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When voter turnout is high, Democrats have an advantage - or so the truism goes. But, it is true? In The Turnout Myth, Daron Shaw and John Petrocik refute the widely held convention that high voter participation benefits Democrats while low involvement helps Republicans. The authors examineover 50 years of presidential, gubernatorial, Senatorial, and House election data to show that there is no consistent partisan effect associated with voter turnout in national elections. Instead, less-engaged citizens' responses to short-term forces - candidate appeal, issues, scandals, and the like- determine election turnout. Moreover, Republican and Democratic candidates are equally affected by short-term forces. The consistency of these effects suggests that partisan conflict over eligibility, registration, and voting rules and regulations is less important for election outcomes than bothsides seem to believe. Featuring powerful evidence and analytical acumen, this book provides a new foundation for thinking about U.S. elections.
The #1 book--now updated through 2018
Media events are a central communication tactic used by political communicators in political campaigns and in governmental affairs. Each president has an advance staff that creates mediagenic events to influence the news media, generate coverage and excitement, construct favorable political images, and persuade voters. Advance men and women are visual speechwriters who focus not only on what the politician says, but also on how the candidate looks and the visual message communicated by the event. This timely and groundbreaking work examines media events and advance in political communication by exploring: (1) how media events are conceived and staged, (2) the role of advance in an overall co...
During presidential campaigns, candidates crisscross the country nonstop—visiting swing states, their home turf, and enemy territory. But do all those campaign visits make a difference when Election Day comes? If so, how and under what conditions? Do they mobilize the partisan faithful or persuade undecided voters? What do campaigns try to achieve through campaign visits—and when do they succeed? I’m Here to Ask for Your Vote is a comprehensive and compelling examination of the strategy and effectiveness of presidential campaign visits. Christopher J. Devine uses an original database of presidential and vice-presidential campaign visits from 2008 through 2020 to estimate the effects of...
This second edition of Attack Politics updates Emmett Buell and Lee Sigelman's highly regarded study of negativity in presidential campaigns since 1960 with a substantial new chapter on the 2008 contest between Barack Obama and John McCain. That campaign, the authors contend, proved to be the least negative in the last half century and reinforces their central argument that these campaigns have actually not grown "dirtier" and more negative since the election of JFK. In this new edition, Buell and Sigelman address the same questions that guided their research in the original book. Who attacked whom? How frequently? On what issues? In what ways? And at what point in the race? They also update...
Stephen K. Medvic’s Campaigns and Elections is a comprehensive yet compact core text that addresses two distinct but related aspects of American electoral democracy: the processes that constitute campaigns and elections, and the players who are involved. In addition to balanced coverage of process and actors, it gives equal billing to both campaigns and elections and covers contests for legislative and executive positions at the national, state, and local levels, including issue-oriented campaigns of note. The book opens by providing students with the conceptual distinctions between what happens in an election and the campaigning that precedes it. Significant attention is devoted to settin...
Democrats and Republicans have become geographically divided along regional lines, which has furthered the ideological polarization of American politics.
The Hollywood Connection: The Influence of Fictional Media and Celebrity Politics on American Public Opinion is one of the first edited volumes offered in the political science discipline on the effects of fictional media and celebrity on public opinion, and synthesizes many niche areas of research into single text. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of acknowledging a shift in academic focus away from the lateral interactions between celebrities and politicians (and in some cases celebrities becoming politicians) toward research that engages the American audience, as consumers of media, as a critical political component. The volume offers a collection of diverse research on question...
The "swing voter" occupies a cherished place in American political lore. Candidates court swing voters, consultants target them, and pundits speculate constantly on which way they will lean. But nobody has adequately defined them as a group. What exactly is a swing voter? No one really seems to know. T he Swing Voter in American Politics fills this conceptual gap. The book brings political scientists and pollsters together to answer four basic questions: What is a swing voter? How can analysts use survey data to identify swing voters? How do swing voters differ—if at all—from the rest of the electorate? And what role do swing voters play in determining the outcomes of contemporary electi...
What are the most cost-effective ways to increase voter turnout? Whether the ambition is to win elections, promote civic engagement, or bolster the legitimacy of democratic institutions, this question is of enormous significance to those who run and study campaigns. Since the original edition appeared in 2004 Get Out the Vote has become the indispensable guide to understand how to mobilize voters. Combining information from their own extensive field research and the rapidly expanding number of studies conducted by a growing network of scholars and campaign consultants, Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber bring scientific rigor to the subject, challenging much of the conventional wisdom about what works and what doesn't in political campaigns. Updated to include the newest research and published in time for the 2024 election cycle, Get Out the Vote will again be the indispensable guide to voter mobilization for campaign managers, consultants, and activists across the political spectrum. In addition, Green and Gerber provide students an accessible introduction to campaign research methodology.