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