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C H A P T E R 8THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY
C H A P T E R C O N T E N T S
Financing Elections
• Public Disclosure
• Contribution and Expenditure Limits
• Independent Expenditures, Issue Advocacy, and Soft Money
• The BCRA: Banning Soft Money and Regulating Issue Advocacy
• Political Parties after the BCRA
• PACs and 527s
• Public Financing of Elections
The Electoral College
• Allocation of Electoral Votes among the States
• Allocating a State’s Electoral Votes: Winner-Take-All
• Majority in the Electoral College Required for Election
• Electoral College Tendency to Exaggerate the Popular-Vote Margin of the Winning Candidate
• Encouraging Two-Party Politics
• Big State versus Small State Advantages
• Tight Electoral College Competition in 2000 and 2004
The General Election Campaign
• When the Voter Decides
• Incumbency
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• Majority versus Minority Party Status
• Debates
• Issues
• Candidate Image
• The Role of Parties in Modern Campaigns
Election Outcomes
• Presidential Elections
• Congressional Elections
• Gubernatorial and State Legislative Elections
Campaigns, Elections, and Governance
Once the field of candidates has been narrowed through the nomination process, the scene of the party battle shifts to the general election. Nominations are intra- party struggles, whereas the general election is an interparty struggle that operates in a different type of political environment. In the general election competition, there is normally a higher level of citizen interest, an expanded electorate, larger campaign expenditures, and greater media exposure. The nomination is an interim stage in the process of selection of government officials. In the general election, all decisions are final.
FINANCING ELECTIONS
Without substantial funds, it is rarely possible to run a credible campaign. Money is not the only critical campaign resource name identification, charisma, incumbency, volunteers, party organizational support, interest group backing, and a favorable balance within the constituency of party voters are also important. But without money, the basics of a campaign are impossible to obtain. Money purchases a headquarters, consultants and staff, polls, media advertising, and travel. As the technology of cam- paigning has become more advanced and the electronic media has become an indis- pensable part of major campaigns, campaign costs have escalated dramatically. Retaining professional campaign consultants to advise on the use of the modern cam- paign technology has become a standard feature of most campaigns for major office.1
These experts frequently demand large fees for their services, including a commission fee on media booking and production costs and substantial monthly retainers.2
The escalating cost of campaigns for the House and Senate is demonstrated in Figure 8.1, which shows the average expenditures between 1992 and 2008 for incumbents, challengers, and open seat candidates. The figure reveals that House campaigns costing $1 million or more are now commonplace. Even $3 million House campaigns (37 in 2008) are no longer unusual. Twelve Senate candidates spent more than $10 million in 2008, and thirty campaigns spent over $5 million. Campaigns for state office have also become costly. For example, in the 2002 Illinois gubernatorial race, Democrat Rod Blagojevich spent over $14 million to win the general election. Even state legislative races can be extremely expensive, with some candidates spending approximately half a million dollars in states where a
222 C H A P T E R 8
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switch in party control of a few seats could result in the change of party control of a legislative chamber.
The level of campaign spending is related to the candidates chances of winning and the closeness of the contest. For example, in House elections, incumbents and open seat (where no incumbent is running) candidates have the best chance of victory and normally spend at higher-than-average levels. The parties are also more likely to provide open seat candidates with funds and other valuable resources. Closely fought races also cause high spending by both incumbents and challengers. The nineteen chal- lengers who defeated House incumbents in 2008 spent an average of nearly $2 million, while the incumbents they defeated spent, on average, over $2.3 million.
Analyses of campaign spending and election outcomes have shown that the level of expenditure by a candidate can affect the result, but the individual who spends the most does not necessarily win. Sufficient funds to run an adequate
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Incumbents
Incumbents
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FIGURE 8.1 | AVERAGE EXPENDITURES OF HOUSE AND SENATE CANDIDATES, 1992 2008
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 223
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campaign are absolutely essential, and large disparities in financial resources can be hurtful to the disadvantaged candidate. Research on House elections demonstrates that campaign spending is particularly important for candidates challenging incum- bents. The more challengers spend, the better known they become to the voters and the better able voters are to make an evaluation of them (as well as more critical evaluations of the incumbents). Large-scale spending by a challenger can cut the incum- bent s advantage in voter recall and recognition in half. Spending by incumbents, however, has less impact. As campaign finance expert Gary Jacobson has observed, for incumbents the campaign adds little to the prominence and affection they have gained prior to the campaign by cultivating the district and using the many perqui- sites of office. 3
Because of the escalating cost of campaigns, the inevitable differences among can- didates in their financial resources, and the recurring charges of improprieties, there have been periodic demands for regulation of campaign finance. The resulting statutes at the national and state levels have used the following methods to regulate campaign finance: (1) public disclosure of contributions and expenditures; (2) contribution and expenditure limits; and (3) public funding of campaigns.
BOX 8.1 CAMPAIGN FINANCE TERMINOLOGY
The difficult subject of campaign finance regulations is compounded by the jargon used to describe these rules. Here are some of the terms that are useful to keep in mind:
BCRA: Acronym for the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as McCain-Feingold, after Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.).
Express Advocacy: Communication that expressly advocates for the defeat or elec- tion of a particular candidate. According to the FEC, this type of communication uses the words like elect, defeat, vote for, and vote against. These words are often referred to as magic words and are identified as such by the Supreme Court in the 1976 landmark decision, Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1.
Election Cycle: A federal election cycle is a two-year period beginning on January 1st of an odd year (e.g., 2005) and ending December 31st of the following even year (e.g., 2006).
FEC: The Federal Election Commission, created by Congress in 1975, is the executive agency charged with administering and enforcing campaign finance regulations.
FECA: The Federal Election Campaign Act, passed in 1971 and amended in 1974, 1976, and 1979.
Hard Money: Any money raised or spent that is subject to federal limits.
Issue Advocacy: Any communication that does not expressly advocate for the defeat or election of a particular candidate.
Soft Money: Any money raised or spent that is not subject to federal limits.
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PUBLIC DISCLOSURE The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) requires that all contributions of $200 or more must be identified and all expenditures of $200 or more must be reported. Candidate committees and parties must also file periodic preelection reports and a final postelection report with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Using these reports, the FEC maintains an online searchable database of candidates, parties, PACs, and donors (http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/disclosure_data_search .shtml). Visitors to the site can search for contributions made by particular indivi- duals or by all individuals in any zip code. The site also allows users to browse a particular candidate s record of contributors in order to increase the transparency of the sources of candidates financial support.
CONTRIBUTION AND EXPENDITURE LIMITS Candidates for federal office may raise money from individuals, political action committees (PACs), and party committees.
Individuals. Individual contribution limits to federal candidates were doubled after the BCRA from $1,000 to $2,000 and are indexed for inflation (see Table 8.1). Thus, they increase with each election cycle. In 2010, individuals could contribute no more than $2,400 to any one candidate per campaign, up to a total of $45,600 for all candidates. Primary elections and general elections are considered separate contests, so an individual could give a candidate $2,400 for the primary campaign and an additional $2,400 for the general election campaign. Candidates running unopposed in the primary can still raise money for the primary contest and use that money for their general election campaigns. PACs. Nonparty political action committees may give no more than $5,000 to any one candidate per campaign (primary and general elections considered separate). This remained unchanged after the BCRA, and this limit is not adjusted for inflation.
TABLE 8.1 CHANGE IN INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION LIMITS UNDER THE BCRA
Type of Contribution Pre-BCRA Limit Post-BCRA Limit
Federal candidates $1,000 $2,000 (indexed for inflation)
National party committee $20,000 $25,000 (indexed for inflation)
State or local party committee $5,000 $10,000
Political action committee $5,000 $5,000
Aggregate limit $25,000 per year $95,000 total per election cycle
$37,500 to candidates
$57,500 to party committees and PACs (all indexed for inflation)
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 225
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Parties. In House elections, party committees are restricted to direct contributions of $5,000 per candidate per election. This means that party committees can con- tribute up to a total of $10,000 to House candidates ($5,000 for the nomination campaign and $5,000 for the general election). Both the national committees and the congressional campaign committees are permitted to make contributions at this level. As a result, national-level party committee contributions to House candidates may total $20,000. State party organizations may also contribute directly to congressional candidates. Direct party contributions to senatorial candidates are restricted to $37,300 per campaign, but this limit is shared by the national party committees and congressional campaign committees. This amount is also indexed for inflation and increases in each election cycle.
In addition to direct contributions, party committees are also authorized to make coordinated expenditures on behalf of the party and its candidates. Coordi- nated expenditures involve spending by the parties to support candidates (e.g., for polls, media production, campaign consultants), which benefits specific candidates but does not entail direct financial contributions to a candidate s campaign committee. The amount of coordinated expenditures a party may make depends on the type of election:
House Campaigns. In 2010, the amount of coordinated expenditures autho- rized by law to assist a particular House candidate was $43,500. This amount increases in each election cycle based on cost-of-living adjustments to the orig- inal $10,000 limit set in 1974. In the seven states with only one congressional district, national party committees were permitted $87,000 in coordinated expenditures in 2010. Senate Campaigns. National party committees are permitted to spend more extensively in Senate races. Party-coordinated expenditures are based upon a formula of two cents per eligible voter in the state (adjusted for inflation since 1974). The two cents per voter formula, when applied to large states like California or Texas, means that party committees are in a position to be of major assistance to their party s nominee for the Senate ($2.4 million for California and $1.6 million for Texas in 2010). State party committees are also permitted to spend two cents per voter in coordinated expenditures to support senatorial candidates. However, most state parties are not in a financial posi- tion to take full advantage of this provision in the law. To compensate for the inability of most state parties to spend to the legal limit in support of senatorial candidates, the Republicans pioneered the development of the agency agree- ment technique. Under this procedure, state parties assign their quota of coordinated expenditures to the national party to act as their agent. As a result of this procedure, the Republican and Democratic senatorial campaign committees have been able to double the level of their coordinated expendi- tures in key races.
Traditionally, Republican Party committees played a more significant role in funding their candidates than did Democratic Party organizations (see Figure 8.2). Since 2004, however, Democratic Party committees have achieved parity with Republicans.
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Although political parties are restricted in terms of how much they may spend to support congressional and senatorial candidates, there are no overall limits on the amount the candidates organizations may spend. The outer range of expenditures in races for positions on Capitol Hill, therefore, can be extremely high. For example, in 2008, Al Franken (D-Minn.) spent over $20 million to defeat incumbent Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) who also spent over $20 million. And in the most expen- sive House race of the cycle, incumbent Representative Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) spent $4.5 million to defend her seat from a Republican challenger who spent over $7 million.
Nor are there limits on how much of their own money candidates may spend in pursuit of public office. The Supreme Court has ruled that the limit on candidate contributions to their own campaigns contained in the FECA of 1974 was unconsti- tutional. As a result, some wealthy candidates have lavishly funded their own cam- paigns. Democrat Jon Corzine holds the record for candidate funding of a campaign. In 2000, he spent over $60 million of his own money to run for and win a New Jersey Senate seat. The least successful self-funded candidate was Blair Hull (D-Ill.) who spent over $28 million to lose the 2004 Democratic primary for the Sen- ate to Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
Because of concern about the growing number of successful self-financed candidates, the BCRA included a provision typically referred to as the million- aire s amendment. In an attempt to level the playing field, the clause increased the contribution limits if a candidate s opponent spent a certain amount of his or her own money on the campaign. It also removed the limits on party coordi- nated expenditures. However, this portion of the law was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in June, 2008. The majority opinion in the case noted that it was unconstitutional to penalize candidates who exercised their rights to spend freely on their own campaign.
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FIGURE 8.2 | POLITICAL PARTY CONTRIBUTIONS AND COORDINATED EXPENDITURES FORCONGRESS, 1976 2008 Source: Federal Election Commission.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 227
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INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURES, ISSUE ADVOCACY, AND SOFT MONEY The Supreme Court struck down as a violation of the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association a provision in the FECA that restricted to $1,000 the amount that groups could spend to support candidates. This FECA provision limited so-called independent expenditures by PACs and individuals in support of candidates. These were expenditures made by organized groups or indi- viduals without consultation or coordination with the candidate s organization. Independent expenditures are a campaign activity that is mainly the domain of large, well-funded groups such as the National Rifle Association, the American Medical
BOX 8.2 IS MONEY SPEECH? THE SUPREME COURT ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE REGULATIONS
After Congress passed the FECA in 1971, a host of politicians, including New York Senator James L. Buckley, challenged the constitutionality of the new regulations in a case that eventually reached the Supreme Court. In 1976, the Supreme Court s decision in Buckley v. Valeo upheld the constitutionality of contribution limits but struck down limits on how much candidates could spend. The Court explained that while contribution limits served a government interest in safeguarding the integrity of the electoral pro- cess, the limits on candidate expenditures amounted to substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech. This decision meant that the government could not mandate limits on candidate expenditures; such limits could be opted into only by a candidate receiving public funding (as in presidential campaigns).
After the BCRA passed Congress in 2002, many suspected that, under the same logic as in Buckley v. Valeo, the Court would strike down the new limits on soft money and issue-advocacy advertisements as curtailment of free speech. However, in a 5 4 decision in McConnell v. FEC (2003), the Court upheld these limits as prudent given the dan- gerous effects of soft money and issue-advocacy ads on the electoral system. In 2006, the Court ruled again on campaign finance restrictions in the case of Randall v. Sorrell. This case involved a challenge to a Vermont law enacted in 1997 that would have set extremely restrictive limits on contributions and spending by candidates for state office. Candidates for statewide office would be limited to spending $300,000 for the entire campaign, and the limit for state legislative campaigns would have been just $4,000. However, the Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional, arguing that such low spending and contribution limits would be too restrictive of political speech. In 2008, the court again cited free speech concerns when it ruled the millionaire s amendment of the BCRA unconstitutional in Davis v. Federal Election Commission. And the Supreme Court s landmark decision in Citizens United v. FEC again referenced free speech concerns when ruling that the federal government could not limit the ability of corporations to spend on behalf of candidates during a campaign. These recent cases demonstrate that the Court is willing to allow restrictions on contributions and some regulation on particular types of spending, but campaign finance regulations that are viewed as too limiting will be struck down for impinging on the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.
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Association, the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, the National Association of Realtors, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In 1996, 1998, and 2000, voters were bombarded with television advertising costing uncounted millions and paid for by political parties and interest groups engaged in issue advocacy defined by the FEC as public advertisement, not spon- sored by a federal office candidate or political committee, encouraging readers or listeners to take action to advance whatever public cause is being promoted. This type of advertising, which cannot contain express advocacy of the election or defeat of a candidate for federal office, was not regulated by FEC, and hence there were no limits on how much parties and groups could spend on issue ads or when they could air these ads. Although these ads did not expressly advocate the election or defeat of specific candidates, they were carefully crafted in such a way that the average viewer finds them almost indistinguishable from conventional ads for candidates. For example, during the 2004 campaign, MoveOn.org aired extensive issue- advocacy ads criticizing President Bush and the Republican Congress for the Iraq War but did not expressly advocate for their defeat in the coming election. An Annenberg Public Policy Center study found that 87 percent of the issue ads run in 1996 named individual candidates and that these ads were significantly more negative in tone than regular political commercials run by the candidates.4 Subsequent research by the Wisconsin Advertising Project on the 2000 and 2004 elections has confirmed that issue ads tend to be more negative in tone.5
Beginning in 1996, the use of issue-advocacy advertising by political parties exploded. Issue advocacy was particularly attractive to party organizations because it provided a means of getting around contribution and spending limits in the FECA (issue ads could be funded to a significant extent using soft money outside the restrictions of the FECA). As a result, the parties raised ever larger amounts of soft money and became increasingly dependent upon it. Taking advantage of FECA rules that made it advantageous to have state parties actually pay for the television ads and mailings, the national-level committees of the Democratic and Republican parties made massive transfers of soft money to state affiliates. In 2000, $106.5 million was transferred by national-level Democratic committees and $98.6 million by GOP national party units to their respective state parties. This explosion in issue-advocacy advertising funded largely through soft money created several problems in the cam- paign finance system:
The Soft Money Loophole. The FECA contained major soft money loop- holes that enabled individuals, unions, and corporations to evade federal con- tribution limits or prohibitions and permitted parties to exceed their spending limits in support of federal candidates. Soft money involved contributions, sometimes in denominations in excess of a million dollars, that went to national and state parties or auxiliary committees set up by the national Republican and Democratic parties. It was used for party building activities such as voter registration drives, get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaigns, generic advertising that urged voter support for a party s full slate of candidates rather than for specific candidates and it was used extensively by both parties for issue advocacy ads that were in fact thinly disguised commercials, mainly for
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 229
C op
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top-of-the-ticket candidates rather than those at the bottom. Thus, a major consequence of the growth of issue-advocacy advertising by parties and interest groups through the use of soft money was to render the contribution limits of the FECA virtually meaningless. Interest Group Influence. Not only did the growth of issue-advocacy advertis- ing create massive loopholes in the federal campaign finance laws, it also worked to take control of campaign strategy out of the hands of the candidates because outside groups could enter campaigns and engage in saturation adver- tising without advance warning to the candidates. Accountability. One of the problems with the extensive use of issue advocacy by the parties and a wide range of interest groups was that no one is really accountable for the content or tone of campaigns. Candidates at times even disavow interest group and even party ads run on their behalf. Yet voters often assume that it is the candidates who are responsible for the ads they see and hear in the media, when in reality the candidates own ads are only a portion of what is being done in support of their candidacies.
THE BCRA: BANNING SOFT MONEY AND REGULATING ISSUE ADVOCACY In 2002, Congress passed the most significant campaign finance legislation since the FECA in 1974. In addition to the adjustment of contribution limits noted earlier, the BCRA also aimed to tackle the problems created by the rise of soft money and issue advocacy in recent elections.
Ban on Soft Money. The BCRA mandated that the national party committees could only raise and spend money subject to contribution limits. This effec- tively eliminated the use of soft money by the parties. Individual contributions were limited to $25,000 in 2004 (an increase of $5,000 from the FECA limit) and are now indexed for inflation (the limit is $26,700 in 2006). Previously, individuals could give an unlimited amount of soft money for the parties that could be used for issue advocacy. Limits on Issue-Advocacy Spending. Under the BCRA, labor unions or cor- porations could not contribute to a committee that paid for advertising identi- fying a candidate for federal office within thirty days of a primary or sixty days of a general election. The purpose of this clause was to reduce the prevalence of issue-advocacy advertisements; the standard of not even mentioning a can- didate is significantly more stringent than the previously established prohibition on express advocacy. Before the BCRA, advertisements paid for with unregu- lated funds could mention federal candidates as long as they did not expressly advocate for their election or defeat. Stand by Your Ad Disclaimer. To attempt to create more accountability in
political advertising, the BCRA required all candidates, interest groups, and parties to include a statement of responsibility for their broadcast advertise- ments. These statements became very familiar in 2004 as candidates typically appeared at the end of their advertisements repeating into the screen, I approve this message.
230 C H A P T E R 8
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Arguably the most important part of the BCRA was the ban on soft money. Until it was banned for national parties by the BCRA, soft money was by far the fastest growing source of campaign money (see Figure 8.3). The $263.5 million in soft money raised by the two parties in the 1995 1996 election cycle was triple the amount raised four years earlier; and the $487.4 million collected in 1999 2000 was 1.8 times more than was raised in the prior presidential year election cycle. After lag- ging behind the Republicans in the competition to collect soft money, the Democrats achieved parity with their opposition in the 1999 2000 election cycle, and the Dem- ocratic congressional and senatorial committees actually outpaced their Republican counterparts in raising soft money. The reason soft money was so popular with the parties is that it allowed the parties to collect funds in large amounts from big donors who did not have to abide by the contribution limits that federal law imposed on other types of contributions, such as direct contributions to federal candidates. For corporations, labor unions, and other groups, soft money contributions were attrac- tive because the money could be taken directly out of their treasuries something they could not legally do in making direct contributions to federal candidates.
Issue-advocacy ads also had become a prevalent feature of American campaigns in the decade before the BCRA took effect. The BCRA sought to reduce interest group influence via issue-advocacy advertisements by limiting the time period dur- ing which such ads could be aired.
POLITICAL PARTIES AFTER THE BCRA By giving money to candidates, not parties, the FECA reinforced the decentralized qualities of the American party system and confirmed the conception of the party as a candidate-dominated structure. Candidates are given discretion to accept or reject federal campaign subsidies, and candidate organizations control the federal funds. Each candidate is required to set up a single central campaign committee that accepts all contributions or federal subsidies and makes expenditures.
0
100
200
300
400
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600
700
19 92
19 94
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19 98
20 00
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19 92
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20 00
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Democrats Republicans
R ai
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(M il
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Soft Money Hard Money
FIGURE 8.3 | PARTY FUNDRAISING OF HARD AND SOFT MONEY, 1992 2008 Source: Federal Election Commission.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 231
C op
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01 0
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The FECA, however, did contain provisions that were beneficial for parties. As noted previously, national party committees were permitted to make coordinated expenditures to support House and Senate candidates. State parties benefited from the FECA party-building provisions that encouraged the national parties to transfer funds or channel soft money contributions their way. This routing of resources to state parties enabled these organizations to play a more significant role in cam- paigns. The national party organizations were major beneficiaries of the soft money loophole in the FECA, which enabled them to collect millions of dollars that were used to defray operating expenses, engage in issue and generic advertising, and fund registration and GOTV drives in key states.
Given the parties recent dependence on soft money contributions and issue- advocacy advertisements, changes made by the BCRA threatened to undermine the health of national party organizations. But in 2004, the first post-BCRA election, the parties did not appear to have lost a step. In a book evaluating the effects of the BCRA on the 2004 elections, Michael Malbin argues that rather than being undermined by the new campaign finance regulations, the parties were remarkably resilient raising more money and playing a more significant role in the 2004 elections than even BCRA s supporters had predicted. 6
The DNC and RNC responded to the BCRA by increasing their emphasis on soliciting contributions subject to limits. For example, both parties increased their efforts to attract small donations from citizens by modernizing their direct mail and Internet donation programs, which led to significant increases in the amounts raised in contributions of $200 or less (see Figure 8.4). Both parties also focused on raising large donations under the increased individual limits. These efforts were very successful, as the national party committees raised more hard money in 2004 and 2008 than they had accumulated in hard and soft money combined in previous campaigns (see Figure 8.3). The BCRA also provided the parties with the ability to spend unlimited amounts of this money on behalf of their candidates. While coordi- nated expenditures were limited to $16.2 million for each party in 2004, the party committees were allowed to make unlimited independent expenditures money spent on behalf of candidates but without coordination with those candidates. The DNC took advantage of the independent expenditures route, spending more than $120 million independently of the Kerry campaign. The RNC took a different tack by co-funding advertisements with the Bush campaign. These advertisements did not count as coordinate expenditures, since they made general appeals for voters to support Republicans rather than in support of any specific candidate.7
While the national committees more than made up for the loss of soft money in the first post-BCRA campaign, other party organizations did not fare as well. While all four Hill committees increased the amount of hard money that they raised dur- ing the 2004 election cycle, the increase was not sufficient to overcome the loss of soft money. Furthermore, the 2008 presidential election, the second following the BCRA, provided new insight into how the BCRA might diminish the influence of the national party committees. During that campaign, Barack Obama chose to rely almost exclusively on funds raised by his own campaign rather than support from the DNC. Thus, the DNC spent just $1.1 million in independent expenditures on behalf of Obama s candidacy, compared to over $53 million that the RNC spent independently on behalf of McCain.
232 C H A P T E R 8
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The largest effect of the BCRA on state parties was to eliminate the large amounts of soft money that national parties previously transferred to them. Previ- ously, the national parties would raise soft money and then transfer those funds to state parties, which would spend them on television and radio advertisements aimed at influencing elections for Congress and president. With national parties no longer able to raise soft money, the transfers declined markedly in 2004 and the amount of advertising purchased by the state parties virtually disappeared. However, when accounting for the loss of soft money transfers, the state parties did raise roughly the same amounts as they had in 2000. This money was largely spent on grassroots mobilization, administration, and direct mail efforts. Thus, the state parties did lose the large soft money transfers from the states, but these funds had usually been fun- neled directly into advertising anyway. Other activities that the state parties engage in appear not to have been affected by the BCRA.
PACS AND 527S Political action committees and the newer 527 committees compete with and com- plement the parties in the campaign process. As previously noted, the FECA of 1971 and amendments of 1974 significantly expanded the role of PACs, especially corporate PACs. PACs are a type of political committee to which the statutes grant the right to solicit and accumulate funds for distribution to candidates. The law provides an exemption for corporate PACs from the general rule against federal campaign contributions by corporations and federally insured institutions. These institutions may now use corporate funds to offset the costs of setting up a PAC
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0
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2000 2004 2008 2000 2004 2008
DNC RNC
A m
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Contributions Less Than $200 Maximum Contributions
FIGURE 8.4 | PARTY FUNDRAISING FROM SMALL AND LARGE DONORS, 2000 2008 Source: Federal Election Commission.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 233
C op
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and soliciting contributions to them from stockholders, administrative personnel, and their families. Labor union and trade association PACs are also given legal recogni- tion by the law and given the right to solicit funds from their members. There are also independent PACs, organized by like-minded persons interested in promoting a particular ideology or policy position. All PACs must meet minimum statutory stan- dards concerning the number of contributors (at least 51) and candidate recipients (at least 5) of PAC contributions.
Prior to the 1960s, PACs were largely a labor union phenomenon, patterned after the example of the AFL-CIO s Committee on Political Education (COPE), though the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Medical Association also maintained PACs. The statutory changes of the 1970s, however, spurred an explosion in the number of PACs (see Figure 8.5). Not only has the number of PACs prolifer- ated, but so has their role in campaigns. One of the most striking characteristics of PAC contribution patterns to House and Senate campaigns is their preference for incumbents (see Figure 8.6). In fact, the propensity to donate to incumbents has be- come increasingly strong; in the 2007 2008 election cycle, nearly 80 percent of all PAC contributions went to incumbents, while 12 percent went to challengers and 8 percent to open seat candidates. Because the Democrats until 1995 had by far the largest share of incumbents in the House, they received the largest share of PAC con- tributions to House candidates. After the Republicans won control of the chamber in the 1994 elections, their share of PAC money majorities jumped dramatically from
BOX 8.3 POLITICAL SPAM? THE FEC PASSES ON REGULATING INTERNET COMMUNICATION
In 2006, the FEC decided unanimously that the only type of Internet communication that was subject to campaign finance regulations were paid political advertisements appearing on Web sites. Thus, political appeals made via Web sites, blogs, and e-mail are not subject to any campaign finance restrictions. One political consultant explained the practical consequences of this decision:
A wealthy individual could purchase all of the e-mail addresses for registered voters in a congressional district produce an Internet video ad, and e-mail it along with a link to the campaign contribution page . Not only would this activity not count against any contribution limits or independent expenditure requirements; it would never even need to be reported.
In 2004, over 1 billion unsolicited e-mails were received by American voters, and many experts believe that this number could increase substantially over the coming years. Since paid issue-advocacy advertisements mentioning federal candidates cannot be aired within sixty days of the general election, groups and individuals may turn to unregulated e-mail campaigns during the final stages of the campaign. But many political consultants believe that e-mail campaigns will not be effective in mobilizing or persuading voters during a campaign. As one consultant noted, It is spam after all, and there are few things that annoy us more than spam.
Source: Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, Loophole a Spigot for E-Mail; Critics Fear Voters Will Be Deluged as Fall Elections Near, Washington Post, June 11, 2006, p. A06.
234 C H A P T E R 8
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0
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19 92
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FIGURE 8.5 | THE GROWTH OF POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEES, 1974 2008 Source: Federal Election Commission.
$0.00
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FIGURE 8.6 | AMOUNT OF PAC CONTRIBUTIONS TO INCUMBENTS, CHALLENGERS, ANDOPEN SEAT CANDIDATES IN HOUSE AND SENATE ELECTIONS, 1990 2008 Source: Federal Election Commission.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 235
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33 percent in 1994 to an average of 50 percent in the 1996, 1998, and 2000 elections. With the Republicans holding only a narrow House majority after 1994, most PACs have hedged their bets and contributed almost equal amounts to both parties candi- dates. Only in 2004 did Republicans gain a clear advantage in contributions from PACs. But that advantage quickly evaporated when the Democrats regained control of Congress after the 2006 election. The ebb and flow of PAC money to the parties House and Senate candidates in recent elections is shown in Figure 8.7.
The conventional wisdom is that PAC growth has weakened the parties. How- ever, there is evidence that both the Democratic and Republican parties have adapted to the PAC phenomenon. The parties solicit funds from PACs and encourage them to contribute directly to needy candidates. In an effort to channel PAC money into tar- geted races, the parties national-level committees have revealed the results of party- commissioned polls to PAC directors, held special candidate receptions for PAC personnel, and set up candidate interviews with PAC representatives. Some PACs form close alliances with parties and become a dependable source of support for party candidates; organized labor s relationship with the Democratic Party is one example.
The BCRA largely ignored the role of PACs. It maintained previous limits on contributions to and from PACs (PACs can receive $5,000 from individuals and can give $15,000 to national party committees and $5,000 to a candidate or another PAC). These limits are not adjusted for inflation; thus, as individual contribution lim- its continue to increase over time, their value relative to the static PAC limits will also rise, which may reduce the influence of PACs in future election.
The rise of 527 committees during the 2004 campaign also overshadowed PACs. 527s were not new in 2004, but their influence was significant. Groups ex- isting under section 527 of the tax code are tax-exempt and may engage in political
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FIGURE 8.7 | PAC CONTRIBUTIONS GOING TO REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATICCANDIDATES FOR THE HOUSE AND SENATE, 1990 2008 Source: Federal Election Commission.
236 C H A P T E R 8
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activities, but they cannot expressly advocate for or against candidates for federal office. These committees can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals and organizations and can spend unlimited amounts on activities such as voter mobilization and issue advocacy. Like the issue-advocacy advertisements of the pre-BCRA era, these ads typically leave no doubt who the 527 committee favors. For example, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth aired advertisements attacking John Kerry s service in Vietnam and his later protests against that war, but these ads never expressly urged citizens to vote against Kerry or for Bush.
Before the 2004 campaign, most 527 organizations were tied to interest groups that also maintained PACs. Interest groups used PACs to donate to candidates and often used their 527 organization to air issue-advocacy ads and make other inde- pendent expenditures. However, in 2004, new 527 committees that were not neces- sarily tied to existing interest groups appeared. According to Steve Weissman and Ruth Hassan at the Campaign Finance Institute, The two major parties, including their leading paid consultants and active notables, were involved, in varying de- grees, in the creation, operation or funding of several prominent 527 groups. 8
The parties encouraged the formation of these new 527 organizations as a new venue for the raising and spending of soft money. For instance, The Media Fund was formed by Harold Ickes, former deputy chief of staff for Bill Clinton and pre- viously a member of the DNC s executive committee. He left this position at the DNC specifically to manage the new 527 organization without violating campaign finance rules about coordination.
The new 527 committees received significant funding in the form of large con- tributions from wealthy individuals. In fact, just twenty-four donors accounted for roughly half of all individual contributions to 527s in 2004 by each contributing at least $2 million. This list was headed by George Soros and Peter Lewis, who each gave more than $20 million to Democratic-affiliated 527s. An analysis of the most lucrative 527 donors found that many had previously been contributors of soft money to the national party committees. In fact, many of these donors also contributed far more to 527s in 2004 than they had to the parties in previous campaigns, though most of the former soft money contributors did not become 527 donors in 2004. It is also important to note that 527s were not nearly as prevalent or influential in 2008 as they had been in 2004.
PUBLIC FINANCING OF ELECTIONS The Federal Elections Campaign Act authorizes public funding of general election campaigns for those presidential candidates who qualify and wish to accept the federal subsidy. Major party candidates (defined by the law as the nominees of parties receiving at least 25 percent of the popular vote in the last election) auto- matically qualify for public funding of their campaigns. Although public funding is not mandatory, a candidate who accepts it must agree to restrict expenditures to the amount of the federal grant and forego all private fund-raising. The amount of public funding stipulated by the FECA of 1974 is $20 million, adjusted for in- flation ($84.1 million in 2008). Minor parties presidential candidates are also eli- gible for a proportionate share of public funding, provided their party received at least 5 percent of the popular vote for president in the previous election. Until the
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 237
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2008 campaign, every major-party candidate has chosen to accept public funding of his or her campaign since the program was initiated in 1976. Acceptance of the fed- eral funds removes from candidates the burden of private fund-raising. Another rea- son why candidates traditionally elected to accept public funds is that they were fearful that failure to do so would alienate some voters and make them vulnerable to the charge of being beholden to special interests. Because presidential candidates receive saturation coverage by the news media, the spending limits that the public funding provisions of the FECA impose on candidates are not thought to create any major advantages for either party or for incumbents or challengers. Clearly, however, the use of public funding in presidential elections has tended to equalize the resources available to the Republican and Democratic parties.
Much as with public funding of presidential nomination campaigns, the public funding of general election campaigns is now in jeopardy. In 2004, John Kerry seriously considered refusing the general election funds so that his campaign could raise and spend an unlimited amount of money. Buoyed by his unprecedented fund- raising success during the 2008 nomination campaign, Barack Obama became the first presidential candidate to decline public funding for the general election campaign. To deflect criticism that the move would make him beholden to special interests, Obama frequently cited the fact that he did not accept money from lobby- ists or PACs and that much of his funds were raised from small donors. However, there were several strategic reasons for Obama to eschew public funds for the general election:
More money. It sounds simple, but a necessary pre-condition for declining the $84.1 million check that the federal government would have handed him was the confidence that his campaign could raise substantially more than that amount. Since he had raised hundreds of millions for the Democratic nomina- tion campaign, it seemed to be a safe bet that he could raise hundreds of millions more for the general election campaign. And by raising large sums of money, Obama felt confident that he would be able to outspend McCain and the RNC during the general election campaign. More control. The general election grant from the federal government comes with the stipulation that the candidate s campaign will not raise or spend any additional monies after the party s convention. This has traditionally meant that candidates had to rely on the national party committee and outside groups (such as 527s) to supplement the candidate s own expenditures. However, there are limits on the extent to which this supplemental spending can be coordinated with the candidate s campaign. Thus, by raising similar sums through his own campaign organization, Obama could exercise much more control on how the money was spent. Reduced cost of raising money. In the past, the amount of time and effort that it would have taken a presidential candidate to raise hundreds of millions of dollars would likely not have been worth the benefits of doing so. However, much of the money that Obama raised did not come from time-consuming fund-raising events, but rather from contributions made to the candidate online. Thus, the cost of raising money was relatively low compared to the benefit of being able to outspend his opponent and have more control over the campaign.
238 C H A P T E R 8
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By all accounts, Obama s decision to become the first candidate to decline public funding was a smart one. Obama spent more than $300 million during the fall campaign, which easily eclipsed the $84.1 million in public funding that the McCain campaign spent combined with the $53.5 million that the RNC spent inde- pendently on behalf of its candidate. This spending turned in to a significant advan- tage in contacting voters. For example, the Wisconsin Advertising Project found that during the last two months of the campaign, Obama ran substantially more television advertisements than McCain on all but a handful of days. Citizens were also more likely to report that they had been contacted by Democrats than by Republicans during the campaign. Obama even spent more than $3 million to pro- duce a thirty-minute infomercial program that aired during primetime on NBC, CBS, Fox, Univision, MSNBC, and BET.
Unless the federal public funding system is reformed to make it more attractive to candidates, John McCain may have been the last person to use the system in 2008. Similar to what happened with the matching fund system for presidential nomination campaigns, now that a candidate has demonstrated the value of
BOX 8.4 SMALL DONORS OR SMALL DONATIONS?
During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama revolutionized campaign fund-raising. He raised and spent, by far, more money than any candidate in the history of American elections. Even more notable was the fact that so many of his contributions came in small amounts. Nearly half of the amount Obama raised during the campaign came in the form of contributions of $200 or less. This led many news reports to focus on the notion that Obama s campaign was fueled mostly by small donors, a point that Obama himself often repeated as justification for forgoing public financing.
In reality, however, Obama s contributors may not have been that unique compared to previous campaigns. Political scientist Michael Malbin noted, The myth is that money from small donors dominated Barack Obama s finances. The reality of Obama s fund-raising was impressive, but the reality does not match the myth. While nearly half of Obama s funds came in small contributions, many of those contributors donated money to his campaign several times, meaning that their total contributions to his campaign exceeded $200. In fact, the percentage of money he raised from contributors who gave $200 or less was roughly the same as what George W. Bush raised from small contributors in 2004 (about 25 percent).
Nevertheless, Obama did far out-pace Bush s total fund-raising, meaning that he still attracted a much larger number of small donors than candidates in previous campaigns. In fact, the Obama campaign estimated that approximately 2.5 million small donors gave an average $62 each to the campaign. The 2.5 million small donors that Obama attracted in 2008 was likely greater than the small contributors attracted by all candidates who ran in 2004 combined. Thus, while the notion that Obama s war chest was fueled largely by small donors may have been a myth, his success in attracting financial support from millions of small donors is still an impressive accomplishment.
Source: Michael Malbin, Reality Check: Obama Received About the Same Percentage from Small Donors in 2008 as Bush in 2004. Campaign Finance Institute.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 239
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working outside of the system, other candidates are likely to follow a similar blue- print in the future.
In addition to public funding of presidential campaigns, approximately half of the states have public-funding statutes for state elections. These statutes vary from state to state in terms of how the money for public financing of elections is raised, whether the funds are controlled by the candidates or the parties, and which races are eligible to be subsidized. Most plans involve taxpayer check-offs of one or two dollars per income tax form, although six states use an add-on procedure in which taxpayers indicate on their tax forms a willingness to add a small contribution to the campaign fund. Check-off plans tend to produce higher response rates from tax- payers than do add-on procedures. In most states, the contribution goes into a gen- eral campaign fund. However, in several states (including Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, and Utah) the citizens designate on the tax form which party is to receive their contribution.9
Public funding of campaigns may also be accomplished indirectly by channeling funds through the state and county party organizations (e.g., in Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, Utah, and Virginia). However, the more common prac- tice among the states is for the funds to go directly to candidates. In four states (Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Rhode Island), a combination of these allocation procedures is used. When the money goes through the party organiza- tion, the major consequence of public funding is to permit the party to engage more actively in a broad range of electoral activities. Ruth Jones found that when the public subsidy goes to the candidates, the public funding was more important to legislative candidates than to statewide candidates, to candidates for the state house of representatives than to candidates for state senate, to Democratic candidates than to Republicans, and to challengers than to incumbents.10 However, as campaign costs have escalated, public funding tends to be inadequate to finance campaigns at a level commensurate with candidates needs. The evidence from a recent nation- wide study provides no compelling evidence that state public-funding programs have increased electoral competition, as was hoped by the reformers who pressed for adoption of public-funding legislation. Public funding has not removed the advantages of incumbency; and it has not encouraged challengers to take on state legislative incumbents.11
THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
When voters within a state go to the polls and mark their ballots for the presidential candidate of their choice, they are in fact voting for a slate of presidential electors who will cast that state s electoral votes for president. The election of an American president is not a direct popular vote, but rather an indirect election process in which the voters select electors who in turn make the actual choice of a president. In designing this system, the Founders envisioned the presidential electors as a council of wise men from each state who would render an independent judgment on the best person to hold the nation s highest office. They also expected that the Electoral College would, in effect, nominate presidential candidates in those in- stances when no candidate received an Electoral College majority, because the House of Representatives would then choose a president from among the top three
240 C H A P T E R 8
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Electoral College vote getters. The Founders also envisioned a nonpartisan selection process. Only the first two elections of George Washington came close to fulfilling the Constitution writers expectations. Washington was indeed chosen by the Elec- toral College on a nonpartisan basis. But in the ensuing elections, the contests for president became highly partisan. Competing parties ran slates of candidates for the position of presidential elector within the states, and these elector candidates were pledged to support their party s nominee for president and vice president.
ALLOCATION OF ELECTORAL VOTES AMONG THE STATES Each state s allocation of electoral votes is determined by its representation in the Congress. An electoral vote is assigned to each state based upon its number of sena- tors and representatives (e.g., California, with two senators and fifty-three represen- tatives, has fifty-five electoral votes; Vermont, with two senators and one representative, has three electoral votes). The District of Columbia, in accordance with the Twenty-Third Amendment, is entitled to three electoral votes.
ALLOCATING A STATE S ELECTORAL VOTES: WINNER-TAKE-ALL In every state but Maine and Nebraska, the allocation of a state s electoral votes among the presidential candidates is on the basis of a winner-take-all system. The candidate who receives a plurality of the state popular vote for president receives all of that state s electoral votes, no matter how narrow the candidate s margin of victory. In Maine and Nebraska, the state s electoral votes are allocated on the basis of two electoral votes for the candidate gaining a plurality in the statewide vote, and one electoral vote for the winner in each congressional district. Although an exception to the winner-take-all rule, Maine has consistently cast all its electoral votes for one presidential candidate, as has Nebraska since it initiated the district system for the 1992 presidential election.
MAJORITY IN THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE REQUIRED FOR ELECTION To be elected president, a candidate must receive an absolute majority of the votes in the Electoral College (i.e., 270 of the total 538 electoral votes). If no candidate for president receives an Electoral College majority, the election is thrown into the newly elected House of Representatives, which chooses from the three candidates who received the largest number of electoral votes. In making its selection, the House votes by state delegation, with each state having one vote and with a majority of the states required for election. When no vice presidential candidate has a majority of the electoral votes, the Senate chooses the vice president from between the two candidates with the largest number of electoral votes.
The House of Representatives has been required to choose the president only twice. The first time was after the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson and his vice presidential running mate, Aaron Burr, both received the same number of electoral votes. This tie vote occurred because electors could not differentiate in
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 241
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casting their two votes between which candidate they preferred for president and vice president under the Constitution as originally written. Rather, the candidate with the largest number of votes was elected president and the candidate in second place became vice president. This system of balloting, which was not well adapted to the emerging party system, in which candidates for president and vice president ran as a ticket, resulted in the tie vote between Jefferson and Burr. The House ulti- mately resolved the tie in Jefferson s favor. In consequence of this bitter contro- versy, the Twelfth Amendment was added to the Constitution. It provided for electors to vote separately for the offices of president and vice president. The other instance of the House having to decide the election occurred in the election of 1824, when four persons received electoral votes: Andrew Jackson (99 votes), John Quincy Adams (84), William Crawford (41), and Henry Clay (37). With the sup- port of Henry Clay, Adams was selected as president by a majority of one vote.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE TENDENCY TO EXAGGERATE THE POPULAR-VOTE MARGIN OF THE WINNING CANDIDATE In four instances, the presidential candidate who was the winner of the popular vote failed to gain a majority in the Electoral College. In 1824, Andrew Jackson re- ceived a plurality of the popular vote in the eighteen states that chose their electors by popular vote (there were twenty-four states in the Union at that time, and in six the state legislatures chose the electors). The other cases of the popular-vote winner not gaining an electoral vote majority took place in the 1876 contest between Samuel J. Tilden (Democrat) and Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican), when Hayes was awarded disputed electoral votes of Oregon plus four southern states; in 1888 when Grover Cleveland (Democrat), with a 95,096 popular-vote plurality, lost in the Electoral College to Benjamin Harrison (Republican) by a 168 to 233 margin; and most recently in the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Gore won 48.4 percent of the popular vote and a plurality of 537,179 votes nationwide. He carried twenty states plus the District of Columbia, but his electoral vote of 266 fell four short of a majority. Bush won a narrow majority in the Electoral College (271 electoral votes while carrying thirty states) even though he trailed Gore by 0.5 percent of the popular vote. His electoral vote majority was sealed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the dispute over Florida s twenty-five electoral votes in a way that resulted in his gaining the state s twenty-five electoral votes.
Most public discussion of the Electoral College, especially since the 2000 elec- tion, has focused upon the possibility that the popular-vote winner is not assured of an Electoral College majority and election to the presidency. However, because this circumstance has occurred rarely, Electoral College reform has not been high on the public s list of concerns. Indeed, the Electoral College normally has operated in such a way as to exaggerate the popular-vote winner s margin in the Electoral College. For example, Richard Nixon s 43.4 percent of the popular vote was less than 1 percent greater than Hubert Humphrey s 42.7 percent. In the Electoral College, however, Nixon s margin was a more comfortable 55.9 percent. A more striking example of the extent to which the winner of the popular vote can have his margin of victory exaggerated by the operation of the Electoral College occurred in 1980, when Ronald Reagan received 50.7 percent of the popular vote and 90.9 percent of the electoral
242 C H A P T E R 8
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vote. This pattern of the winning candidate s proportion of the electoral vote nor- mally being greater than his popular-vote percentage is shown in Figure 8.8. Because the popular-vote winner and the electoral-vote winner were the same from 1888 through 1996, there was little interest within the Congress especially before the 2000 election in changing the Electoral College system. Bush s election without a plurality of the popular vote in 2000 did spark some interest in plans to reform the Electoral College, but most Americans accepted the legitimacy of his election with an Electoral College majority. The usual tendency of the Electoral College to exaggerate the winning presidential candidate s margin of victory, it has been argued, gives the president an opportunity to claim an electoral mandate to govern and imple- ment the policies that were advocated in the campaign.
ENCOURAGING TWO-PARTY POLITICS The Electoral College system works to the advantage of the two major parties and to the detriment of minor parties. The combination of a winner-take-all system to determine the allocation of the states electoral votes and the requirement of a majority in the Electoral College to be elected makes it almost impossible for third parties to win a presidential election. To win any electoral votes and have any im- pact on the electoral vote, a third-party candidate must have voter support that is geographically concentrated the way George Wallace s was in the southern states in 1968 or Strom Thurmond s was in 1948. When a third-party candidate s support is
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P er
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Percent of Popular Vote Percent of Electoral Vote
FIGURE 8.8 | PERCENTAGE OF POPULAR AND ELECTORAL VOTE OF THE WINNINGCANDIDATE, 1976 2008 Source: http://www.uselectionatlas.org.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 243
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more evenly spread across the country, as in the case of Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, the candidate has virtually no hope of winning any electoral votes.
If the Electoral College tends to be stacked against third parties winning elec- tions, this does not mean that third parties are without influence. By garnering votes that might otherwise have gone to one of the major-party candidates, third parties can affect the outcome of the vote. Theodore Roosevelt s Progressive Party in 1912 split the normally Republican majority in the country and enabled the minority Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, to be elected. The presence of significant third-party candidates in the 2000 election also illustrates the potential these parties have to affect presidential elections. Most analysts believe that if Ralph Nader had not been running as the Green Party nominee, Florida s twenty-five elec- toral votes would have gone to Gore, resulting in his election.
Although third-party candidates played a role in determining the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, their more common impact is to affect the distri- bution of electoral votes within particular states but not decide who is elected president. For example, in 1992 a Washington Post analysis of exit poll data showed that had Perot not been in the race, Ohio would have been in the Bush column, but Clinton still would have won 349 electoral votes to Bush s 189.12
Running on the Reform Party ticket in 1996, Perot again had no effect on the presidential election result, although he did deprive President Clinton of a major- ity of the popular vote.13
BIG STATE VERSUS SMALL STATE ADVANTAGES Small states are mathematically overrepresented in the Electoral College. This is because their overrepresentation in the House (every state is provided one representa- tive irrespective of population) and the Senate (each state has two senators irrespective of population) guarantees them overrepresentation in the Electoral College. Following the 2000 reapportionment, Wyoming had an electoral vote for every 169,000 people in the state while the five most populated states (Illinois, New York, Florida, California, and Texas) had more than 600,000 people for every electoral vote. Because of the winner-take-all system, however, it is the large, populous states that mainly benefit from the Electoral College. California, with fifty-five electoral votes, has more electoral votes than the thirteen smallest states combined (six states with three electoral votes and seven states with four electoral votes). This means that narrow vic- tories in large states yield a much higher return in terms of electoral votes than do large pluralities in small states. A vote in California holds the potential of influencing fifty-five electoral votes, whereas a vote in South Dakota can influence only three.
The critical nature of the big states to a presidential nominee is illustrated by the data contained in Table 8.2. The ten largest states have a combined total of 255 electoral votes (47 percent of the total), just 15 short of the 270 needed for election. Without carrying at least some of these large states it is almost impossible for a candidate to be elected president. It is, therefore, small wonder that presiden- tial candidates tend to concentrate their campaign efforts in those large states where they believe they have a chance of victory. Because large states are normally quite competitive between the two major parties, they are major battlegrounds in presi- dential elections. Since the Electoral College makes large competitive states so
244 C H A P T E R 8
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important in presidential elections, it also benefits those groups that are geographi- cally concentrated in these states (e.g., racial and ethnic minorities).
TIGHT ELECTORAL COLLEGE COMPETITION IN 2000 AND 2004 With the Republicans winning 271 electoral votes and the Democrats 266 in 2000, the nation witnessed the closest Electoral College contest in over a century. The 2004 result was also relatively close, with George W. Bush s capturing a 286 251 victory and Ohio proving to be the pivotal state swinging the election to Republi- cans. Recent elections demonstrated that the Republican Electoral College base is the Mountain, Plains, and southern states, while the Democratic base is in the Northeast, West Coast, and industrial states of the Midwest. These partisan bases of support provide the potential for highly competitive contests for Electoral College majorities. However, recent elections have also witnessed regional polariza- tion that has left fewer states up for grabs, meaning that campaigns have become increasingly focused on a narrowing battlefield.
TABLE 8.2 THE IMPACT OF STATE SIZE ON THE ELECTORAL COLLEGEa
State Electoral Votes
Percent of Total Electoral College State
Electoral Votes
Percent of Total Electoral College
Smallest States (13) Largest States (10)
Vermont 3 0.56 California 55 10.22
Delaware 3 0.56 Texas 34 6.32
Montana 3 0.56 New York 31 5.76
South Dakota 3 0.56 Florida 27 5.02
North Dakota 3 0.56 Pennsylvania 21 3.90
Wyoming 3 0.56 Illinois 21 3.90
Alaska 3 0.56 Ohio 20 3.72
Maine 4 0.74 Michigan 17 3.16
New Hampshire 4 0.74 New Jersey 15 2.79
Rhode Island 4 0.74 North Carolina 14 2.60
Nevada 4 0.74 Total 255 47.4
Idaho 4 0.74
Hawaii 4 0.74
Total 45 8.36
aBased on 2000 census figures.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 245
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In 2000 and 2004, Democratic hopes were largely tied to winning Florida or Ohio to complete a narrow majority in the Electoral College. In both cases, this strategy fell short. In 2008, Barack Obama expanded the field of contested states by competing in southern and southwestern states that had increasingly more urban and affluent electorates (Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada). Obama also extended his campaign efforts in the Midwest by running an active campaign in Iowa and even Indiana, a state where Kerry received less than 40 percent of the vote just four years earlier. Ultimately, Obama prevailed in eight states that Kerry lost in 2004 Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Ohio.
THE GENERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN
Each campaign is unique. Campaigns differ depending upon who the contending candidates are, the nature of the office being sought (executive, legislative, or judi- cial), the level of government (national, state, or local), the applicable campaign finance and election regulatory statutes, the campaign resources of the candidates, type of nominating campaigns that were conducted, the nature of the constituency, and the tenor of the times (e.g., which issues are salient to the voters). For the in- cumbent, the campaign is usually a matter of protecting one s inherent advantages of name familiarity and a favorable image while maintaining a favorable balance of campaign resources. For the challenger, who is often underfinanced, the cam- paign is frequently a time of frantic scrambling to accumulate adequate campaign resources and seeking to find the point of vulnerability in the incumbent s record. In every election cycle, elections are won and lost because of campaign decisions. For example, during the 1992 presidential race, the Clinton campaign was success- ful in keeping its message zeroed in on blaming the Bush administration for the economy s performance and the need for a new economic plan. The focused nature of its advertising, plus the use of a quick response technique to any charge made by the Republicans, enabled the Clinton organization to keep the campaign agenda on its chosen issue the state of the economy. By contrast, Bush s message lacked focus; he wavered between claiming that the economy was better than his oppo- nents asserted, blaming the Democratic Congress for the state of the economy, and attacking Clinton s character.
In 1996, the Clinton campaign again was successful in setting the campaign agenda through advertising, campaign events, and speeches. It succeeded in framing the electo- rate s choice as a referendum on the Republican Revolution that followed the party s takeover of Congress after the 1994 elections. Clinton s message was that the Republi- cans were uncaring and insensitive and should not be trusted with America s future. By contrast, Republican Bob Dole did not find an issue that made an impact until the last weeks of the campaign, when he began to stress the issue of Clinton s character amid news media reports of Democratic campaign finance irregularities.14
In the 2000 presidential campaign, Vice President Al Gore s campaign themes failed to take advantage of running on the administration s record, a favorable economy, and criticism of the Republican Congress. Instead, he allowed the race to become a contest between two individuals and their programs for the future. This strategy failed to capitalize on the Democrats slight advantage among voters in terms
246 C H A P T E R 8
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of party identification. It also gave a small edge to George W. Bush, whose personal qualities were generally perceived to be more attractive to voters than Gore s.
In 2008, Obama s blueprint was much the same as Clinton s had been sixteen years earlier. With a struggling economy following two terms of a Republican pres- idency, Obama relentlessly focused on economic themes. When the difficult eco- nomic conditions became the focal point of America s attention, the Republican nominee was bound to fare poorly. McCain did himself few favors when the finan- cial crisis began to surface during the fall campaign. He initially claimed that the fundamentals of the economy are strong, a quote the Obama campaign quickly
seized on as evidence that McCain was out of touch and did not understand how hard the economy was hitting the American public. Perhaps realizing his misstep, McCain changed course nine days later and announced abruptly that he was sus- pending his campaign to return to Washington to help assist in the passage of an economic bailout package. But Democrats were again to criticize McCain s erratic behavior and his campaign was never able to regain momentum.
WHEN THE VOTER DECIDES Most voters (normally around 60 percent) in presidential elections make up their minds about the candidate for whom they will vote before or during the nominat- ing conventions. A substantial portion of the electorate, however, does not make its decision until after the conventions and during the general election campaign (see Figure 8.9). Therefore, the impact of the campaign can be significant. Analysis of Gallup Poll and National Election Studies data by James Campbell shows that in presidential elections between 1948 and 2000, the campaigns after the conventions were probably determinative in Truman s win in 1948 and Kennedy s narrow victory in 1960. Campbell also concludes that it is quite possible that the campaigns were decisive in 1976 (Carter), 1980 (Reagan), and 2000 (Bush). For example, in 1976 more voters identifying with the Democratic Party decided during the campaign than before it (53 to 47 percent), and Carter garnered three-fourths of their votes. The one common condition that works against making campaigns decisive is the presence of a popular incumbent president Eisenhower (1956), Johnson (1964), Reagan (1984), and Clinton (1996). In these cases, it appears that voters were familiar with and quite satisfied with the performance of the incumbent, and hence they might assume that there was little need to learn more about either the incumbent or his opponent. By contrast, when incumbents have been in trouble, the campaigns seem to have been important. Thus, Truman s Democratic Party was badly divided in 1948; Ford in 1976 carried the burdens of being an unelected president, Watergate, and his pardon of Richard Nixon; and Carter faced the voters in 1980 during one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression.15
In 2004, the presence of a polarizing president also appeared to have diminished the importance of the campaign to some extent. A much smaller percentage of the public than usual said that they had made their decision after the party conventions. Most Americans had a strong view on President Bush s record on the economy, terrorism, and the Iraq War, and their view on Bush s record largely determined their vote choice before the campaign had even begun. Even in 2008, without an incum- bent running, the fall campaign appeared to make little difference. Obama held a
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 247
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consistent lead in the polls for almost the entire year and exit polls indicated that he did just as well among voters who made up their minds before September as he did among those who made up their minds closer to the day of the election.
INCUMBENCY Incumbency normally carries with it advantages. The resources and privileges of public office enable incumbents to publicize themselves and build support through the positions they take and the decisions they make. Incumbents are better known than challengers, and they have built-in ways of reaching the voters. Incumbent members of Congress stay in contact with their constituents through newsletters, surveys of constituent opinion, special targeted mailings, news releases, radio and television interviews, and meetings with constituent groups. Skilled incumbents use the rights and duties of public office in a way that projects the image of caring and conscientious legislators fulfilling their obligations to constituents. Voters, however, often see these tactics, such as newsletters, office hours in the district, casework to help constituents having problems with the federal bureaucracy, and advocacy of programs to benefit the constituency, as instances of members of Congress merely performing their official duties. By contrast, voters see challengers as poli- ticians or campaigners interested primarily in winning votes on Election Day. The self-advertisement efforts of all incumbent members of the House have meant that they are not only well known to their constituents, but they are normally
41
31
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30
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0
5
10
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30
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40
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1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004
P er
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FIGURE 8.9 | PERCENT OF VOTERS WHO SAID THEY DECIDED ON THE PRESIDENTIALCANDIDATE THEY VOTED FOR AFTER THE CONVENTIONS, 1976 2004 Source: National Election Studies.
248 C H A P T E R 8
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thought of in positive terms. By contrast, most House challengers are not well known to the voters, who have difficulty making an evaluation of their qualifications.16
Incumbent executives, especially the president and governors, are also in a position to claim credit for all the positive things that have occurred during their tenure. Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan, and Clinton were thus able to run on themes of peace and prosperity during their reelection campaigns of 1956, 1984, and 1996. Incumbency is, however, a two-edged sword. Presidents can also be held accountable for the negative things that have happened while they have been in office. Presidents Ford (1976), Carter (1980), and Bush (1992) found that the voters were unforgiving about a faltering economy and foreign policy setbacks. It makes little difference that presidents cannot control all aspects of our domestic and international condition. They are still likely to be held accountable.
Incumbent senators and representatives have fewer problems than presidents with being held accountable for adverse conditions in the nation and world. Members of the Congress tend to be judged by their constituents not on the basis of the record of the institution of which they are members but rather upon their own individual re- cords. Therefore, they are somewhat insulated from voter resentment about the state of the union, provided they have used their incumbency to build voter trust.
A further advantage of incumbency, especially in the case of legislative cam- paigns, is the ease incumbents have in raising money. Incumbents consistently have more money to spend on their campaigns than do challengers in House or Senate races. This pattern is illustrated in Table 8.3, which presents the mean funds raised in 2008 House races for incumbents and challengers of both parties. Incum- bents raised over $1 million more than challengers, on average. Such financial advantages for incumbents affect the way they campaign. Incumbents are much more likely to have campaign staffs composed of paid professionals than are their opponents, who must rely more heavily on volunteer assistance. Thus, in 2008, just one House incumbent was defeated by a challenger spending less than $1 million.
Normally, over 90 percent of the House incumbents gain reelection (94 percent in 2008; see Figure 8.10). Even in 1994, when the Republicans won control of the
TABLE 8.3 MEAN EXPENDITURES OF HOUSE CANDIDATES, 2007 2008
Type of Candidate Mean Fund-Raising
Incumbents $1,423,875
Republican Incumbents $1,435,004
Democratic Incumbents $1,415,647
Challengers $179,333
Republican Challengers $225,848
Democratic Challengers $265,408
All Candidates $469,359
Source: Federal Elections Commission.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 249
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House ousting thirty-five incumbent Democrats incumbents enjoyed an overall reelection rate of 92 percent. House incumbents benefit from the relatively homoge- neous nature of their districts when compared to the larger and more socially diverse statewide constituencies of senators. The distinctive socioeconomic charac- ter of individual House districts frequently gives a clear advantage to the candidate of one party or the other (e.g., predominantly black inner-city districts are safely Democratic, as are most big city districts with concentrations of blue-collar workers of eastern and southern European heritage; middle- and upper-middle-class sub- urban/small town districts are normally strongly Republican).
Incumbents are in a position to engage in extensive self-advertisement (e.g., mass mailings, constituent surveys, press releases, radio and television interviews, constituent service, town hall meetings) designed to project a favorable image. Of particular benefit to incumbents is the fact that major campaign efforts are not normally made on behalf of their challengers. Through skillful use of the advan- tages of public office, incumbents in most House districts are able to make their constituencies relatively safe for themselves for extended periods of time. Major struggles for control of the House, therefore, are fought out in the small proportion of districts in which incumbents are considered electorally vulnerable and in open seats, where no incumbent is seeking reelection. Thus, the average margin of victory for House incumbents in 2008 was 40 percentage points.
The incumbent reelection rate for senators, however, is substantially below that of members of the House of Representatives (see Figure 8.10). This was particularly true during the 1976 1980 period, when less than 65 percent of incumbents were successful in retaining their seats. The relatively high levels of incumbent senator defeat reflect several factors:
The generally higher levels of interparty competition that exist in statewide constituencies as compared to the smaller and more demographically homogeneous House districts The higher levels of campaign resources plowed into challenger races for the Senate The higher visibility of Senate contests
A substantial proportion of Senate incumbents, however, are normally elected by wide margins. In 2008, slightly more than half of the incumbents (eighteen of thirty-three) gained at least 60 percent of the popular vote in their states.
There is one particular set of candidates for whom incumbency has traditionally created severe difficulties. These are incumbent vice presidents seeking to succeed a president of their own party. Vice presidents running for president in their own right find themselves in a particularly restricted position in terms of campaign strategy. One of their claims to being qualified for the presidency is their service as vice presi- dent. Most claim that they were involved in the major decisions of the administration in which they served. The problem with such claims is that every administration after it has been in office for a time makes decisions that offend sizable numbers of voters. This presents the vice president with a dilemma. If the vice president gives unqualified support to the administration s policies, he or she risks losing the support of key voter groups. But if the vice president suggests disagreement with some aspects of administration policy, this could be interpreted as lack of influence in the administration in which he or she claims to have been a key policy maker. And if the vice president
250 C H A P T E R 8
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seeks to put distance between him- or herself and the president, there is a real risk of losing the support of the president s supporters. The liabilities inherent in the vice presidency were major problems for Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and Al Gore in 2000. Walter Mondale found in 1984, four years after leaving office, that service in the vice presidency during the Carter administration was a serious drawback for his campaign. Even George H. W. Bush, who in 1988 became the first incumbent vice president to be elected to the presidency since Martin Van Buren in 1836, had to endure and overcome charges that he was a wimp because of his reluctance to distance himself from Reagan administration policies.
MAJORITY VERSUS MINORITY PARTY STATUS Candidates have customarily placed differing emphasis on partisan themes depend- ing on whether they were the nominees of the majority or minority party. Majority party candidates have normally stressed party-type appeals and sought to rally the faithful to turn out and vote because if the faithful respond to the call, then the party s candidate is assured of victory. As the dominant party in terms of the elec- torate s party identification since the Great Depression of the 1930s, nationally the Democratic Party has more frequently emphasized partisan Democratic appeals to the electorate than have the Republicans. Past accomplishments of the party and
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FIGURE 8.10 | PERCENT OF HOUSE AND SENATE INCUMBENTS REELECTED, 1960 2008 Source: Table 1-19 Incumbent Reelection Rates: Representatives, Senators, and Governors, General Elections, 1960 2008. CQ Press Electronic Library, Vital Statistics on American Politics Online Edition, vsap09_tab1-19. Originally published in Vital Statistics on American Politics 2009 2010, edited by Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi (Washington: CQ Press, 2009).
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 251
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its heroes have been stressed along with negative characterizations of the Republi- cans (e.g., the party of the rich ). Because pro-Democratic voters groups have tended to have lower rates of turnout than Republican-leaning voters, special efforts have been made to mobilize Democrats to get to the polls on Election Day.
As partisan appeals have become less effective in presidential elections, the signif- icance of majority/minority status in determining campaign strategy has been reduced. In addition, surveys conducted in the 1980s through 2004 have revealed that the two major parties are approaching parity in terms of the party identification of the voters. If this division between the parties continues within the electorate, it will further reduce the impact of majority/minority party status on campaign strategy. In keeping with this, a study conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice found that only 15 percent of issue-advocacy ads used in the 1998 midterm elections even men- tioned a political party by name. However, in a reflection of the candidate-centered nature of campaigning, 99 percent of the ads gave a candidate s name.17
DEBATES Debates have now become a standard part of presidential campaigns, and debates or forums are common in contests for other offices. Because the media tends to hype the presidential debates and give them prime time coverage, the candidates tend to see them as make-or-break events.18 With a massive television audience (over 60 million tuned in for the second presidential debate in 2008), debates have the potential to damage or help presidential nominees. As a general rule, the candidate who is per- ceived to have won the debate tends to make a modest gain in the polls.19 For example, in 1996, Clinton was generally perceived to have won the debates. By pre- senting a positive image of his record and policies while avoiding angry reactions to Dole s attacks, he was able to maintain his double-digit lead in the polls after the debates. In 2004, John Kerry made up some ground on Bush in the polls after he was widely perceived as having won the first two debates. But in 2008, the presidential debates appeared to produce little, if any, movement in the daily tracking polls.
Political scientist Nelson W. Polsby has observed that it s nearly impossible to win a debate but it is possible to lose one .Therefore, whoever is perceived going in as having the higher level of expectations is the one that s most at risk. 20 As a result, the candidates organizations try to raise the expectations for their oppo- nents performance before the first debate and lower expectations for that of their own candidates. In the last two weeks of September 2000, for example, the Bush camp went so far as to describe Gore as a world class debater who had bested debate opponents a dozen times. Consistent with Polsby s thesis, the expectations for Gore were greater than those for Bush, and it was Bush who in the end benefited most from the debates.21 Bush, whose performance in the debates was more consistent than that of Gore, entered the debates trailing by approximately 5 percentage points and emerged from the debates in the lead.
The winner of the debates may receive a modest upward bump in the polls, but it is unlikely that the bump will be of a sufficient magnitude to alter the course of the race unless the contest is extremely close going into the debate. The impact of the debates is further limited by the fact that, for many viewers, the debates tend to reinforce their preexisting candidate preferences. That is, most viewers think their
252 C H A P T E R 8
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preferred candidate won the debate, and those who are dissatisfied with their candi- date s performance are likely to say that the debate was a tie.22
The history of televised debates also demonstrates that it is not so much the sub- stance of what is said that matters as it is the image of the candidates that is con- veyed. The press tends to judge the debates in terms of winners and losers and press judgments affect the public s assessment. Voters in general do not follow the content of the debates carefully and do not normally have great confidence in their ability to make judgments concerning the substance of the debate. But voters often do make personal judgments about the candidates based on how they present themselves in this uncontrolled environment. In 2004, Bush lost the first debate more because of personal tics picked up by the cameras than for any substantive problems with the answers he gave to questions he was asked. Prior to the debate, the candidates had agreed that the cameras would not show one candidate while the other was speaking, but the networks were not bound by this agreement and they made extensive use of split screens to show both candidates at the same time. This decision was problematic for Bush, who was captured looking frustrated and annoyed while Kerry was speak- ing. These visuals led most of the public view the debate as a clear win for Kerry, which helped reinvigorate his campaign.
Voters also tend to rely rather heavily on media commentaries on the debates. As a result, immediately after the event, there is frequently a rather even split bet- ween the candidates in the viewers minds about who won the debate. However, after several days of press commentary, there is usually a shift by the public in the direction of the verdict rendered by the press. In 2000, polls conducted immediately after the first Bush-Gore debates showed a slight advantage for Gore. However, after media commentary, including ridicule of Gore on Saturday Night Live, Gore s debate victory was reinterpreted as a defeat.23
ISSUES Throughout the years from the Great Depression in the 1930s until the 1980 elec- tion, Democratic candidates generally had a clear advantage over the Republicans when dealing with domestic issues. Through their sponsorship and expansion of a vast array of government programs, which Republicans frequently opposed, the Democrats were in a position to seek support from virtually every major group in American society. The party has also had a favorable image on economic is- sues. When asked which party they believed was best for the economy, employ- ment, and jobs, voters from the 1930s to 1980 consistently favored the Democrats. As a result, in elections when pocketbook issues were salient (e.g., 1960, 1976), the Democrats were at a distinct advantage. Indeed, during much of this period, Republican candidates sought to downplay domestic issues and em- phasize foreign policy concerns. The public s perceptions of the parties changed significantly during the Carter administration and the 1980 campaign. For the first time since the 1930s, voters began to view the GOP candidate as best for the economy, no doubt reflecting the double-digit inflation, rising unemployment, and high interest rates of the later years of the Carter administration.24 The Re- publicans lost their economic policy advantage during the serious 1981 1982 recession that occurred during the first Reagan administration. However, an
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 253
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improved economy during 1984 and 1988 enabled the Republicans to achieve a fa- vorable rating from the electorate in terms of their ability to handle the economy. Until the late 1990s, Democrats trailed behind Republicans in being viewed as better able to handle the economy, but they took the advantage on this issue during George W. Bush s second term (see Figure 8.11).
With partisan advantage on the economy and domestic issues having shifted frequently between the two parties in recent elections, it is clear that American poli- tics has emerged from the New Deal era and that neither party has a continuing lock on these issues. Rather, the electorate appears quite capable of venting its frus- trations on either party, depending upon which one it holds responsible for the state of the nation. Thus, an electorate that in 1992 banished the Bush administration from the White House for its seeming lack of sensitivity to the public s economic concerns turned right around two years later and gave the Republicans a resound- ing victory that included control of the Congress for the first time in over forty years. Then, amid the prosperity of 1996, the voters rewarded Bill Clinton with a second term and continued GOP control of Congress. The 2000 elections were a virtual tie that resulted in a Democratic administration being replaced by one led by Republican George W. Bush, while the GOP in Congress sustained losses in both chambers. Republicans entered the 2006 elections suffering from widespread public disapproval and this dissatisfaction was evident in the public s propensity to trust the Democratic Party more on a wide array of issues (see Figure 8.11).
The Republicans traditional disadvantage on domestic issues was partially off- set by an advantage they carried regarding foreign policy. For example, in 1992,
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FIGURE 8.11 | WHICH PARTY THE PUBLIC TRUSTS TO HANDLE ISSUES, FEBRUARY, 2008 Source: The Washington Post/ABC News Poll, February 4, 2008.
254 C H A P T E R 8
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voters preferred Bush to Clinton when it came to handling foreign affairs. The vo- ters preference for Bush over Clinton was small consolation to the GOP, however, because few voters considered foreign policy a basis for making their decisions on Election Day. Following 9/11, security issues became very important to citizens, who tended to trust the Republican Party to better handle terrorism and the Iraq War. Thus, while voters who were concerned about the economy in 2004 favored John Kerry by a large margin, a nearly equal proportion of the electorate who placed more emphasis on terrorism was far more likely to vote for Bush. Neverthe- less, the lingering difficulties for the military in Iraq began working against Repub- licans by the midterm elections in 2006, threatening the Republicans dominance on foreign policy issues (see Figure 8.11).
A third cluster of issues involves social issues such as crime, traditional mo- rality, law and order, abortion, race relations, and school prayer. These are issues that often stir deep emotions, and they tend to affect the parties in different ways. Previously, the GOP was a coalition of free-market libertarians and social conser- vatives, and could usually stay united as long as it concentrated on economic issues, where both factions are in essential agreement on government s limited
BOX 8.5 DO YOUNG ADULTS GET REAL KNOWLEDGE FROM A FAKE NEWS SHOW?
During the 2004 presidential campaign, the popularity of Comedy Central s The Daily Show, hosted by Jon Stewart, soared with an average of more than 1 million viewers nightly. The show is particularly popular with young adults (ages 18 29), over one-fifth of whom said they watched The Daily Show regularly. Stewart s show became such an important political player during the campaign that John Edwards chose it as the venue to announce his run for president and John Kerry appeared on the program after securing the Democratic nomination. The popularity of this show among young Americans drew some criticism from pundits such as conservative talk show host Bill O Reilly, who claimed that Daily Show viewers were nothing but dopey kids. However, a study conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Study found that this was hardly the case. The survey asked citizens to answer six factual questions about where the candidates stood on the issues, and viewers of The Daily Show not only performed better than citizens who do not watch late night comedy, they outperformed those who are regular viewers of network television news or regular readers of the newspaper. In fact, another study found that Daily Show viewers were just as informed about current events as those who watch Bill O Reilly s show on Fox News.
The increased knowledge of Daily Show viewers may be attributable both to the fact that the show attracts a more politically engaged audience because of its content and because in satirizing politics, the show does present content that can be informative. As one Annenberg researcher noted, The Daily Show segments are less likely than a Leno or Letterman joke to use a quick punch-line to make fun of a candidate. Instead, Stewart s lengthier segments employ irony to explore policy issues, news events, and even the media s coverage of the campaign.
Source: Annenberg National Election Study, Daily Show Viewers Knowledgeable About Presidential Campaign, National Annenberg Election Survey Shows, September 21, 2004; Pew Research Center for the People and Press, News Audiences Increasingly Polarized, June 8, 2004.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 255
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role. However, in recent years, social issues have done more to unify the party, such as in 2004 when the Bush campaign used the issue of gay marriage to rally Republican voters to the polls.
Social issues do hold the capacity to split the Democratic coalition. Traditional Democrats often white, middle-class southern voters do not share the enthusi- asm that the party s liberal, egalitarian elements have for such policies as imple- menting affirmative action, cutting defense, protecting a woman s right to an abortion, or supporting gay rights. Figure 8.12 demonstrates the large gap between liberal and conservative Democrats on values issues. This divide has caused pro- blems for recent presidential nominees like John Kerry as well as other Democratic candidates who have been forced to make choices on divisive issues such as school prayer, gay marriage, and partial birth abortion. Nevertheless, these issues gener- ally affect voters only when other concerns are not tantamount. Thus, since most voters were preoccupied with concerns about the economy in 2008, the candidates positions on social issues became less important.
CANDIDATE IMAGE There are no hard and fast rules to guide candidates in terms of how to conduct their campaigns to achieve a favorable personal image, though homilies abound appear decisive, don t appear trigger happy, the best defense is a strong offense,
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Homosexuality Should Be Accepted by Society
To Be Moral It is Necessary to Believe in God
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P er
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FIGURE 8.12 | DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS ONSOCIAL ISSUES, 2005 Source: The Pew Research Center, Beyond Red vs. Blue: Republicans Divided about Role of Government Democrats by Social and Personal Values, May 10, 2005.
256 C H A P T E R 8
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carry the attack to your opponent. Personal characteristics that voters believe are important tend to vary depending upon the condition in which the country finds itself. In 2000, both Gore and Bush had image problems. For Gore it was the image of pandering to voters, whereas Bush faced the question of whether he was pre- pared to be president. Because he had been part of the Clinton administration, which had had its share of both accomplishments and scandals, Gore faced a diffi- cult dilemma on the image front: how to claim credit for the accomplishments of the Clinton administration while distancing himself from the unpopular image of Clinton as a person. This proved to be extremely difficult. Exit polls on Election Day revealed that no single issue dominated voters choices, but one personal qual- ity did honesty and trustworthiness. Of the 25 percent who said that this quality was most important to their vote, 80 percent voted for Bush.25 In 2004, Bush s im- age was one of a strong leader who was willing to take unpopular stands on the issues while Kerry suffered from being perceived as a flip-flopper. Kerry worked hard to project his own strong image at the Democratic Convention and during the debates, but his efforts were not entirely successful. Exit polls revealed that those who placed a priority on the winner being a strong leader voted overwhelmingly for Bush. With a faltering economy and two stagnant wars, voters in 2008 were looking for the candidate who best represented change, and Obama had the clear advantage over McCain on that quality (see Figure 8.13).
There is frequent commentary about how candidates manipulate their images through skillful use of the mass media. In fact, however, candidate images are not easily created and altered. For example, candidates cannot control the topics that will
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Shares My Values Can Bring Change Experience Cares About People
P er
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fo r
C an
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McCain Obama
FIGURE 8.13 | VOTE CHOICE OF EXIT POLL RESPONDENTS BASED ON MOST IMPORTANTPERSONAL QUALITY, 2008 Source: National Election Poll Exit Survey.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 257
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.
be raised by their opponents or journalists, nor can they erase their past records. Candidates for major office that are not well known to the public have the greatest opportunity to create a favorable image during the early stages of their campaigns. Although candidate image can be influential in affecting voter choice for high- visibility races, such as those for president or governor, the impact of candidate image normally declines as one goes lower down the ballot, because these candidates are less well known and less visible.26
To a significant degree, elections are about performance voters render a ver- dict on an incumbent and the incumbent s party s record in office. That is, elections involve retrospective voting on the part of the citizenry. This was certainly the case in 2008, when Obama benefited from the fact that many voters were voting against how Republicans had handled the economy and the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan during the previous several years.
THE ROLE OF PARTIES IN MODERN CAMPAIGNS In the modern campaign, the candidate tends to be the focus, not the party. Most candidates build a personal organization devoted almost exclusively to their own election rather than the election of the party ticket. These organizations recruit volunteers and raise funds independently of the party. Indeed, any campaign for a major office run by a party organization is now a rarity in American politics. The candidate organizations tend to use professionals for the various phases of the campaign. These campaign technicians pollsters, media consultants, direct-mail specialists, Internet experts, targeting experts, and management specialists operate as private entrepreneurs outside the regular party organization. Campaign consultants tend to work, however, for the candidates of only one party. There has grown up, therefore, two sets of consultants one group works almost exclusively for Democratic candidates and another for Republicans. Candidates and consultants have found that it is extremely difficult to develop a relationship of trust and confidence unless it is understood from the beginning that both are on the same side politically. The parti- san orientation of consulting firms is reinforced by the fact that the national party or- ganizations, such as the national committees and the congressional campaign committees of both parties, each maintain approved lists of consultants whom they recommend to their parties candidates.
Although the party organizations are seldom involved in the day-to-day manage- ment of campaigns, they can provide essential and timely financial support and in-kind contributions of services such as polls, computer analyses of voting patterns, and phone banks for contacting contact voters. Indeed, the role of national party or- ganizations in campaigns for the House and Senate has been growing rather than de- clining. Parties often aid candidates by conducting public opinion polls on their behalf. During the 2004 election cycle, state parties spent over $13 million on polling. Survey research is now combined with demographic targeting techniques to sharpen the impact of campaign activities. For example, if polls reveal that a particular set of voters, such as blue-collar workers of eastern and southern European heritage, are undecided about their vote, it is important to be able to find these voters within the constituency. Computer analyses of census and marketing data can aid in the identi- fication of where these voters reside. With these targeting data in hand, the party
258 C H A P T E R 8
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BOX 8.6 HOW DO CITIZENS PERCEIVE THE CANDIDATES STRATEGIES?
Candidates and political parties generally choose to target some demographic groups more than others during the campaign. These choices are an inevitable result of the fact that candidates have limited resources and their appeals are likely to work better with some groups than others. But does the public take note of the decisions?
A 2008 survey asked respondents which groups they thought Barack Obama and John McCain were paying most attention to during the campaign. The figure below presents the findings from this survey. If a group appears above the upper left-hand quadrant, it means that many people thought that Obama was focusing attention but few thought McCain was doing so; when a group fell in the bottom right-hand quadrant, the opposite was true. Groups who are located in the top right-hand quadrant were thought to be attracting attention from both candidates, and those in the bottom left-hand quadrant were thought by the public to have been targeted by neither Obama nor McCain.
According to these results, the public thought that young adults, lower income Americans, African Americans, liberals, and union members were among the groups Obama was focusing most on while few thought McCain was targeting those groups. Instead, the public thought that McCain was focusing most of his attention on whites, upper income Americans, conservatives, and men; groups that the public did not see Obama trying to win votes from. According to the public, some groups drew significant attention from both sides. In particular, middle income Americans and women were singled out for being the subject of both sides campaign efforts.
African Americans
Lower Income AmericansYoung adults
Liberals
Unions
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Jews Catholics Bom Again
Percent Saying McCain Targeted
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Middle Aged Adults Elderly
Moderates
Men
Women
Whites
Upper Income Americans
Middle Income Americans
Conservatives
Source: Cooperative Congressional Election Study.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 259
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organizations can help develop an appropriate plan for directing the campaign s di- rect mail, phone banks, door-to-door canvassing, and media purchases.
A large share of candidates and parties budgets in national and statewide races is devoted to television advertisements. Indeed, in big states like California, cam- paigns have become largely television advertising campaigns, as the opposing candi- dates debate each other and seek to influence voters via thirty-second television spots designed by media consultants. In 2008, over 2 million television advertise- ments were aired for elections to positions at all levels of government.27 Over $500 million was spent on advertising for the presidential campaign alone.
Often these media campaigns emphasize attack ads, featuring harsh criticism of an opponent s record and character. Criticism of an opponent, particularly one s record in public office, has always been a standard and legitimate part of American electoral politics. However, in recent elections television attack ads have, in the view of many close observers, crossed over the line between legitimate criticism of an individual s record and outright distortion. In presidential and congressional campaigns, candidates often seek to avoid the backlash that might come with airing negative ads. Rather, they defer to parties and interest groups to run the most neg- ative attacks against their opponents, while their own campaigns take responsibility for the less controversial and more positive.
Parties are often instrumental in funding targeted appeals during campaigns as well. Direct mail allows candidates and parties to target their appeals to selected voter groups with a message that is apt to strike a responsive chord with the group being courted. Candidates, parties, and interest groups are all involved in producing direct-mail appeals during campaigns. This strategy is often reserved for more tar- geted and emotional appeals aimed at attracting supporters in critical areas. In 2004, the national party committees produced and distributed eighty-two different mailers for Ohio, while the state parties were responsible for another seventy-seven unique pieces of direct mail.28
Direct mail can also be used as part of larger mobilization efforts conducted by candidates, parties, and interest groups. Parties often focus particular attention on these GOTV efforts because getting supporters to the polls tends to aid all of the party s can- didates. For instance, in the presidential campaign, the DNC and RNC spent more than twice as much on their grassroots efforts as the candidates (see Figure 8.14). The state parties reported spending over $70 million on GOTV efforts in 2004, including more than $15 million in Florida.
In attempting to mobilize voters, the parties used a two-step process: finding those who needed to be mobilized and then contacting those potential supporters to encourage them to vote. To identify potential supporters, the parties relied on a combination of voter files and marketing data. The voter files were used to keep track of how often a citizen voted, allowing parties to distinguish between who was registered to vote and, among registered citizens, who was an occasional voter and who was a regular voter. The marketing data provided parties and groups with clues as to the partisan leanings of the citizen. As two Washington Post reporters explained:
Republican firms delved into commercial databases that pinpointed consumer buying patterns and television-watching habits to unearth such information as Coors beer and
260 C H A P T E R 8
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bourbon drinkers skewing Republican, brandy and cognac drinkers tilting Democratic; college football TV viewers were more Republican than those who watch professional football; viewers of Fox News were overwhelmingly committed to vote for Bush; homes with telephone caller ID tended to be Republican; people interested in gambling, fashion and theater tended to be Democratic.29
To complement the information taken from marketing and voter files, parties and groups also attempt to use information they collect themselves when canvassing neighborhoods door-to-door.
In 2008, Democrats were able to surpass the Republican Party s recent domi- nance in GOTV efforts. The massive resources of the Obama campaign were com- bined with the warehouse of data collected by Catalist (see Box 7.2) to generate the largest and most efficient mobilization effort to date. In previous years, Democrats focused their efforts on mobilizing people who lived in particular precincts that appeared to hold a lot of potential supporters who might not otherwise turn out to vote. However, in 2008, Democratic data and technology had developed suffi- ciently so that Democrats were targeting individuals. In particular, they focused on mobilizing individuals who either (1) habitual voters who were likely to be persuad- able; or (2) citizens who were likely to be supportive of Democrats, but were less likely to turn out without encouragement.
Once parties have identified the targets for their GOTV efforts, they turn to contacting these citizens in a variety of ways, including by phone, e-mail, mail, and in person. The grassroots efforts of candidates, parties, interest groups, and party-affiliated 527 organizations during the 2008 campaign were unprecedented in their scope and sophistication. At the end of the campaign, two-thirds of
41
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59
31
18
5
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10
20
30
40
50
60
70
“Robo Call”
P er
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Postal Mail Live Phone Call Email In Person Text Message
FIGURE 8.14 | HOW VOTERS WERE CONTACTED DURING THE 2008 PRESIDENTIALCAMPAIGN Source: Cooperative Congressional Election Study.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 261
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Americans reported being contacted by either a candidate, party, or some other campaign organization. These contacts came in a variety of forms. Three in five Americans received a pre-recorded phone call while one-third of the population was called by a live campaigner. Approximately 40 percent reported receiving direct mail from at least one of the campaigns while over 30 percent received an email. And 18 percent of Americans reported being contacted in person by one of the campaigns (see Figure 8.15). These grassroots efforts are somewhat successful in generating new voters. Research by Donald Green and Alan Gerber demonstrates that contacting potential voters in person has the most significant effect on turnout, followed by phone calls and direct mail. According to their research, e-mail contact has no effect on turnout (see Table 8.4).30
While the air war campaign advertising on television and radio is typically the most visible aspect of the campaign, the importance of the ground war the grassroots efforts to mobilize voters has become an increasingly important aspect of the parties strategies for winning elections. As technological advancements have made targeting voters more cost effective, candidates, parties, and interest groups have devoted more resources to these GOTV strategies. This has become a particularly important venue for political parties, who have contacted more voters in recent cam- paigns than at any time during the previous decades (see Figure 8.15).
ELECTION OUTCOMES
Elections are the culmination of candidates campaigns and voters decisions, and they are played out as contests for specific offices, in different constituencies, at various times. Office, constituency, and timing factors, therefore, combine to pro- duce diverse patterns of election outcomes.
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
Despite the fact that Democrats have enjoyed a substantial advantage in party identification for most of the period from 1956 to 2008, the Republicans have been at least as successful in capturing the presidency. In fourteen presidential elections held during this period, the Republicans have won eight times and the Democrats six. Obviously, short-term factors of candidate image, issues, and
TABLE 8.4 EFFECT OF MOBILIZATION TECHNIQUES ON TURNOUT
Method Effectiveness Cost per New Voter
Door-to-door 1 new voter for every 14 people contacted $19
Phone call 1 new voter for every 35 people contacted $39
Direct mail 1 new voter for every 177 people contacted $59
E-mail No evidence of mobilization effects 3
Source: Alan Gerber and Donald Green, Get Out the Vote.
262 C H A P T E R 8
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party image have overridden the normal Democratic advantage in party identifiers to produce this pattern of outcome in presidential elections. Among the most dramatic aspects of this pattern is the changing allegiance of the South in presi- dential elections.
In each of their presidential victories between 1956 and 2004, the Republicans were beneficiaries of major internal splits within the dominant Democratic Party. Democrats are divided on such matters as affirmative action, crime, gun control, gay marriage, and national defense issues that have become more important than they were in the 1940s through the early 1960s. At the same time, the old New Deal agenda of national government responsibility for the social welfare of indivi- duals and the regulation of the economy has either lost some of its salience or the perceived superiority of the Democrats on these issues for the party s traditional voters has become less obvious.31 These changes have given the GOP the opportu- nity to compete effectively in presidential elections.
CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS Whatever advantages the Republicans may have had in presidential contests had been substantially offset by Democratic domination of the Congress. Until the 1994 midterm elections, which gave Republicans control of both the House and Senate, the voters had denied the party control over both chambers for forty years. Democratic dominance had been so pervasive and persistent that there had even been talk of the GOP being a permanent minority in the House.32 During their
29
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FIGURE 8.15 | PERCENT OF CITIZENS REPORTING THAT THEY WERE CONTACTED BYTHE PARTIES, 1972 2008 Source: National Election Studies.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 263
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forty years in the congressional wilderness, the Republicans did achieve temporary majority status in the Senate during the Reagan era (from 1981 through 1986), but they never controlled the House of Representatives.
REGIONAL PATTERNS The same regional patterns that are discernable in presidential elections are also present in congressional elections. The most significant regional change during the second half of the twentieth century was southern realign- ment. The long-standing Democratic control of Congress was anchored by the party s dominance of southern politics, which enabled it to control nearly every Senate and House seat in the region. In fact, southerners constituted the largest regional bloc within the congressional Democratic Party in 1960 making up 33.8 percent of the party membership in the Senate and 40 percent in the House. Of the 2,565 congressional elections held in the South during the first half of the twentieth century, Republicans won just 80 times. Because Democrats could count on dominating southern Congressional elections, they had a substantial head start in controlling Congress; winning just one-third of the seats outside of the South was usually sufficient to guarantee control.
The realignment of the southern electorate began in the mid-1960s as a response to the Republican and Democratic parties taking clear sides on racial issues. Yet this realignment was not immediately evident in the outcomes of congressional elections in the South (see Figure 8.16). Even as recently as 1990, Democrats won two-thirds of southern House contests. Much of this continued Democratic success in the South was due to the ability of southern Democratic office holders to vote conservatively
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FIGURE 8.16 | DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTY SHARE OF SOUTHERNCONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION, 1966 2008 Source: Results of House elections, by party, 1928 2008. (2001). In Guide to U.S. Elections 2010 (Vol. 2). Washington: CQ Press, 2010.
264 C H A P T E R 8
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on social and race issues while voting more with the mainstream Democratic Party on other issues. In addition, it took several decades to build a viable GOP party organiza- tion in the South capable of seriously competing with Democrats.33
The culmination of the partisan realignment in the South was the 1994 mid- term elections, when Republicans won a majority of southern House seats for the first time since Reconstruction. This Republican advance in the South was instru- mental in handing Republicans control of Congress for the first time in forty years. It also represented a substantial shift in the regional composition of both parties congressional delegations. After the 1994 elections, the Democratic Party became substantially less southern and western in membership. Southern states constituted less than one-quarter of the party s membership in Congress, and Mountain state senators were less than 15 percent. As southern influence in the congressional Democratic Party has declined, it has grown significantly among the Republicans. Southern Republicans moved from being an insignificant segment of the party in 1960 to the largest regional contingent after the 1994 elections. This shift was symbolized in 1995 by the selection of Newt Gingrich of Georgia to be Speaker of the House and Richard Armey of Texas to be the Majority Leader and in 1996 with the selection of Trent Lott of Mississippi as Senate Majority Leader.
REDISTRICTING After the decennial census, state governments are obligated to redraw congressional district lines to assure that districts maintain approximately equal po- pulations. The redistricting process varies from state to state, but in most cases the state legislature is responsible for drawing new maps while the rest use a commission process. In most cases, redistricting plans address the goals of protecting incumbents and gaining a partisan advantage.34 When a state s government is divided and nei- ther party has complete control over the process, the parties tend to compromise and draw lines that make incumbents from both parties more secure. Incumbents high reelection rates are at least partially attributable to the tendency of redistricting plans to draw districts favorable for sitting incumbents.
By most accounts, the redistricting performed by the states after the 2000 cen- sus went especially far in creating large numbers of seats that were safe for either Republicans or Democrats. Only eight incumbents lost reelection campaigns in 2002, and four of those losses were to other incumbents in states that had lost a congressional district. And these incumbents not only won but won easily; their av- erage margin of victory was 40 percent. The reason for this security appeared to be favorable redistricting. In fact, Sam Hirsch s analysis of redistricting noted that of 108 incumbents whose districts were relatively competitive before redistricting, only four districts became more competitive while forty-five were made safer.35
In addition to safer incumbents, Hirsch also notes that redistricting after the 2000 census had an overall partisan bias that favored Republicans. Indeed, when a single party controls a redistricting process, that party often acts to draw district lines to help elect more of their own party members. Democrats in Georgia con- trolled the legislature and governorship in 2001 2002 and used this power to draw district lines intended to benefit Democratic congressional candidates. Unified Republican governments in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan acted at the same time to benefit Republican candidates in those states. According to Hirsch s analy- sis, Republicans were able to partisan gerrymander more congressional districts
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 265
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after the 2000 census than Democrats, creating a twenty-five-seat redistricting bias in favor of the Republican Party. In other words, Republicans would not have had a majority in the House of Representatives after the 2002 and 2004 elections with- out the gains they achieved from redistricting.
Despite the partisan redistricting in several states before the 2002 elections, the clearest effects of partisan gerrymandering were actually evident in Texas in 2004. Prior to the 2002 election, Texas legislature was under divided party control and was not able to reach a compromise on how to draw new congressional districts. Because of the stalemate, a state judge chose the districts used in the 2002 election. However, Republicans gained full control of the Texas legislature following the 2002 elections, which motivated U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to urge Texas Republicans to pass a new map that would favor Republicans. Democratic state legis- lators attracted national media attention when, in an effort to keep Republicans from drawing new districts, they fled the state for Oklahoma and later New Mexico so that there would not be enough legislators for a quorum. After these standoffs, Democrats eventually returned to the legislature and the new map was passed and implemented for the 2004 elections. The Republican gerrymander was successful; the Democrats lost six seats to the Republicans in Texas, including four held by Democratic incum- bents with a combined sixty years of congressional seniority.
Largely due to the national media attention garnered by the Texas redistricting controversy and the overall decline in competitive House districts, many scholars
BOX 8.7 DO SINGLE-MEMBER DISTRICTS CREATE BIAS IN THE HOUSE?
The single-member district-plurality system of election has meant that a party s percentage of the House membership will not necessarily be proportionate to its national popular vote for Congress. If one party s voters tend to be concentrated in districts that it wins overwhelmingly, and if the opposition party tends to win most of the marginal districts by narrow margins, then the composition of the legislative chamber is not apt to reflect accurately the share of the total vote received by either party. A disparity between popular votes and a party s share of the legislative seats is an inevitable consequence of the uneven manner in which adherents of the two parties are scattered across the country and the way boundary lines are drawn. Of course, overt gerrymandering of congressional district lines designed to enhance the advantage of one party or the other can magnify the disparity between seats won and a party s share of the national two-party vote.
From 1960 through 1992, the Democrats were advantaged by the single-member district-plurality system of election. However, in 1994 through 2004, it has been the GOP that gained the advantage from the single-member district system. For example, even though Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000, he would have carried only 198 of the 435 (45.5 percent) congressional districts created for the 2002 midterm elections. Part of this bias against Democrats results from the fact that Democratic populations tend to be more compressed in urban areas, where they comprise overwhelmingly Democratic districts, whereas Republican voters are distributed more efficiently.
Source: Sam, Hirsch. The United States of Unrepresentatives: What Went Wrong in the Latest Round of Redistricting. Election Law Journal [2 (2003): 179 216.]
266 C H A P T E R 8
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and politicians are considering ways to reform the redistricting process to make it less partisan. One example that many reformers point to is Iowa, which uses a non- partisan commission for its redistricting. In 2001, the commission used a computer program to draw congressional districts without accounting for partisanship or in- cumbency, and neither party benefited from the new lines (nor did most of Iowa s incumbents).36 In 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) campaigned for a ballot proposition that would have implemented a similar system in California, but the proposition was rejected by California voters. Nevertheless, if the process is to be reformed, the initiative will have to come from the states themselves; the Supreme Court has consistently upheld redistricting plans that are based on pro- tecting the interests of parties or incumbents. With the next round of redistricting on the horizon following the 2010 elections, both parties will be looking to carve out districts to their advantage.
GUBERNATORIAL AND STATE LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS Despite setbacks in presidential politics, the Democratic Party dominated guberna- torial and state legislative elections during most of the post World War II era (see Figure 8.17). Between 1956 and 1994, the GOP controlled a majority of the nation s governorships only twice following the 1968 and 1994 elections and the party never controlled both state legislative chambers in a majority of the states. The post World War II pattern of Republicans winning the largest share of presi- dential elections and Democrats tending to dominate governorships and state legis- latures (as well as House elections) created a two-tiered political system. Analysts considered this two-tiered system to be a reflection of voters differing expectations
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FIGURE 8.17 | PERCENTAGE OF STATE LEGISLATURES UNDER DEMOCRATIC, REPUBLICAN,AND SPLIT CONTROL, 1956 2008 Source: National Conference of State Legislatures.
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 267
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for governmental institutions and their perceptions of which party was best able to operate those institutions. Thus, voters seemed to expect the House of Representa- tives and state officials to protect specific government programs from which they derived benefits. In protecting those benefits, they saw the Democrats as doing a better job than the GOP. At the same time, voters viewed the presidency as the of- fice responsible for protecting broad national interests, and for this responsibility they favored the Republicans in most postwar presidential elections.37 However, the 1992 and 1994 elections, which brought a Democrat to the White House and Republicans into control of Congress and a majority of governorships, have turned this theory on its head. Recent research into split election outcomes has cast further doubt on the theory that voters engage in ticket balancing. Contrary to the theory that voters intentionally engage in split-ticket voting to produce divided government and moderate policies, most cases of split outcomes are a byproduct of lopsided congressional campaigns characterized by well-funded, high-quality candidates ver- sus unknown competitors plus cross-pressured voters holding candidate evaluations at odds with their partisan leanings.38
With the exception of Democrats in the South from 1960 until 1994, there has been no consistent pattern of regional party dominance of governorships. Rather, party fortunes within regions have shown substantial variation over relatively short periods of time. For example, Republican control of the five midwestern governor- ships ranged from zero to five between 1960 and 1980 and stood at four after the 1994 and 1998 elections. Even before the 1994 GOP sweep, the South had not escaped the rising tide of interparty competition. Every southern state had elected at least one Republican governor between 1966 and 2004.
One of the most interesting patterns of regional voting during the Reagan Bush era was the ability of the Democrats to win governorships in the Mountain states, one of the GOP s areas of greatest strength in presidential elections. Between 1980 and 1990, the Democrats never held less than five of the eight governorships in this region, and after the 1982 elections they held all eight. Clearly, these Democratic governors were able to differentiate themselves from their national party and effec- tively appeal to voters. Even before the 2006 elections (which favored Democratic candidates), Democrats held the governorships in four of the eight Mountain states.
PROFESSIONALIZED LEGISLATURES As a part of the 1970s movement to reform state legis- latures, salaries were increased and additional staff and other resources were pro- vided to legislators. This process of legislative professionalization made legislative service virtually a full-time job in many states. With legislatures professionalizing, campaigning for legislative seats has become almost a full-time vocation. In addi- tion, legislative campaigns have become more expensive and professional, employ- ing consultants and sophisticated techniques.
Research by Morris Fiorina has shown that the trend toward full-time legisla- tors tended to advantage the Democrats by making legislative service more attrac- tive to the party s pool of potential candidates. By contrast, the pool of persons from whom the GOP recruited its candidates tended to find that full-time legislative service was incompatible with another career, thereby hurting the party s candidate recruitment efforts and contributing to the Republicans minority status in most state legislatures since the 1970s. Fiorina also found that there is a relationship
268 C H A P T E R 8
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between professionalized legislatures and divided party control of state govern- ments because entrenched professional legislators can often withstand adverse polit- ical tides much as members of the U.S. House have done.39
The increased professionalization of legislatures also appears to have increased the incumbency advantage in state legislatures.40 Full-time legislators have extensive opportunities to engage in self-advertisement through use of their perquisites of of- fice and normally have a much easier time raising campaign funds. In addition, they often enjoy the support of party caucus staffs and aggressive legislative campaign committees. As a result, defeating incumbent legislators has become more difficult. The Council of State Governments reported that in 2008 34 percent of all state leg- islative seats up for election went uncontested and just 39 percent of state legislative races attracted candidates from both major parties.
CAMPAIGNS, ELECTIONS, AND GOVERNANCE
Although candidates can vary their campaign strategies and can hire experts to devise the seemingly most effective strategy, all are restricted by conditions over which they have little or limited control election laws, the state of the economy, international conditions, campaign resources, public images of the parties, and the partisan division of the electorate between Republicans and Democrats. Candidates, therefore, must tai- lor their campaigns to fit conditions or run the risk of defeat or a serious decline in electoral support. The eventual electoral outcomes reflect the decisions of voters influ- enced by long-term affiliations with either the GOP or Democratic Party and more short-term considerations relating to candidates and issues. The voters electoral choices produce a wide array of different patterns of partisan control over governmen- tal offices. These patterns of party control mirror the effects of regional diversity, incumbency, economic conditions, campaign effort, and the timing of elections.
Those who assume governmental office as a result of elections constitute the party-in-government. It is these partisan leaders who carry major responsibility for the enunciation of party policy and for shaping the public s image of the party. They are also responsible for the content of governmental policies that affect the nation and the world. The role of the party-in-government and its impact on policy making are the concerns of Chapter 9.
WEB SITES ON CAMPAIGNS AND ELECTIONS
Campaign Finance The Federal Election Commission s Web site includes information on candidates and donors as well as reports on overall trends in campaign finance. http://www.fec.gov/
The Center for Responsive Politics also maintains campaign finance databases and presents easy to use information on overall trends. One feature even allows you to search for all donations made in your zip code. http://www.opensecrets.org/
The National Institute on Money in State Politics serves a similar function as the Center for Responsive Politics, but for state elections. http://www.followthemoney.org/
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 269
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The Campaign Finance Institute is affiliated with George Washington University and provides analysis of campaign finance regulations as well as suggestions for reforms. http://www.cfinst.org/
Candidates Project Vote Smart is an organization that provides voters with information about candidates issues positions. Their Web site includes candidates responses to issue questionnaires as well as information about vote ratings of elected officials. http://www.vote-smart.org
Campaign News CNN s home for election news includes a wealth of information, including surveys, issue positions, news, and results. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/
The Note is ABC News daily political update, which keeps close track of campaign news. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/TheNote/TheNote.html
National Journal s Hotline On Call is a blog used by the Hotline staff to post po- litical news of interest, including news about congressional and presidential races. http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/
The Columbia Journalism Review s site monitors and criticizes campaign coverage. http://www.cjrdaily.org/
Election Results Extensive Web site of presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial results, with infor- mation on turnout, statewide and county-level results, and colorful maps. http://www.uselectionatlas.org/
NOTES
1. For a detailed consideration of the role and impact of campaign consultants, see James A. Thurber and Candice J. Nelson, eds., Campaign Warriors: Political Consultants in Elections (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2000).
2. Michael Weisskopf, The Professional Touch, Washington Post, Nov. 8, 1994, p. A3 Dennis W. Johnson, The Business of Political Consulting, in James A. Thurber and Candice J. Nelson, eds., Campaign Warriors: Political Consul- tants in Elections (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2000), pp. 37 52.
3. Gary C. Jacobson, The Politics of Congressional Elections, 5th ed. (New York: Longman, 2001), p. 122. On the impact of campaign spending, see also Paul Herrnson, Congressional
Elections, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2000), ch. 9.
4. David S. Broder and Ruth Marcus, Wielding Third Force in Politics,
Washington Post, Sept. 27, 1997, pp. A1, A6; David E. Rosenbaum, Groups Spending $260 Million on Ads to Promote Agendas, New York Times (national edition), Oct. 15, 1998, p. A21.
5. Michael M. Franz, Joel Rivlin, and Kenneth Goldstein, Much More of the Same: Television Advertising Pre- and Post-BCRA, in Michael J. Malbin, ed., The Election After Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
6. Michael J. Malbin, The Election After Reform: Money, Politics and the
270 C H A P T E R 8
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). E
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Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
7. Anthony Corrado, Party Finance in the Wake of BCRA: An Overview, in Michael J. Malbin, ed., The Election After Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
8. Steve Weissman and Ruth Hassan, 527 Groups and BCRA, in Michael
J. Malbin, ed., The Election After Re- form: Money, Politics and the Biparti- san Campaign Reform Act (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
9. Michael. J. Malbin and Thomas L. Gais, The Day After Reform: Sobering Campaign Finance Lessons from the American States (Albany, N.Y.: Rocke- feller Institute Press, 1998), pp. 52 54, 66 70.
10. Ruth S. Jones, Financing State Elections, in Michael J. Malbin, ed., Money and Politics in the United States: Financing Elections in the 1980s (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1984), p. 203.
11. Malbin and Gais, The Day After Reform, pp. 136 138; see also Kenneth R. Mayer and John M. Wood, The Impact of Public Financing on Electoral Competitiveness: Evidence from Wisconsin 1964 1990, Legislative Studies Quarterly 15 (Feb. 1995): 69 88.
12. E. J. Dionne, Perot Seen Not Affecting the Vote Outcome, Washington Post, Nov. 8, 1992, p. A36.
13. Paul R. Abramson, John H. Aldrich, and David W. Rohde, Change and Continuity in the 1996 Elections (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1998), p. 248.
14. Darrell M. West, Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns, 1952 1996, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1997), pp. 141 142.
15. James E. Campbell, When Have Presi- dential Campaigns Decided Election Outcomes? American Politics Research 29 (Sept. 2001): 437 460.
16. Jacobson, The Politics of Congressional Elections, pp. 30 32 and ch. 5.
17. Study reported by David S. Broder, Ads Sham, Washington Post, May
28, 2000, p. B7. 18. For a thorough analysis of the impact of
presidential debates and of the scholarly literature on debates, see Thomas M. Holbrook, Do Elections Matter? (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996), ch. 5.
19. Holbrook, Do Elections Matter? p. 114. 20. Quoted in Richard L. Berke, Debate
Stakes Seen as Critical by Candidate, New York Times, on the Web, Oct. 1, 2000, p. A1.
21. Majorie Randon Hershey, The Campaign in the Media, in Gerald M. Pomper, ed., The Election of 2000 (New York: Chatham House, 2001), pp. 60 63.
22. Holbrook, Do Elections Matter? p. 123. 23. Hershey, The Campaign in the
Media, p. 62. 24. William Schneider, The November 4
Vote for President: What Did It Mean? in Austin Ranney, ed., The American Elections of 1980 (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1981), p. 231; Gallup Poll Index, Report No. 181, Sept. 1980, p. 19.
25. Kathleen A. Frankovic and Monika L. McDermott, Public Opinion and the 2000 Election: The Ambivalent Elector- ate, in Gerald M. Pomper, ed., The Election of 2000 (New York: Chatham House, 2001), pp. 87 88.
26. William H. Flanigan and Nancy H. Zingale, Political Behavior of the American Electorate, 9th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1998), pp. 166 170.
27. Based on figures calculated by the Wisconsin Advertising Project.
28. David B. Magleby and Kelly D. Patterson, Stepping Out of the Shadows:
Ground War Activities in 2004, in Michael J. Malbin, ed., The Election After Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
THE GENERAL ELECTION: CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 271
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29. Thomas B. Edsall and James V. Grimaldi, On Nov. 2, GOP Got More Bang for Its Billion, Analysis Shows, The Washington Post, December 30, 2004, p. A1.
30. Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber, Get Out the Vote! How to Increase Voter Turnout (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004).
31. John R. Petrocik and Frederick T. Steeper, Realignment and 1984: New Coalitions and New Majorities? Election Politics 2 (Winter 1984 85): 8.
32. William F. Connelly, Jr., and John J. Pitney, Jr., Congress Permanent Minority? Republicans in the U.S. House (Lanham, Md.: Littlefield Adams, 1994).
33. Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).
34. Andrew Gelman and Gary King, En- hancing Democracy through Legislative Redistricting, American Political Science Review 88 (1994): 541 59.
35. Sam Hirsch, The United States House of Unrepresentatives: What Went Wrong in the Latest Round of Congressional Redistricting, Election Law Journal 2 (2) (2003).
36. See Adam Clymer, Why Iowa Has So Many Hot Seats, New York Times, October 27, 2002.
37. Gary C. Jacobson, The Electoral Origins of Divided Government, 1946 1988 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990), ch. 6; see also Byron E. Shafer, ed., The End of Realignment (Madison: Univer- sity of Wisconsin Press, 1991), ch. 3.
38. Barry C. Burden and David C. Kimball, A New Approach to the Study of
Ticket Splitting American Political Science Review 92 (Sept. 1998): 533 544; and Franco Mattei and John S. Howes, Competing Explanations of Split-Ticket Voting in American National Elections, American Politics Quarterly 28 (July 2000): 379 407.
39. Morris P. Fiorina, Divided Government in the American States: A Byproduct of Legislative Professional- ism? American Political Science Re- view 88 (June 1994): 304 316; see also Peverill Squire, Another Look at Leg- islative Professionalization and Divided Government in the States, Legislative Studies Quarterly 22 (Aug. 1997): 417.
40. Malcolm E. Jewell and David Breaux, The Effect of Incumbency on State
Legislative Elections, Legislative Stud- ies Quarterly 13 (Nov. 1988): 477 494; Malcolm E. Jewell, State Legislative Elections: What We Know and Don t Know, American Politics Quarterly 22 (1994): 483 509.
272 C H A P T E R 8
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