Elections, Campaigns, & Voting The who, what, when, where, why, and how of political participation.
Voting elections and campaigns
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Transcript of Voting elections and campaigns
Voting, Elections and Campaigns
Patterns in Voter Turnout
• turnout - the proportion of the voting-age public that votes
• Education and Income– Higher education more likely to vote– Higher income more likely to vote
• Age– Over 30 more likely to vote
Patterns in Voter Turnout
• Gender– About the same or women slightly more likely to vote
• Race and Ethnicity– Whites tend to vote more regularly; may be
education/income effects– Hispanic Americans less likely to vote than African
Americans
• Interest in Politics– More interested more likely to vote
Why Is Voter Turnout So Low?
• Too Busy
• Difficulty of Registration – burden of registration on individual
• Difficulty of Absentee Voting
• Number of Elections – as in too many elections
Patterns in Vote Choice
• Party Identification
• Issues– retrospective judgment – evaluation of
party in power– prospective judgment – evaluation of a
candidate’s pledge
Types of Elections
– primary elections – who will represent party in general election
– closed primaries – only party’s registered voters can participate
– open primaries – anyone is allowed to vote, even from other parties
– crossover voting – participation in the other party’s primary
– raiding – organized attempt to influence other party results
Types of Elections
– runoff primary – occurs when there is no majority
– general election – election to public office– initiative – citizens propose legislation– referendum – legislature proposes legislation– recall – remove an incumbent from office
Nomination Campaign
• Begins at candidacy and ends at the party convention
– Primaries versus Caucuses• primaries direct election, caucuses party meetings• front-loading – the tendency of states to choose an early
date on the primary calendar
– The Party Conventions• nomination usually settled well in advance
– Delegate Selection• delegates are usually more elite than average Americans
The Key Players
• The Candidate• The Campaign Staff
– volunteers are central to campaigns.• The Candidate’s Professional Staff
– campaign manager – coordinates the campaign– finance chair – fund-raising– pollster – public opinion surveys– direct mailer – direct mail fund-raising– communications director – media strategy– press secretary – communicates with journalists– Internet team – web resources
The Electoral College
• The Electoral College in the Nineteenth Century
– confusion in 1800– modified by the Twelfth Amendment – separate
elections for president and vice president• The Electoral College in the Twentieth and
Twenty-First Centuries– Bush versus Gore (2000)– reapportionment – the reallocation of the number
of seats in the House of Representatives allocated to each state after each decennial census.
– shifts in population could alter the political map
Congressional Elections
• The Incumbency Advantage – people in office tend to remain in office. High rate of re-election, even when approval of Congress remarkably low…why?
– Redistricting• redistricting – redrawing congressional districts to reflect
increases or decreases in seats allotted to the states as well as population shifts within a state.
• gerrymandering – drawing of boundaries to product a particular electoral outcome
– The Impact of Scandals• Most incumbents implicated in scandals retire or resign
Congressional Elections
• Presidential Coattails– Successful presidential candidates carry into office
congressional candidates of the same party in the same election
• Midterm Elections – elections that take place in the middle of a presidential term
– the incumbent party usually loses seats in midterm elections
• The 2008 Congressional Elections– Democratic majority in both houses, plus the
Presidency
The Media’s Role in theCampaign Process
• Paid Media – political advertisements– positive ads– negative ads– contrast ads– inoculation ads
• Free Media – news stories– controlled by editors, not candidates
• The New Media – Internet – more information, more quickly– “rapid response”– first use of internet in 1992– social networking sites