Transcript Chapter 9: Nominations, Elections and Campaigns

Chapter 9:
Nominations,
Elections and
Campaigns
The Evolution of Campaigning
• Election campaign: an organized effort to
persuade voters to choose one candidate over
others competing for the same office
• Have evolved from being party-centered to
candidate-centered
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From Many to One: 2004 Democratic
Presidential Hopefuls Dropping Out
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Nominations
• Most distinguishing feature of U.S. nomination
process: involves an election by party voters
• Nomination for Congress and State Offices
– Primary Election: a preliminary election conducted within
a political party to select candidates who will run for public
office in a subsequent election.
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Nominations
• Nomination for Congress and State Offices
– Types of Primary Elections:
• Closed primary: voters must declare their party affiliation to vote
on that party’s potential nominees
• Open primary: voters need not declare their party affiliation and
can choose one party’s primary ballot to take into the voting booth
• Modified closed primary: allows individual state parties decide
whether to permit independents to vote in their primaries and for
which office
• Modified open primary: entitles independent voters to vote in a
party’s primary
– Primaries are peculiar to the U.S.
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Nominations
• Nomination for President
– Until the 1960s, delegates chose their party’s nominee at
the national convention
– Since 1972, national conventions have simply ratified the
results of the complex process for selecting convention
delegates
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Nominations
• Selecting Convention Delegates
– Most important distinction is between presidential primary
and local caucus
• Presidential primary: a special primary election used to
select delegates to attend the party’s national convention,
which in turn nominates the presidential candidate
• Caucus/convention: a method used to select delegates to
attend a party’s national convention; generally, a local
meeting selects delegates for a county-level meeting, which
in turn selects delegates for a higher-level meeting; process
culminates in a state convention that actually selects the
national convention delegates
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Nominations
• Selecting Convention Delegates
– Presidential primaries now generate 80% of convention
delegates
– Conventions merely ratify decision made in the states
– Front-loading: states’ practice of moving delegate
selection primaries and caucuses earlier in the calendar
year to gain media and candidate attention
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Nominations
• Campaigning for the Nomination
– 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
– Iowa and New Hampshire are first testing grounds
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Nominations
• Consequences of Primary-Centered Nomination
Process
– Timing and luck can affect who wins
– Incumbent president usually has little or no opposition
within the party
– Candidates favored by most party identifiers usually win
their party’s nomination
– Candidates win the nomination on their own, without the
support of the national party organization
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Elections
• General election: a national election held by
law in November of every even-numbered year
– All seats in the House of Representatives
– One-third of the seats in the Senate
– Numerous state and local offices
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Elections
• Presidential Elections and the Electoral College
– The Electoral College: Structure
• 535 + 3 (for DC)
• Need 270 votes to win
• If no candidate receives a majority, election goes to the
House of Representatives
• Apportionment of votes changes after 2000 census
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Elections
• Presidential Elections and the Electoral College
– The Electoral College: Politics
• Since 1860, all states have selected electors through popular
vote
• Highlights the fact that the presidential election is federal, not
national
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Elections
• Presidential Elections and the Electoral College
– The Electoral College: Abolish It?
• Must distinguish between electoral “college” and electoral
“system”
• Electoral college is the set of individuals empowered to cast
state’s electoral votes
– Elected directly
– May be “faithless”
– May be good reason to oppose need for body of electors to
translate the decision of voters
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Elections
• Presidential Elections and the Electoral College
– The Electoral College: Abolish It?
• The electoral “system”
– Candidate can win a plurality of the vote but still not win the
presidency
– From 1888-2000, the electoral college magnified the margin of
victory
– 2000 election showed that the candidate could win the popular
vote and still lose the federal election
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Elections
• Presidential Elections and the Electoral College
– The Electoral College: Abolish It?
• Reasons to support the electoral system
– Gives small states more weight in the vote
– Encourages candidates to campaign on foot and in rural areas
– If a nationwide recount were necessary, the problems of Florida
would be multiplied by 50
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The Popular Vote and the Electoral Vote
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Elections
• The Popular Vote and the Electoral Vote
– Ballots list candidates for presidency, then national offices,
then state and local offices
• Straight ticket: in voting, a single party’s candidates for all
the offices
• Split ticket: in voting, candidates from different parties for
different offices
• Split ticket voting results in divided government
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Elections
• The Popular Vote and the Electoral Vote
– First-past-the-post elections: a British term for elections
conducted in single-member districts that award victory to
the candidate with the most votes
• The party that wins the most votes tends to win even more
seats than projected by its percentage of the vote
• Both parties have both benefited from and suffered under this
phenomena
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How America Votes
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Campaigns
• The Political Context
– Most important structural factors
• Incumbent or Challenger?
• Characteristics of the State or District
– Significant political issues may also play a role and negate
other advantages
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Campaigns
• Financing
– Quality of a campaign organization often boils down to
campaign funds
– Regulating Campaign Financing
• Federal Election Campaign Act (1971, amended 1974)
– Created Federal Election Commission
– Limited PAC contributions
– Limited hard money contributions
– Did not target soft money contributions
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Campaigns
• Financing
– Regulating Campaign Financing
• Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act (2002)
– Changed campaign finance rules effective for the 2004 election
– Raises the individual contribution limit to $2,000 to a specific
candidate in a primary, run-off and general election
– Permits a contribution of $5,000 per year to each state party or
political committee
– Permits a contribution of $20,000 per year to any national party
committee
– Linked future contribution limits to inflation
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Campaigns
• Financing
– Public Financing of Presidential Campaigns
• FEC matched dollars raised, up to half of a preset spending
limit (indexed to inflation)
– All candidates 1976-1996 accepted primary campaign funding,
and the associated spending limits
– All candidates since 1976 have accepted general election
funding, and the associated spending limits
• Total campaign spending is far more than the official limit
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Campaigns
• Financing
– Private Financing of Congressional Campaigns
• Presidential campaigns are isolated from congressional
campaigns
• Congressional campaigns raised more money than
presidential campaigns (in 2004)
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Campaigns
• Financing
– Future Trends in Campaign Finance
– Public funding of presidential primaries faces an uncertain
future
– Public funding of presidential campaigns has strengthened
the trend toward “personalized” presidential campaigns
– Congressional candidates – and incumbents – must spend
substantial time raising funds from private sources
– BCRA spawned the rise of 527 committees
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Campaigns
• Strategies and Tactics
– Strategy: the broad approach used to persuade citizens to
vote for the candidate
– Tactics: the content of the messages and the way they are
delivered
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Campaigns
• Strategies and Tactics
– Basic Strategies:
• Party-centered strategy: relies heavily on voters’ partisan
identification and the party’s organization
• Issue-oriented strategy: seeks support from groups that feel
strongly about various policies
• Image-oriented strategy: depends on the candidate’s
perceived personal qualities
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Campaigns
• Strategies and Tactics
– Making the News
• News coverage is free
• News coverage seems objective to the audience
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Campaigns
• Strategies and Tactics
– Advertising the Candidate
• Objectives of paid advertising
– First objective: name recognition
– Second objective: promotion of candidate virtues
– Negative objective: attack the opponent or play on emotions
• Political ads contain more substantive information than many
people believe
• Media may report controversial ads as news
• Findings about impact of negative ads is ambiguous
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Campaigns
• Strategies and Tactics
– Using the Internet
• Candidates like the Internet because it is fast, easy to use,
and cheap
• Internet use by voters has steadily increased
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Explaining Voting Choice
• Party Identification
– The most important long-term factor in voting choice
– Winning presidential candidate wins most of his party
identifiers, some defectors from the other party, and most
of the independents (usually)
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Effects of Party
Identification and the Vote, 2004
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Population Shifts and
Political Gains and Losses
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Explaining Voting Choice
• Issues and Politics
– Challengers point out problems and promise to solve them
– Incumbents campaign on their accomplishments
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Explaining Voting Choice
• Candidate Attributes
– Especially important when voters lack information about a
candidate’s past behavior and policy stands
– Voters may fall back on their beliefs about gender, race
and religion in making political judgments
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Explaining Voting Choice
• Evaluating the Vote Choice
– For most presidential voters, issues are less important
than either party identification or the candidate’s image
– Relationship between voters’ positions on issues and their
party identification is clearer and more consistent today
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Explaining Voting Choice
• Campaign Effects
– The Television Campaign
• “Sound bites” make TV news unreliable for candidate
messages
• Campaigns are principally fought through television
advertising
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Explaining Voting Choice
• The Presidential Debates
– A regular campaign feature since 1976
– Candidates negotiate strict conditions
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Campaigns, Elections, and Parties
• Parties and the Majoritarian Model
– Weak link in the model of responsible party government is
the connection between candidates and voters through
campaigns and elections
– Parties do not choose candidates according to the party
program
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Campaigns, Elections, and Parties
• Parties and the Pluralist Model
– Parties act like giant interest groups
– Parties’ primary interest is in electing and re-electing
candidates, and enjoying the benefits of public office
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