This document summarizes key aspects of voting, elections, and campaigns in the United States. It discusses patterns in voter turnout related to education, income, age, gender, and race. It also examines reasons for low voter turnout such as being too busy, registration difficulties, and number of elections. The document then outlines patterns in vote choice, types of elections including primaries and general elections, and the nomination campaign process. It describes the key players in campaigns and the roles of the electoral college, Congress, and media.

1. Voting, Elections and
Campaigns

2. Patterns in Voter Turnout
• turnout - the proportion of the voting-
age public that votes
• Education and Income
– Higher education  more likely to vote
– Higher income  more likely to vote
• Age
– Over 30  more likely to vote

3. Patterns in Voter Turnout
• Gender
– About the same or women slightly more likely to vote
• Race and Ethnicity
– Whites tend to vote more regularly; may be
education/income effects
– Hispanic Americans less likely to vote than African
Americans
• Interest in Politics
– More interested  more likely to vote

4. Why Is Voter Turnout So Low?
• Too Busy
• Difficulty of Registration – burden of
registration on individual
• Difficulty of Absentee Voting
• Number of Elections – as in too many
elections

5. Patterns in Vote Choice
• Party Identification
• Issues
– retrospective judgment – evaluation of
party in power
– prospective judgment – evaluation of a
candidate’s pledge

6. Types of Elections
– primary elections – who will represent party
in general election
– closed primaries – only party’s registered
voters can participate
– open primaries – anyone is allowed to vote,
even from other parties
– crossover voting – participation in the other
party’s primary
– raiding – organized attempt to influence
other party results

7. Types of Elections
– runoff primary – occurs when there is no
majority
– general election – election to public office
– initiative – citizens propose legislation
– referendum – legislature proposes legislation
– recall – remove an incumbent from office

8. Nomination Campaign
• Begins at candidacy and ends at the party
convention
– Primaries versus Caucuses
• primaries direct election, caucuses party meetings
• front-loading – the tendency of states to choose an early
date on the primary calendar
– The Party Conventions
• nomination usually settled well in advance
– Delegate Selection
• delegates are usually more elite than average Americans

9. The Key Players
• The Candidate
• The Campaign Staff
– volunteers are central to campaigns.
• The Candidate’s Professional Staff
– campaign manager – coordinates the campaign
– finance chair – fund-raising
– pollster – public opinion surveys
– direct mailer – direct mail fund-raising
– communications director – media strategy
– press secretary – communicates with journalists
– Internet team – web resources

10. The Electoral College
• The Electoral College in the Nineteenth
Century
– confusion in 1800
– modified by the Twelfth Amendment – separate
elections for president and vice president
• The Electoral College in the Twentieth and
Twenty-First Centuries
– Bush versus Gore (2000)
– reapportionment – the reallocation of the number
of seats in the House of Representatives allocated
to each state after each decennial census.
– shifts in population could alter the political map

11. Congressional Elections
• The Incumbency Advantage – people in office
tend to remain in office. High rate of re-
election, even when approval of Congress
remarkably low…why?
– Redistricting
• redistricting – redrawing congressional districts to reflect
increases or decreases in seats allotted to the states as
well as population shifts within a state.
• gerrymandering – drawing of boundaries to product a
particular electoral outcome
– The Impact of Scandals
• Most incumbents implicated in scandals retire or resign

12. Congressional Elections
• Presidential Coattails
– Successful presidential candidates carry into office
congressional candidates of the same party in the
same election
• Midterm Elections – elections that take place in
the middle of a presidential term
– the incumbent party usually loses seats in midterm
elections
• The 2008 Congressional Elections
– Democratic majority in both houses, plus the
Presidency

13. The Media’s Role in the
Campaign Process
• Paid Media – political advertisements
– positive ads
– negative ads
– contrast ads
– inoculation ads
• Free Media – news stories
– controlled by editors, not candidates
• The New Media – Internet
– more information, more quickly
– “rapid response”
– first use of internet in 1992
– social networking sites