You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The recent rise of “primarying” corresponds to the rise of national fundraising bases and new types of partisan organizations supporting candidates around the country
Congressional primaries are increasingly being blamed for polarization and gridlock in Congress. Most American states adopted congressional primaries during the first decades of the 20th century as a means of breaking the hold of political "bosses" on the nomination of candidates. Yet now, many contend that primaries have become a means by which the most dedicated party activists choose candidates unrepresentative of the electorate, and so general election voters are forced to choose between two ideologically extreme candidates. Consequently, there have been recent instances in both parties where nominees were chosen who were clearly not preferred by party leaders, and who arguably lost elec...
The direct primary, in which voters rather than party leaders or convention delegates select party nominees for state and federal offices, was one of the most widely adopted political reforms of the early twentieth century. Yet after decades of practice and study, scholars have found little clear evidence that direct primaries changed the outcomes of party nominations. The conventional wisdom has always been that once the Progressive movement declined and voters became distracted by more pressing issues, parties slowly reasserted their control over candidate selection. This book shows that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Exploring changes in American primary election laws from the 1920s to...
This text presents a new approach to understanding political parties. It sheds light on the inner dynamics of party politics and offers a comprehensive analysis of one of the most important processes any party undertakes, its process of candidate selection.
Image Bite Politics is the first book to systematically assess the visual presentation of presidential candidates in network news coverage of elections and to connect these visual images with shifts in public opinion. Presenting the results of a comprehensive visual analysis of general election news from 1992-2004, encompassing four presidential campaigns, the authors highlight the remarkably potent influence of television images when it comes to evaluating leaders. The book draws from a variety of disciplines, including political science, behavioral biology, cognitive neuroscience, and media studies, to investigate the visual framing of elections in an incisive, fresh, and interdisciplinary...
The last twenty years has seen a series of changes to American party politics: polarization, negative partisanship, decreasing voter turnout, and decreasing faith in elections and government. In Primary Elections and American Politics, Chapman Rackaway and Joseph Romance trace the origins of these and other problems to one of the most controversial reforms in American political history: the direct partisan primary election. With a comprehensive history of the primary election, the authors link the rise of primaries to the many political ills the nation faces today. They argue that the Progressives who created the primaries mistook direct democratic reforms, like the primary, for participatory democratic reforms like deliberative polling or participatory budgeting.
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...
Demonstrates how party elites influence candidate decisions and shape the outcomes of primary elections for House and Senate.
Maisel (government, Colby College) and West (public policy, Brown University) present analyses of 16 highly competitive campaigns in the House and Senate during the 2002 midterm elections. Measuring various aspects of campaign discourse throughout a variety of paid and unpaid media coverage, includi
Congressional Primaries and the Politics of Representation explores the ways in which congressional primary elections appear to be changing in the face of electoral and congressional politics. The prominent contributors examine how primary elections influence the types of candidates who run, the support they receive, the positions they take, the resources they spend, the media coverage they receive, and the type of party nominees that prevail. All of these factors have significant implications for congressional general elections, the political parties, interest groups, and the day-to-day representation of constituents by congressional incumbents.