E

AP Gov 5.4: Interest Groups

Presidential Elections

Stages of Election

  • Exploratory Campaigning
    • Publicity, book tours (often an autobiography), fundraising, debates
  • Intraparty Elections
    • Via either a direct primary or a caucus
  • Presidential Nomination
    • Done through a party convention
    • Convention of delegates who nominate president, write platform, and set rules for next presidential election
  • General Election and Electoral College

Selection of Candidates

  • The race for the party nomination features decentralized races in each state
  • Influenced by national party incentives determining delegate counts
  • Selected via caucus or primary
  • Incumbency advantage
    • “Native sons” and daughters (being from the state the primary is held)
    • Open and closed participation
  • Logistics
    • Delegate distribution
    • Superdelegate vs. delegate
    • Calendar of elections
  • Support for Candidates
    • Decentralized party system
    • Endorsement from party elites and special interest groups
    • Private financing and volunteers \n \n

Incumbency Advantage Phenomenon

  • Acquisition of campaign skills, resources
  • Better and campaigning
  • Voter attitudes and name recognition towards incumbent
    • Prospective voting
    • Retrospective voting

Caucus vs. Primary States

  • States run elections for party nominating contests by party request

Caucus

  • Synchronous rounds of voting performed via persuasive dialogue
  • Only registered members of the party can attend

Primaries

  • Somewhat asynchronous
  • One-time voting via ballots
  • Features the Australian ballot
    • Paid for and distributed by state
    • Marked in private
    • Features all qualified candidates

Closed Primaries

  • Only registered party members participate
  • Lower turnout
  • More responsive to party desires \n \n \n \n

Open Primaries

  • Voters do not  necessarily have to register as a member of a party
  • Public declaration v. private choice
  • Can lead to “raiding the ticket”

Partisanship and Primaries

  • Adaptations such as blanket primaries and rank-choice voting 
  • Seek to limit partisanship

Timeline of Primaries

Parties

  • Try to keep schedule manageable
  • Carrot: allocate more delegates to go later
  • Stick: take away delegates if states jump the line

States

  • Want to go as early as possible
    • So that citizens can get a meaningful opportunity to influence outcome
    • Make money from ads and events
  • Can lead to frontloading, a phenomenon where states stack primaries and caucuses early
  • Frontloading allows for runaway candidates

Front-Runner

  • Wants a quick nomination

  • Can seek to influence the sequence of nomination events for their benefits

    \n

Candidates

  • Want states that are relatively small,  have a homogenous population, and play to the voter coalition the candidate is courting
  • Difficult for candidates to get media attention, acquire funding, establish infrastructure, and visit

Delegates

Allocation of Delegates

  • Winner-Take-Alll vs. Proportional allocation
  • Parties have different preferences

Winner-Take-All

  • A faster path to declaring the nominee
  • Candidate with plurality wins all delegates for a state
  • Preferred by Republicans
  • 50% of GOP delegates awarded by mid-March 2016

Proportional

  • Extends the race and allows for more representation for coalitions
  • Candidates awarded delegates based on proportion of vote above 15%
  • Preferred by Democrats
  • 50% of Democratic delegates awarded by mid-April 2016

Superdelegates

  • Individuals in the party organization and party in the government who are granted the right to vote individual preference at the party nominating convention
  • Found in both parties
    • Democratic Party: 15% in 2016
    • Republican Party: 7% in 2016
  • Similar to pre-McGovern Fraser Commission delegates
    • Nominated regardless of the public’s preference for the presidential candidate

Delegates

  • Number determined by party
  • Delegate seats awarded by allocation rules set by state
  • Vote as voters indicated preference on ballot
  • Allowed to vote as a superdelegate if there is a brokered election

General Elections and Electoral College

Timing of Election

  • Federal general elections required by Constitution on even numbered years
  • Federal law: first Tuesday after first Monday in November

Election selects Electors

  • How electors are chosen is left to states to determine by Constitution
  • Most states award electors via winner-take-all
    • Winner of the plurality vote state-wide
    • Maine and Nebraska have a modified district distribution called the Congressional District Method

Relative Importance of State Contests

  • Swing States/Battleground States
    • Distribution of electors and composition of voting means only competitive states with large populations matter
    • Include Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan
  • Large, homogenous states have less significance in the race 
    • Texas, California, New York

Significance

  • According to the Election Project’s analysis of the 2016 General Election:
  • 43.1% of eligible voters did not vote
  • Hillary Clinton received 65,853,625 votes
    • 48% of the voter turnout in total
    • 232 Electoral College Votes
    • >27% of the voting eligible population
  • Donald Trump received 62,985,106 votes
    • 45.9% of the voter turnout in total
    • 306 Electoral College votes
    • <27% of the voting eligible population
  • There is an advantage to geography over population in the distribution of electors, courtesy of the Great Compromise

Proposed Reforms

  • Flawed Reforms:

    • Require Constitutional Amendment
    • Do not completely prevent an Electoral College loss of the popular vote winner
    • Inject a high degree of partisanship

  • Most popular reform: National Popular Vote Compact

    • Requires the agreement of enough states so that the total of their electors is equivalent to the majority of the Electoral College
    • Surrenders state vote to winner of popular vote

    \n

Congressional Elections

Incumbent Behavior

  • Incumbency Advantage Phenomenon
    • Name recognition 
    • Franking privilege (sending mail for free)
  • Significant amounts of time spent fundraising
  • “Congressmen spend 5-7 hours on the phone per day”

State Election Impacts

  • Nomination Process   
    • Caucus, primary, convention, canvass?
    • Open vs. closed primaries
    • “Getting on the ballot”
  • General Election
    • Ballot structure and election timing

Linkage Institutions

  • Special interest groups and parties
  • Give benefits to candidates
    • Endorsements
    • Mobilization
    • Going Public
    • Financing
    • Media coverage
    • Debates