Unit 4: Campaigns and Elections
Essential Question: Evaluate the fairness of our current system of presidential primaries and caucuses.
The Nomination Game
• A nomination is a party’s official endorsement of a candidate for office.
• Politicians begin their bid for a presidential nomination more than a year in advance of the election. In most other countries, campaigns are limited to only a few months.
• Most candidates have previously held a government post (not Trump of course!), such as representative, senator, governor, or military general.
• The master game plan candidates lay out to guide their electoral campaign is the campaign strategy.
Competing for Delegates
• Each state selects delegates to send to the Democratic and Republic national conventions, which have the supreme power to select the presidential nominee for the party.
• A few states still use traditional caucuses to choose delegates, which are closed meetings of party regulars who participate in party building activities and select nominees.
• Most states now use primaries where voters can nominate a presidential candidate directly, or else they can choose delegates who have pledged to vote for that candidate.
• State parties may have open primaries, where any registered voter can fill out a party nomination ballot, or closed primaries, where advanced party registration is required.
• The political parties in each state decide how to divide its delegates’ votes.
• Delegates are apportioned to each candidate based on their proportion of the vote in each state congressional district.
• The Republican Party gives all votes to the candidate with the majority vote in each district.
• The Democratic Party divides delegates proportionally by district and statewide. The rise of primaries has allowed the electorate to take control of the election process away from political parties.
• The primary system has raised numerous criticisms:
◦ The early caucuses and primaries (Iowa and New Hampshire) receive far too much media attention, which can distort campaigns and candidates who do not score early victories are likely to be dismissed by the media and the public and to be unable to raise funds to continue campaigning.
◦ The lengthy campaign and rigors of the primary season discourage some capable politicians from running.
◦ It requires and encourages an exorbitant amount of spending in campaigns.
◦ Primaries are unrepresentative of the electorate because few people vote in them, and those who do are more likely to be older and wealthier than the majority of Americans.
◦ It allows the media, which focuses on winners and dismisses losers early in the running, tremendous influence in shaping campaigns.
• One proposal by critics of the current system is a national primary, which would replace the extended primary calendar with a nationwide primary held on one day.
• Another proposal calls for regional primaries, which would allow regions to have primaries, with rotation of the older of regional primaries every four years.
The Convention Send-Off
• The delegates selected in each state’s primary attend the national convention, where they cast their votes for their presidential candidate.
• The parties, especially the Democrats, have made efforts to reform delegate selection to ensure representation of youth, minorities, women, and organized labor at the convention.
• The Democratic Party makes greater use of superdelegates than the Republican Party.
• The outcome of conventions today is usually predetermined by previous primary results, so conventions today are media events.
• At a national convention, delegates support their candidate, the party presents its official party platform for the next four years, the winning candidate formally accepts the party’s nomination, and the party’s vice-presidential nominee is chosen, usually based on the presidential nominee’s preference for a running mate.
Essential Question: Identify and explain key objectives of any political campaign.
The Campaign Game
• The two presidential candidates then embark on a national campaign to win the votes of different groups in different regions of the country.
• Modern campaign techniques include television advertising, televised public appearances, direct mail campaigns, and an official website to advance the candidate’s platform and collect campaign contributions.
• The media closely follow campaigns and coverage focuses on the candidates’ daily activities, campaign strategies, and poll results.
• Studies show that voters learn more about the candidates’ positions on important issues from their advertisements than from the news.
• Critics fear that campaigns have become centered on candidates’ positions on important issues from their advertisements than from the news.
• To coordinate a campaign, a candidate must hire a campaign team that serves to organize his or her daily activities and also conducts public relations, and this adds significantly to the enormous cost of a campaign.
Essential Question: Describe how the financing of federal campaigns is regulated by campaign finance laws.
Money and Campaigning
• Candidates rely on television to communicate directly with the electorate, and airtime often translates into votes, and therefore, the necessity of television has made American campaigns extremely expensive.
• Politicians spend as much time fundraising as doing their jobs.
• In 1974, Congress passed Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) to attempt to control campaign costs and donations, which established the Federal Election Commission to enforce campaign laws, and initiated public financing of elections.
• Taxpayers can choose to donate $3 to a federal campaign fund that is divided among all candidates by checking a box on their income tax form (Presidential Election Campaign Fund)
• FECA also set limits for spending in each election by those who accept public funds.
• Under FECA, candidates are required to report all campaign contributions and how money was spent, and individual campaign contributions are limited to $2,000.
• Soft money is one loophole through which businesses and wealthy individuals can make unlimited contributions.
• Soft money is intended for a party’s general use; since it is therefore not a donation to a specific candidate, it can be channeled into presidential campaigns.
• The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BRCA or McCain-Feingold) attempted to ban soft money, as a candidate often rewards contributors once he or she is in office.
• The Supreme Court upheld the act against a constitutional challenge in 2003.
• A loophole in the BCRA allowed 527 organizations to form and raise unlimited amounts of money to spend on advertising and voter mobilization efforts.
• Political Action Committees (PACs), established in 1974 by the FECA, are another method through which interest groups try to influence policy through campaign contributions.
• To contribute to a campaign, an interest group must channel money through a PAC, which must be registered with the FEC so that it can be monitored.
• There is no limit to the amount PACs can spend. Super PACs may accept donations of any size and can endorse candidates. Citizens United v. FEC (2010).
• PACs can act independently of the candidate and his or her campaign team by running an advertisement without the candidate’s approval.
• Created to provide unions and other groups the opportunity to contribute, PACs have been organized and used by businesses to affect elections.
• Candidates rely on PACs to help finance costly campaigns.
• PACs play a greater role in congressional elections than presidential elections, which are primarily funded by the public.
• Despite the massive amount of money spent on campaigns and the media’s constant focus on them, campaigns rarely convert voters away from their predisposed party identification.
Essential Question: Discuss why campaigns have an important yet limited impact on election outcomes.
The Impact of Campaigns
• In general, politicians tend to overestimate the impact of campaigns; political scientists have found that campaigning primarily reinforces citizens’ views rather than changing views.
• Factors such as selective perception, party identification, and the incumbency advantage tend to weaken the ability of campaigns to influence voters’ decisions.
Essential Question: Identify and explain the factors that influence whether people vote.
Whether to Vote: A Citizen’s First Choice
• Suffrage has been expanded several times throughout American history and, although the Constitution left the issue up to the states, generally only white, male, property owners had the right to vote.
• Today, almost all Americans over the age of 18 can vote in elections.
◦ 15th Amendment- granted suffrage to African American males
◦ 19th Amendment- extended voting privileges to women.
◦ 26th Amendment- set the minimum voting age at 18.
• Although more people are able to vote, fewer people are exercising this right
◦ Some people do not vote because they believe that one vote in more than 1000 million makes no difference
◦ Some people do not vote because they are unable to take time off of work to vote on a Tuesday; reformers have suggested moving Election Day to a Saturday.
◦ Some people do not vote because voter registration is difficult or inconvenient in most states.
◦ Procedures have been made easier, especially with the Motor Voter Act, but turnout has still decreased.
◦ Some people do not vote because there is little ideological difference between the two parties’ candidates.
◦ Some people are more likely to vote because they perceive a significant ideological difference between the two parties’ candidates.
◦ Some people are more likely to vote because they have a sense of political efficacy- they believe their vote will make a difference.
◦ Some people are more likely to vote because they want to perform their civic duty in a democracy
Who Votes?
• People with a college education are more likely to vote.
• Older people, especially senior citizens, are more likely to vote.
• Hispanic Americans and African Americans are less likely to vote, but those with higher levels of education vote in greater percentages than educated Caucasians.
• More women than men have voted in recent elections.
• Union members are more likely to vote.
• Politicians who rely on these voters to be elected are more likely to address their concerns in the policy arena.
• Studies show that if turnout increased among groups with low turnout rates, Democrats would probably receive more votes.
• Reforms are unlikely because Republicans do not want to lose this advantage.
Essential Question: Discuss the impact of party identification, candidate evaluations, and policy opinions on voting behavior.
How Americans Vote: Explaining Citizens’ Decisions
• The idea that the winning candidate has a mandate from the people to carry out his or her platforms and politics is the mandate theory of elections.
• Some people vote according to their party identification.
• A candidate of their chosen party probably shares their political beliefs and they do not have to decide on or become informed about every issue.
• This trend is declining as parties have lost some significance in the political process.
• Some voters evaluate what they know and see of the candidate’s personalities to make a decision.
• A candidate’s appearance may play an unconscious role in voter decision making.
• People tend to value integrity, competence, and reliability in a candidate.
• Voters with a college education are more likely to base their decision on a candidate’s personality, using it to make assumptions about the candidate’s performance.
• Some people vote for candidates who share their policy preferences; this assumes that voters have firm policy convictions, they are familiar with each candidate’s policy preferences, and that they are able to discern differences among candidates’ stands on issues.
• A person may also vote retrospectively by choosing a candidate who vows to continue policies helpful to him or her, or by choosing the opposition candidate who promises to change the policy. “What have you done for me lately?”
• Candidates may avoid taking a clear stand on a controversial issue, making policy voting (prospective) difficult. This method requires a lot of effort on the part of voters.
Essential Question Discuss the fairness of the Electoral College system for choosing the president.
• In the United States, the president is not chosen directly by the people in a popular election; the Electoral College casts the final vote.
• The writers of the Constitution created this institution to keep the presidency at a distance from the masses; it was intended to allow only the elite to choose the president.
• Each state’s number of electors is equal to its total number of representatives and senators. Electors are chosen by the state party organizations.
• Almost all states are winner-take-all: The candidate who receives the highest popular vote in the state gets all of that state’s electoral votes.
• The key states that the presidential campaigns focus on because they are most likely to decide the outcome of the Electoral College are known as battleground states.
• Electors convene in December and deliver their votes to the president of the Senate (the Vice President), who officially announces the majority winner at the opening of the congressional session in January.
• If no candidate receives a majority of the electoral vote (at least 270), the members of the House of Representatives vote, with each state delegation having one vote.
• This system has received an enormous amount of criticism.
• It gives an unfair advantage to states with larger populations, because they have a greater number of electoral votes at stake; large states and their policy concerns receive more attention from presidential candidates.
• A candidate may need to win in only a few large states to win the election.
◦ This neglects the less populous states (although George W. Bush used a small-state strategy to win the presidency in 2000 and 2004.
◦ Because most large states also have large cities, the system is biased in favor of urban voters.
• It is possible to win the popular vote but lose the election because of the electoral votes. This happened to Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote by over 3 million in 2016.
Essential Question: Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the U.S. system of campaigns and elections.
• American election campaigns are easily the most open and democratic in the world.
• They are extraordinarily long, perhaps excessively burdening politicians and leading politicians to make many promises that increase the scope of government.
• Long campaigns do give little-known candidates (dark horse) a chance to emerge and provide a strenuous test for all the candidates.
• Politicians spend so much time campaigning that they neglect their constituents and governmental obligations.
The current system of presidential primaries and caucuses has significant implications on the nomination of candidates in the United States. Nomination involves a party’s endorsement of a candidate, often starting over a year before an election. Unlike other countries with shorter campaigns, the U.S. has a lengthy primary season that can discourage capable candidates due to its rigors and costs. Voter participation in primaries varies; open primaries allow any registered voter to participate, while closed primaries require party registration. Critics highlight issues such as disproportionate media attention on early primaries, lack of representation among voters, and excessive spending. Proposals for reform include national or regional primaries to create a more equitable system. The Democratic Party also utilizes superdelegates for added representation at conventions, which are largely media events influenced by prior primary results.