Chapter Nine Nominations, Elections, and Campaigns.

Chapter Nine

Nominations, Elections, and

Campaigns

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The Evolution of Campaigning

• An election campaign is an organized effort to persuade voters to choose one candidate over others competing for the same office.

• Increasingly, election campaigns have evolved from being party-centered to being candidate-centered.


Nominations

• In the U.S., candidates campaign for nomination as well as election.

• Primary Election: a preliminary election conducted within a political party to select candidates who will run for public office in a subsequent election. • This is how most candidates for major office

are nominated


Primary Election Types

• A closed primary in which voters must register their party affiliation to vote on that party’s potential nominees.

• An open primary in which any voter, regardless of party registration or affiliation, could choose either party’s ballot.


Modified Primary Elections

• A modified closed primary: • Individual state parties decide whether to

allow those not registered with either party to vote with their party registrants.

• A modified open primary: • All those not already registered with a party

could choose any party ballot and vote with party registrants.


Primary Election Types (Cont’d)

• The invisible primary: • Soon after one election ends, prospective

candidates quietly begin lining up political and financial support for their likely race approximately four years later, has also increased in use.


Nominations (Cont’d)

• To nominate a presidential candidate, parties employ a complex mix of ways of polling voters, including presidential primaries, local party caucuses, and party conventions.


Elections

• All seats in the House of Representatives, one-third of the seats in the Senate, and numerous state and local offices are filled in a general election held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even-numbered years.


Elections (Cont’d)

• Voters choose a president indirectly through the electoral college, composed of electors pledged to one of the candidates.


Figure 9.4: The Popular Vote and the Electoral Vote



• Every four years, presidential and congressional elections are held on the same ticket. Congressional elections are also held in other even-numbered years.

• In recent years, elections have resulted in divided government, in which one party controls the presidency and the other party controls the Congress.



• So-called first-past-the-post elections, conducted in single-member districts, award victory to the candidate with the most votes. In congressional elections, this means that the party that wins the most votes tends to win even more seats than projected by its percentage of the vote. • The Republican party has benefited from the

mathematics of first-past-the-post elections since 1994.


Campaigns

• Election campaigns may be studied by analyzing the political context, the available financial resources, and the strategies and tactics that underlie the dissemination of information about the candidate.


Campaigns (Cont’d)

• Political context:

• An incumbent, the current officeholder, usually enjoys an advantage over a challenger, who seeks to replace him or her.

• An open election lacks an incumbent.



• Financing:

• Election campaigns have become very expensive, and ample financing is usually critical to success.

• Campaign financing for federal election today tends to be heavily regulated through the Federal Election Commission.



• In Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court upheld limits on contributions but declared unconstitutional limits on expenses incurred by individuals or organizations who campaigned independently on behalf of a national candidate, likening these expenditures to protected free speech.



• The Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act changed campaign finance rules effective for the 2004 election


Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act

• Raises the individual contribution limit to $2,000 to a specific candidate in a primary, run-off and general election

• Permits a contribution of $5,00 per year to each state party or political committee

• Permits a contribution of $20,000 per year to any national party committee

• Linked future limits to inflation


Campaign Strategies and tactics

• Using information obtained from pollsters or political consultants, professional campaign managers develop a strategy that mixes party, issues, and the candidate’s “image” (perceived personal qualities).


Campaign Strategies and Tactics (Cont’d)

• Three basic strategies include:

• “Party-centered strategy”

• “Issue-oriented strategy”

• “Image-oriented strategy”



• Campaign messages are disseminated to voters via the media through news coverage, candidate appearances on popular television programs, home pages on the World Wide Web, and advertising.


Explaining Voter Choice

• The choices individual voters make can be analyzed as products of both long-term forces, which operate over a series of elections, and short-term forces, which are associated with particular elections.

• Party identification is the most important long-term factor in voting choice.


Explaining Voter Choice (Cont’d)

• Party identification is the most important long-term factor in voting choice.


Figure 9.5: Effect of Party Identification on the Vote, 2004



• Candidates seek to exploit issues that they think are important to voters

• Among short-term forces, candidate attributes are especially important when voters lack information about a candidate’s past behavior and policy stands.



• Most studies of presidential elections show that when people cast their ballots, issues are less important than either party identification or the candidate’s image.

• There are definite limits to the effects of an election campaign on the outcome of elections. Factors outside the control of campaign managers have powerful effects on voting behavior.


Campaigns, Elections, and Parties

• Although the party affiliation of the candidates and the party identification of the voters explain a good deal of electoral behavior, party organizations are not central to U.S. elections.


Campaigns, Elections, and Parties (Cont’d)

• The Republican and Democratic parties fail to meet two of the four principles of responsible party government noted in Chapter 8.

• Parties in the United States typify the pluralist more than the majoritarian model of democracy.

Chapter Nine Nominations, Elections, and Campaigns.

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