Chapter 12. Voting, Campaigns, and Elections
Study
Chapter Summary with Key Terms
Voting enhances the quality of democratic life by legitimizing the outcomes of elections. However, American voter turnout levels are typically among the lowest in the world and may endanger American democracy. Factors such as age, income, education, and race affect whether a person is likely to vote, as do legal obstacles (though measures like the Motor Voter Bill try to overcome these), varying levels of voter mobilization, and attitudinal changes.
Candidates and the media often blur issue positions, and voters realistically cannot investigate policy proposals on their own. Therefore, voters make a decision by considering party identification and peer viewpoints, prominent issues, employing elements of both prospective voting and retrospective voting and candidate image.
The “road to the White House” is long, expensive, and grueling. It begins with planning and early fundraising and develops into more active campaigning during the presidential primary--where primaries may be open or closed--and party caucus phase, a period considerably shortened these days due to the practice of front-loading. Candidates want to be perceived to have momentum in the race, but being considered the front-runner has both advantages and disadvantages. Each party's choice of a candidate is officially announced at the party conventions, and the general election campaign is launched after Labor Day.
The general election campaign is shaped by the battle for large states with significant votes in the electoral college and the quest to find and convert swing voters. Professional staff run the campaign--coordinating activities, engaging in oppo research, managing the media and running ads, including negative advertising. An essential part of campaign strategy is the consideration of issues--valence issues on which most candidates agree; position issues on which they differ; wedge issues, which can be used against the other side; and issue ownership, which can give one party or the other an edge. Raising and spending money is also a key part of campaigns. Campaign money can be in the form of government matching funds given to candidates of the major parties and to candidates of the minor parties who performed well in the previous election, hard money donations collected by the candidates, or soft money collected by parties and interest groups. Soft money, used for get-out-the-vote efforts and the funding of issue advocacy ads, was supposed to be regulated by campaign finance legislation in 2002, but loopholes have allowed it to flourish in a different form. All this campaign activity is geared toward winning the election, so the victorious candidate can claim an electoral mandate and pressure Congress into enacting his preferred policies.
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should understand
- Americans’ ambivalence about the vote and the reasons that only about half of the citizenry even bother to exercise what is supposed to be a precious right
- how voters go about making decisions, and how this in turn influences the character of presidential elections
- the organizational and strategic aspects of running for the presidency.