of presidential campaign staff, journalists, and political observers take us inside the 2016 race for the Republican and Democratic nominations and general election, guiding us through each candidate's campaign from the time each candidate announced his or her intention to seek the presidency through the primaries, conventions, and up to election day. Meeting under the auspices of the Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, the candid discussion allows us to learn about the motivations of each candidate, strategies they deployed, and lessons they learned. In addition, representatives from the major SUPERPACS share their strategies and evaluate their impact in an election characterized by unprecedented campaign spending. Campaign for President: The Managers Look at 2016 is essential reading for anyone interested in the inner workings of national political campaigns.
Coming out of one of the most contentious elections in history, Dennis Johnson and Lara Brown have assembled an outstanding team of authors to examine one of the fiercest and most closely fought presidential elections of our time. Like the 2008 and 2012 editions of Campaigning for President, the 2016 edition combines the talents and insights of political scientists who specialize in campaigns and elections together with seasoned political professionals who have been involved in previous presidential campaigns. Campaigning for President is the only series on presidential campaigns that features both political scientists and professional consultants. This book focuses on the most important questions of this most unusual presidential campaign. What was the appeal of Donald Trump? Has Twitter and social media become the dominant means of communicating? How did fake news, WikiLeaks, and the Russians factor in this election? What happened to the Obama coalition and why couldn’t Hillary Clinton capitalize on it? Hundreds of millions of Super PAC dollars were raised and spent, and much of that was wasted. What happened? Is the wild west of online media the new norm for presidential contests? These and many other questions are answered in the provocative essays by scholars and practitioners. The volume also is packed with valuable appendixes: a timeline of the presidential race, biographical sketches of each candidate, a roster of political consultants, the primary and general election results, exit polls, and campaign spending. New to the 2016 Edition The 2016 presidential contest brings a completely new set of players, policies, and electoral challenges. Like the 2008 and 2012 editions, the authors probe the strategies and tactics of the candidate campaigns and the outside organizations. The chapters focus on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but also look at the Bernie Sanders insurgency, the collapse of the mainstream Republican candidates, and the dynamics of the general election. Chapters also analyze the changes in campaign finance, new technologies, the role of social media, and how fake news and subterfuge might become the new realities of presidential campaigning.
From former US Congressman and CIA Officer Will Hurd, a “how-to guide with a prescription for getting the nation on the right footing” (Politico) and “a clarion call for a major political pivot” (San Antonio Report) rooted in the timeless ideals of bipartisanship, inclusivity, and democratic values. “Hurd has the biography and the charisma and the God-given political chops to put the Republican Party—and the rest of the country—on notice.” —THE ATLANTIC It’s getting harder to get big things done in America. The gears of our democracy have been mucked up by political nonsense. To meet the era-defining challenges of the 21st century, our country needs a reboot. In American Reboot, Hurd, called “the future of the GOP” by Politico, provides a “detailed blueprint” (Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense, 2006–2011) for America grounded by what Hurd calls pragmatic idealism—a concept forged from enduring American values to achieve what is actually achievable. Hurd takes on five seismic problems facing a country in crisis: the Republican Party’s failure to present a principled vision for the future; the lack of honest leadership in Washington, DC; income inequality that threatens the livelihood of millions of Americans; US economic and military dominance that is no longer guaranteed; and how technological change in the next thirty years will make the advancements of the last thirty years look trivial. Hurd has seen these challenges up close. A child of interracial parents in South Texas, Hurd survived the back alleys of dangerous places as a CIA officer. He carried that experience into three terms in Congress, where he was, for a time, the House’s only Black Republican, representing a seventy-one percent Latino swing district in Texas that runs along 820 miles of the US-Mexico border. As a cyber security executive and innovation crusader, Hurd has worked with entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of technology to anticipate the shockwaves of the future. Hurd, who the Houston Chronicles calls “a refreshing contract to the panderers, petty demagogues, and political provocateurs who reign these days,” draws on his remarkable experience to present “a call to Americans to consider the most contentious issues of our times more holistically” (The Atlantic). He outlines how the Republican party can look like America by appealing to the middle, not the edges. He maps out how leaders should inspire rather than fearmonger. He forges a domestic policy based on the idea that prosperity should be a product of empowering people, not the government. He articulates a foreign policy where our enemies fear us and our friends love us. And lastly, he charts a forceful path forward for America’s technological future. We all know we can do better. It’s time to hit “ctrl alt del” and start the American Reboot.
How the 2016 news media environment allowed Trump to win the presidency The 2016 presidential election campaign might have seemed to be all about one man. He certainly did everything possible to reinforce that impression. But to an unprecedented degree the campaign also was about the news media and its relationships with the man who won and the woman he defeated. Words that Matter assesses how the news media covered the extraordinary 2016 election and, more important, what information—true, false, or somewhere in between—actually helped voters make up their minds. Using journalists' real-time tweets and published news coverage of campaign events, along with Gallup polling data measuring how voters perceived that reporting, the book traces the flow of information from candidates and their campaigns to journalists and to the public. The evidence uncovered shows how Donald Trump's victory, and Hillary Clinton's loss, resulted in large part from how the news media responded to these two unique candidates. Both candidates were unusual in their own ways, and thus presented a long list of possible issues for the media to focus on. Which of these many topics got communicated to voters made a big difference outcome. What people heard about these two candidates during the campaign was quite different. Coverage of Trump was scattered among many different issues, and while many of those issues were negative, no single negative narrative came to dominate the coverage of the man who would be elected the 45th president of the United States. Clinton, by contrast, faced an almost unrelenting news media focus on one negative issue—her alleged misuse of e-mails—that captured public attention in a way that the more numerous questions about Trump did not. Some news media coverage of the campaign was insightful and helpful to voters who really wanted serious information to help them make the most important decision a democracy offers. But this book also demonstrates how the modern media environment can exacerbate the kind of pack journalism that leads some issues to dominate the news while others of equal or greater importance get almost no attention, making it hard for voters to make informed choices.
