Summary

The long and arduous campaign required of candidates is unique to the United States. While some argue that this extended period is a useful testing ground, others question its effectiveness in helping citizens choose the best candidate. The first part of this chapter discusses the structure and dynamics of presidential election campaigns, with special attention given to the role of money in campaigns. As the campaign nears its end, voters face two key choices: whether to vote and, if they choose to, how to vote. The second part of this chapter discusses the ways that voters make these choices.

THE NOMINATION GAME

There are two types of campaigns in American politics: campaigns for party nominations and campaigns between the two nominees. A nomination is a party's official endorsement of a candidate for office. Success in the nomination game generally requires money, media attention, and momentum. Candidates attempt to manipulate each of these elements through campaign strategy.

From February through June of election year, the individual state parties choose their delegates to the national convention through caucuses or primaries. At one time, all states selected their delegates to the national convention in a meeting of state party leaders, called a caucus. Today, caucuses are open to all voters who are registered with the party. The Democrats also require strict adherence to complex rules of representation. Only a minority of states hold caucuses today, with the earliest caucus traditionally held in Iowa.

Most of the delegates to the national conventions are selected in presidential primaries in which voters in a state go to the polls and vote for a candidate or for delegates pledged to a candidate. The most recent restructuring of Democratic party primaries began in 1968. Riots at the Democratic National Convention that year led to the creation of the McGovern-Fraser Commission, which established open procedures and quota requirements for delegate selection. The party has since replaced most of its quota requirements with affirmative action guidelines, with the exception that each delegation must be half male and half female. Many believe that the divisiveness of the Democrats' open procedures has hurt their ability to unite for the fall campaign, and the party has tried to restore a role for its party leaders by setting aside a portion of delegate slots for party leaders and elected officials (known as superdelegates).

The primary season begins in the winter in New Hampshire. At this early stage, the campaign is not for delegates but for images. In 1988, the southern states (feeling that northern states like New Hampshire had disproportionate influence in the choice of the Democratic nominees) created Super Tuesday by moving all of their primaries to the same day in early March (referred to as frontloading). A wide variety of different procedures are used because state laws (not federal) determine when primaries are held, and each state party sets up its own rules for how delegates are allocated.

There are a number of criticisms of the primary system, including the disproportionate amount of attention that is given to the early caucuses and primaries. Running for the presidency has become a full-time job, and prominent politicians find it difficult to take time out from their duties to run. Money plays too big a role in the caucuses and primaries. Participation is low and is not representative of the voting population. There are also numerous defenders of the system, including most of the candidates-many of whom feel that the primary contest keeps candidates in touch with the public.

The winners of presidential nominations are usually a foregone conclusion by the time of the national party conventions. The preferences of delegates selected in primaries and open caucuses are known before the conventions begin. Nevertheless, conventions are a significant rallying point for the parties and they are important in developing the party's policy positions and in promoting political representation.

THE CAMPAIGN GAME

Modern campaigning is heavily dependent on technology. While television is the most prevalent means used by candidates to reach voters, between 15 and 25 percent of presidential campaign expenses now go to computer services and direct mail. As one of its most important uses, computer technology targets mailings to prospective supporters. The accumulation of mailing lists enables a candidate to pick almost any issue and write to a list of people concerned about it.

Once nominated, candidates concentrate on campaigning for the general election in November. Three ingredients are needed to project the right image to the voters: a campaign organization, money, and media attention.

Campaigns are expensive, and they are growing more so in America's high-tech political arena. Candidates need money to build a campaign organization and to get the message out. There is a common perception that money buys votes and influence.

In the early 1970s, momentum developed for campaign financing reform. Several public interest lobbies (particularly Common Cause and the National Committee for an Effective Congress) led the drive for reform. Congress subsequently passed the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1974 with the goals of tightening reporting requirements for contributions and limiting overall expenditures. A bipartisan Federal Election Commission (FEC) was created to administer campaign finance laws and enforce compliance with their requirements. Among other provisions, the act provided public financing for presidential primaries and general elections, and limits were established for presidential campaign spending. Money raised for voter registration drives and the distribution of campaign material at the grassroots level or for generic party advertising is known as soft money and is not subject to any contribution limits.

Campaign spending reforms have made campaigns more open and honest. All contribution and expenditure records are open, and FEC auditors try to make sure that the regulations are enforced. However, campaign reforms also encouraged the spread of Political Action Committees (PACs). Any interest group can now form its own PAC to directly channel contributions of up to $5,000 per candidate. In 2002, the McCain-Feingold Act: (1) banned soft money contributions; (2) increased the amount that individuals could give to candidates from $1,000 to $2,000 and indexed the latter amount to rise in the future along with inflation; and (3) barred groups from running "issue ads" within 60 days of a 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).

PACs have proliferated in recent years and play a major role in paying for expensive campaigns. PACs contributed more than $258 million to Senate and House candidates in the 2002 congressional elections. Critics of the PAC system believe that this has led to a system of open graft. They fear that the large amount of money controlled by PACs leads to PAC control over what the winners do once they are in office. On the other hand, this chapter notes that the perception that PACs control officeholders may be misleading since most PACs give money to candidates who already agree with them. The impact of PAC money on presidents is even more doubtful since presidential campaigns are partly subsidized by the public and presidents have well-articulated positions on most important issues.

Money is critical to electoral victory. In this era of high-tech politics, pollsters, public relations people, direct-mail consultants, and many other specialists are crucial to a campaign. Perhaps the most basic complaint about money and politics is that there may be a direct link between dollars spent and votes received.

Media attention is also crucial in campaigns. Almost every logistical decision in a campaign is calculated according to its intended media impact. The major item in a campaign budget is television advertising, and no major candidate these days can do without what political scientist Dan Nimmo calls "the political persuaders"-a new profession of political consultants who can turn a disorganized campaign into a well-run, high-tech operation. The emphasis on public relations worries some observers of American politics, who fear a new era of politics when Madison Avenue will be more influential than Main Street. The networks rarely delve into where the candidates stand on the issues. News coverage is disproportionately devoted to campaign strategies, speculation about what will happen next, poll results, and other aspects of the campaign game.

Most people pay relatively little attention to campaigns in the first place. People have a remarkable capacity for selective perception-paying most attention to things they already agree with and interpreting events according to their own predispositions.

Political scientists have found that campaigns have three major effects on voters: reinforcement, activation, and conversion. Campaigns can reinforce voters' preferences for candidates; they can activate voters, getting them to contribute money or become active in campaigns; and they can convert by changing voters' minds. However, campaigns rarely convert; they primarily reinforce and activate.

WHETHER TO VOTE: A CITIZEN'S FIRST CHOICE

Nearly two centuries of American electoral history include greatly expanded suffrage (the right to vote). Ironically, proportionately fewer of those eligible have chosen to exercise that right. The highest turnout of the past 100 years was the 80 percent turnout in 1896; in 2004, only 55 percent of the adult population voted for president and in the 2002 congressional elections only 39 percent took part.

Individuals with high levels of political efficacy and civic duty are more likely to vote, as are individuals who see policy differences between the two parties. Before voting, citizens in most states must register to vote, often a cumbersome procedure. The Motor Voter Act-which allows individuals to register to vote when they receive or renew their driver's licenses-has made registration a little easier since 1993.

There are several characteristics of voters and nonvoters: Voting is a class-biased activity, in that individuals with higher-than-average education levels have a higher rate of voting; young people have the lowest turnout rate; whites vote with greater frequency than members of minority groups (but not when adjustments are made for factors such as income and education); and southerners are less likely to vote than northerners. Other characteristics associated with turnout are marital status, mobility, union membership, and religiosity; gender is only weakly related to turnout, with women being slightly more likely to vote than men.

HOW AMERICANS VOTE: EXPLAINING CITIZENS' DECISIONS

Many journalists and politicians believe the winner of an election has a mandate from the people to carry out the policies he or she promised during the campaign. Conversely, political scientists know that different kinds of people vote a certain way for different reasons. Political scientists focus instead on three major elements of voters' decisions: voters' party identification, voters' evaluations of the candidates, and the match between voters' policy positions and those of the candidates and parties (known as policy voting).

Because of the importance of party identification in deciding how to vote, the parties tended to rely on groups that lean heavily in their favor to form their basic coalition. Scholars singled out party affiliation as the single best predictor of a voter's decision in the 1950s. With the emergence of television and candidate-centered politics, the hold of the party on the voter eroded substantially during the 1960s and 1970s, and then stabilized at a new and lower level during the 1980s.

Political psychologists Shawn Rosenberg and Patrick McCafferty show that it is possible to manipulate a candidate's appearance in a way that affects voters' choices. Other research has shown that the three most important components of candidate image are integrity, reliability, and competence.

Policy voting occurs when people base their choices in an election on their own issue preferences. True policy voting can take place only when several conditions are met: Voters must have a clear view of their own policy positions; voters must know where the candidates stand on policy issues; and voters must actually cast a vote for the candidate whose policy positions coincide with their own. One recurrent problem is that candidates often decide that the best way to handle a controversial issue is to cloud their positions in rhetoric; both candidates may be deliberately ambiguous. The problem is further complicated by the fact that the media typically focus more on the "horse race" aspects of the campaign than on the policy stands of the candidates.

In the early days of voting research, the evidence seemed clear: Voters rarely voted on policies, preferring to rely on party identification or candidate evaluations to make up their minds. The Changing American Voter challenged this claim, however, arguing that voters had become more sophisticated about issues and better able to use policy positions to gauge candidates. Although it is questionable whether today's voters are more sophisticated about issues, policy voting has become somewhat easier than in the past; today's candidates are regularly forced to take clear stands to appeal to their own party's primary voters.

The intensity of the battle for the presidency in 2004 was at least in part due to the controversial way Bush gained the presidency in 2000. Ultimately, with the margin between Bush and Gore down to 537 votes in Florida, the election hinged on whether or not the undervotes (ballots that showed no vote for president) would be examined by hand or not.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore (2000) overruled the Florida Supreme Court and held that although a recount was legal, the same (and more precise) standards for evaluating ballots would have to be applied in all counties. Most importantly, they ruled that there was not enough time to recount all the ballots in an orderly fashion by the time the electors were to vote on December 12. Thus, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately determined that George W. Bush would emerge the winner.

THE LAST BATTLE: THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

It is the electoral vote that actually determines the outcome of the presidential election. The Founders created the electoral college because they wanted the president to be selected by the nation's elite. Nevertheless, it has been customary since 1828 for electors to vote for the candidate who won their state's popular vote.

Despite winning office by a narrow margin, Bush governed boldly, making numerous consequential decisions that reshaped American policy. Many of his decisions further polarized his political allies from his political opponents. According to exit polls, strong leadership in the war on terrorism ended up being one of people's major reasons for voting for Bush. Voters whose top concern was taxes also favored Bush, who promised to stay the course with his tax-cutting agenda. On the other hand, Kerry won votes among those who were most concerned with the war in Iraq, the economy, health care, and education. There were sharp regional divisions in the vote in 2004, unlike in 2000, when Bush lost the popular vote by about three percent (51 percent to 48 percent). The results of the 2004 election show how important it is to understand how the electoral college works.

The electoral vote may distort the popular vote. All states except Maine and Nebraska have a winner-take-all system in which electors vote as a bloc for the candidate who received the most votes in the states. In almost every close election, a few vote changes have the potential to produce a result where one candidate could win the popular vote and another could win the electoral vote (and the presidency). However, the election has not been decided by the House since 1824.

Although in 2000 Bush won in the electoral college by 271 to 266 (one elector from Washington, D.C. abstained in protest), Gore narrowly won the popular vote by 48.4 to 47.9 percent. This marked the first time since 1888 that the winner of the popular vote lost the decisive electoral college count. As a result, serious discussion is now being given to changing the electoral college system. But as with past proposals to reform this aspect of our elections, it is likely that reform proposals will encounter strong opposition from senators who represent small states.

UNDERSTANDING CAMPAIGNS AND VOTING BEHAVIOR

Are campaigns too democratic? The American political system allows citizens a voice at almost every point of the election process, unlike many countries where a political elite controls nominations and elections. As a result, party outsiders can get elected in a way that is virtually unknown outside the United States. The process has also led to what some call "the permanent campaign" and what Martin Wattenberg has termed the "candidate-centered age." Some analysts believe the process of openness places numerous demands on citizens; many are overwhelmed by the process and do not participate. Today's campaigns clearly promote individualism in American politics. The American campaign game is one of individual candidates, by individual candidates, and for individual candidates.

While the threat of election defeat constrains policymakers, it also helps to increase generalized support for government and its powers. Elections legitimize the power of the state, thereby making it easier to expand the size of the government. When people have the power to dole out electoral reward and punishment, they are more likely to see government as their servant instead of their master. As a result, citizens in a democracy often seek to benefit from government (rather than to be protected from it). As democracy has spread, government has come to do more and more, and its size has grown.

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