Elections and Campaigns
- Presidential versus congressional campaigns
- Introduction
- Two phases: getting nominated and getting elected
- Getting nominated
- Getting a name on the ballot
- An individual effort (versus organizational effort in Europe)
- Parties play a minor role (compared with Europe)
- Parties used to play a major role
- Major differences
- Presidential races are more competitive.
- House races have lately been one-sided for Democrats.
- Presidential winner rarely gets more than 55 percent of vote
- Most House incumbents are reelected (more than 90 percent)
- Fewer people vote in congressional elections
- Unless election coincides with presidential election
- Gives greater importance to partisan voters (party regulars)
- Congressional incumbents can service their constituents.
- Can take credit for governmental grants, programs, and so forth
- President can't: power is not local
- Congressional candidates can duck responsibility.
- "I didn't do it; the people in Washington did!"
- President is stuck with blame
- But local candidates can suffer when their leader's economic policies fail
- Benefit of presidential coattails has declined
- Congressional elections have become largely independent
- Reduces meaning (and importance) of party
- Presidential races are more competitive.
- Running for president
- Getting mentioned
- Using reporters, trips, speeches, and name recognition
- Sponsoring legislation, governing large state
- Setting aside time to run
- Reagan: six years
- May have to resign from office first
- Money
- Individuals can give $1,000, political action committees (PACs) $5,000
- Candidates must raise $5,000 in twenty states to qualify for matching grants to pay for primary
- Organization
- Need a large (paid) staff
- Need volunteers
- Need advisers on issues: position papers
- Strategy and themes
- Incumbent versus challenger: defend or attack?
- Setting the tone (positive or negative)
- Developing a theme: trust, confidence, and so on
- Judging the timing
- Choosing a target voter: who's the audience?
- Getting mentioned
- Getting elected to Congress
- Malapportionment and gerrymandering.
- Establishing the size of the House
- Winning the primary
- Ballot procedures
- Developing a personal following for the "party's" nomination
- Incumbent advantage
- Sophomore surge
- Using the perqs of office
- Campaigning for / against Congress
- Impact of the way we elect individuals to Congress
- Legislators closely tied to local concerns
- Weak party leadership
- Introduction
- Primary versus general campaigns
- Kinds of elections and primaries: general versus primary elections
- Differences between primary and general campaigns
- What works in a general election may not work in a primary
- Different voters, workers, and media attention
- Must mobilize activists with money and motivation to win nomination
- Must play to the politics of activists
- Iowa caucuses
- Held in February of general election year
- Candidates must do well
- Winners tend to be "ideologically correct"
- Most liberal Democrat, most conservative Republican
- The caucus system: "musical chairs and fraternity pledge week"
- The balancing act
- Being conservative (or liberal) enough to get nominated
- Move to center to get elected
- True nationwide in states where activists are more polarized than average voter
- The "clothespin vote": neither candidate is appealing
- Even primary voters can be more extreme ideologically than the average voter
Example: McGovern in 1972
- What works in a general election may not work in a primary
- Two kinds of campaign issues
- Position issues
- Valence issues
- Television, debates, and direct mail
- Paid advertising (spots)
- Has little (or a very subtle) effect on outcome: spots tend to cancel each other out
- Most voters rely on many sources of information.
- News broadcasts (visuals)
- Cost little
- May have greater credibility with voters
- Rely on having TV camera crew around
- May be less informative than spots
- Debates
- Usually an advantage only to the challenger
- Reagan in 1980: reassured voters
- Primary debates: the "dating game" in 1988
- Risk of slips of the tongue on visuals and debates
- Ford and Poland, Carter and lust, Reagan and trees
- Forces candidates to rely on stock speeches
- Sell yourself, not your ideas
- Free television time to major presidential candidates in 1996
- The computer
- Makes direct mail campaigns possible
- Allows candidates to address specific voters
- Creates importance of mailing lists
- The gap between running a campaign and running the government
- Party leaders had to worry about reelection
- Today's political consultants don't
- Paid advertising (spots)
- Money
- How important is it?
- "Money is the mother's milk of politics."
- Presidential candidates spent $286 million in 1992; up from $177 million in 1988
- Are candidates being "sold" like soap? Answer is not so obvious
- The sources of campaign money
- Presidential primaries: part private, part public money
- Federal matching funds
- Only match small donors: less than $250; $5,000 in twenty states
- Gives incentive to raise money from small donors
- Government also gives lump-sum grants to parties to cover conventions
- Presidential general elections: all public money
- Congressional elections: all private money
- From individuals, PACs, and parties
- Most from individual small donors ($100 to $200 a person)
- $1,000 maximum for individual donors
- Benefit performances by rock stars, etc.
- $5,000 limit from PACs
- But most PACs give only a few hundred dollars
- Tremendous PAC advantage to incumbents: backing the winner
- Challengers have to pay their own way; only one-sixth from PACs
- Presidential primaries: part private, part public money
- Campaign finance rules
- Watergate
- Dubious and illegal money raising schemes
- Democrats and Republicans benefited from unenforceable laws.
- Nixon's resignation and a new campaign finance law
- Reform law
- Set limit on individual donations ($1,000 per election)
- Reaffirmed ban on corporate and union donations, but allowed them to raise money through PACs
- Set limit on PAC donations ($5,000 per election to individuals, $15,000 per year to a party)
- Federal tax money made available for primaries and general election campaigns.
- Impact of the law
- Increase in money spent on elections
- Increase in PAC spending
- Additional problems: independent expenditures and soft money
- Campaign finance reform
- Reforms can have unintended consequences
- Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002
- Ban on soft money
- Increase on individual contributions (to $2,000 per candidate per election)
- Restrictions on independent expenditures
- Watergate
- Money and winning
- During peacetime, presidential elections usually decided by three things:
- Political party affiliation
- State of the economy
- Character of candidates
- Money makes a difference in congressional races
- Challenger must spend to gain recognition
- Jacobson: big-spending challengers do better
- Big-spending incumbents also do better
- Party, incumbency, and issues also have a role
- Advantages of incumbency
- Easier to raise money
- Can provide services for constituency
- Can use franked mailings
- Can get free publicity through legislation and such
- During peacetime, presidential elections usually decided by three things:
- How important is it?
- What decides elections?
- Party identification, but why don't Democrats always win?
- Democrats less wedded to their party
- GOP does better among independents
- Republicans have higher turnout
- Issues, especially the economy
- V. O. Key: most voters who switch parties do so in their own interests
- They know which issues affect them personally
- They care strongly about emotional issues (abortion, etc.)
- Prospective voting
- Know the issues and vote for the best candidate
- Most common among activists and special interest groups
- Few voters use prospective voting because it requires information.
- Retrospective voting
- Judge the incumbent's performance and vote accordingly
- Have things gotten better or worse, especially economically?
- Examples: presidential campaigns of 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992
- Usually helps incumbent unless economy has gotten worse
- Most elections decided by retrospective votes
- Midterm election: voters turn against president's party
- V. O. Key: most voters who switch parties do so in their own interests
- The campaign
- Campaigns do make a difference
- Reawaken voters' partisan loyalties
- Let voters see how candidates handle pressure
- Let voters judge candidates' characters
- Campaigns tend to emphasize themes over details
- True throughout American history
- What has changed is the importance of primary elections and tone of campaigns
- Theme campaigns give more influence to single-issue groups
- Campaigns do make a difference
- Finding a winning coalition
- Ways of looking at various groups
- How loyal, or percentage voting for party
- How important, or number voting for party
- Democratic coalition
- Blacks most loyal
- Jews slipping somewhat
- Hispanics somewhat mixed
- Catholics, southerners, unionists departing the coalition lately
- Republican coalition
- Party of business and professional people
- Very loyal, defecting only in 1964
- Usually wins vote of poor because of retired, elderly voters
- Contribution to Democratic coalition
- Blacks loyal but small proportion
- Catholics, unionists, and southerners largest part but least dependable
- Ways of looking at various groups
- Party identification, but why don't Democrats always win?
- The Effect of Elections on Policy
- Political scientists are interested broad trends in wining and losing
- Cynics: public policy remains more or less the same no matter which official or party is in office
- Comparison: Great Britain, with parliamentary system and strong parties, often sees marked changes, as in 1945
- Reply: evidence indicates that many American elections do make great differences in policy
- Why, then, the perception that elections do not matter? Because change alternates with consolidation; most elections are only retrospective judgments