VOTING PARTICIPATION
Slide One
Audio: This presentation is courtesy of Brian Dille. I'm the speaker and I'm a Professor of
Political Science at Mesa Community College, a College of the Miracle Good Community
College District in Mesa, Arizona. I hope you've enjoyed this presentation.
Slide Two
Audio: Welcome to America and Arizona Government for Elementary Teachers. This is
Presentation 18, Voting and Participation. In the previous presentations we've discussed the
structures of American Government and the various processes of politics. We now turn to the
concept of active citizenship, how citizens can use these processes within the structures to affect
change and maintain their policy preference outcomes. In this presentation we will first look at
the notion of active citizenship and how people and groups engage the system through voting
and direct participation. We will then look at elections and campaigns. These are probably the
most visible ways that people engage politics, and it's important to understand the rules and
dynamics of elections in order to understand election outcomes.
Slide Three
Audio: In this presentation we will be examining the AEPA Objective 14, understand the
election process in the United States, as well as the Arizona Social Studies Standards Strand 3
Concept for Rights, Responsibilities and Roles of Citizenship. As always, I recommend you look
at the Strand 3 document that is articulated by grade level so that you can look at the objectives
by grade level, and then at the end of this presentation go back and review that document and
make sure that you understand the objectives associated with this presentation so that you can
exhibit competence on those objectives.
Slide Four
Audio: When we look at political participation we can divide most people into one of four
categories. They're either uninvolved and don't participate, at all, they're a voter who engages in
periodic symbolic participation, they're activists who are highly motivated and periodically
involved. And then there are the professionals, who do politics as a career.
Slide Five
Audio: The first group, the uninvolved, actually represent a fairly large portion of Americans. A
lot of Americans don't register to vote. A lot of the people who do register to vote don't show-up
to vote. Sometimes when the people vote they will only vote on a presidential election, they don't
vote during midterm or local elections. Why is that? Why would so many Americans not take
advantage of the freedom and the responsibility to engage the system and participate in politics?
Well, there's a few reasons for it. Part of it is apathy. People tend not to engage a process unless
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they feel that they have a stake in the process or they feel threatened by that process. And many
people don't understand the impact that politics has on them, and so they don't see politics as
being something that they need to participate in. Now, of course, politics happens all around us
every day, and the consequences of policy decisions affect us every day, but many people don't
see those consequences and don't understand the implications. And, as a result, they are apathetic
because they feel that they do not need to be involved because the outcome doesn't affect them.
Another group of people who are involved are not apathetic, but are, in fact, highly engaged on a
particular issue, but they have decided that the political system doesn't work for them. These are
people that I refer to as conscientious objectors. They follow the issues, but they make a
conscious choice not to participate. This tends to be a fairly small group, graduate students in
college is the way I characterize this group. They don't have much impact on the outcome
because of their lack of participation in the process. As Mario Cuomo, the former Mayor of New
York said, we live in a political system that rewards participation and punishes nonparticipation.
Slide Six
Audio: The next group of participants are the voters, and this is the vast majority of the
electorate. These are people who do vote. They may vote occasionally, but they do vote, but they
don't pay a whole lot of attention to politics in between elections and they certainly are not what
we would consider activists. They're not donating time or money or marching on the street or
writing letters or doing any of those things that might make them an activist, but they are
engaged in their civic duty of voting. So their participation is a periodic symbolic participation.
They go through the ritual of going to the voting location, going into the booth, making their
check or their slide or however or whatever voting machine they're using, and then returning
from that and wearing their I Voted sticker with pride. Now political scientists have tried to
figure out why people vote because from a rational point of view it doesn't make a lot of sense.
The political scientists refer to this as the paradox of voting. The paradox is that if you look at
the cost benefit analysis for voting the costs almost always outweigh the benefits. The cost of
voting include registering, keeping your registration intact and current. You typically have to
travel to a voter location that may or may not be close to your home. If you're an hourly
employee you may have to take time off of work which will cost you real money or you have to
vote early in the morning or late at night before or after work. You have to engage in the
information costs if you want to be a conscientious voter, of taking the time to learn about the
issues, learn about the candidates, so that you can make a coherent defendable position or
decision. So these were all the costs that are incurred by deciding to vote. Well, what are the
benefits of voting? Well, you get one vote towards the overall total of the vote that is cast. So in
the United States there are 330 odd million people, only about two-thirds of those people are
eligible to vote, the rest are either children or people with green cards or immigrants or whatever,
so only about 200 million of those people are eligible to vote. Of those people only about 60%
actually register, and so that's down to about 120 million. And of the people who register only
about 50% to 60% actually show-up to vote. So out of a country of 330 million, about 80 to 90
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million on a midterm election, anyways, would actually show-up and vote. Well, your vote is
then 180 millionth of the outcome. Or let's not be so pessimistic, let's look at the governor's race
in Arizona. In Arizona there's three million people, and if we use the same calculations we come
up with about a million votes for a governor's race in Arizona. Well, that means that your vote is
one one-millionth of the outcome. Now here's the paradox, is that if you assume people are
rational, meaning they engage in cost benefit analysis before they take action then that would
suggest that the costs that they would incur to be able to vote are greater than the benefit, the one
one-millionth of a voice towards the outcome. So why then does anybody vote? Well, the
political scientists struggle about that, but the answer is found in the intangible benefit, that you
can't simply weigh on a scale, like one one-millionth, and that is the warm fuzzy that you get
from doing your civic duty, from participating in the system, from having a say in the outcome.
That has a tremendous value, as the slide says, never underestimate the value of a warm fuzzy.
The cost of voting are not great and the benefit from voting is a psychological benefit that comes
from knowing that you have contributed to the maintenance of the democratic order that we live
in. Another way to look at it, as well, to try to address the concerns with the political scientists
who are doing the math is that if you remember so many people can't vote and so many other
people don't vote because they're not registered or they don't show-up, that it's as if your vote
counts for more than just you because the people who do vote have a disproportionate voice
because so many others choose not to use their voice. Another way of thinking of this is that you
have a collective impact on your vote that goes beyond merely the mathematical equation of
what your single vote might otherwise be worth. An example of this would be in central Phoenix,
the central Phoenix neighborhood has a voter turnout rate, meaning the people who actually
show-up and vote, of about 75%. And you can contrast that with south Phoenix, which has a
voter turnout rate of about 28% give or take 25% to 30% on any given election. If you want to be
elected to a city council position in Phoenix then you need to make sure that the central Phoenix
people are happy because they're the ones who actually show-up and vote. The south Phoenix
people may or may not like you. It's almost irrelevant whether they like you or not because they
don't vote, which means their neighborhood doesn't get the attention that the central Phoenix
neighborhood gets. In central Phoenix there are no potholes, the police patrol regularly, the lights
all work because it's in the interest of the city leadership to keep those people happy. So your
individual vote may only be one one-millionth or whatever, but if you and your group, however
you define your group, vote consistently and have a high turnout rate then your group will get the
attention of policymakers because they like their job and so they want people to vote for them.
They're going to pay attention to the people who actually vote. This is one reason, for example,
why social security will continue even though it is bankrupting the nation because old people
vote and young people, the ones who are going to have to increase their taxes to pay for social
security, don't vote. And so politicians will keep old people happy at the expense of young
people because young people don't vote. So there is a very real power in voting, even if not
individually there's a collective power that if you and your group does not participate, as Mario
Cuomo said, you will be punished and the groups that do participate will be rewarded.
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Slide Seven
Audio: The next group of actors are activists. Now these are people who engage in a sustained
attention span. They're not like the voters who only pay attention periodically to politics. These
are people who are passionate about a particular issue or a particular candidate. These are people
who follow that issue or candidate over time. And they're people who give of their means or their
time to promote their cause or their candidate. They do this because of the passion that they feel
for the cause or candidate they're supporting. And they become invested in the outcome of that
policy debate or that election. I've seen people who are volunteering on campaigns and they put
their whole life and soul into that campaign. And when their candidate wins, they're on top of the
world. And when their candidate loses, they fall into a deep funk for days because they're
personalized that battle. And the same holds true for issue advocates when their policy
preference goes through Congress, they're elated. And when a judge overturns that policy for
constitutional reasons, they're devastated. And so activists are involved because they get a
personal benefit emotionally from the outcome. In addition, there are advocates who are -- oh
sorry, activists who are engaged because they have more than an emotional benefit: they have an
actual benefit. They're group has a tangible benefit from policy. Maybe it's a welfare check or
maybe it's a subsidy to their farm. Or maybe it's a tariff on their good. They get a tangible benefit
from policy. And so those groups are highly motivated to pay attention and have their voice
heard and be an activist in favor of or in opposition to the policy that affects them most. Now
activists are the vocal groups that draw a lot of the attention in American politics. Now activists
can become professionals as they develop a -- expertise on the issue that they're advocating for.
Slide Eight
Audio: Which leads us to the last group of activists -- or of actors and that's the professionals.
The professionals do politics all day. It's their job. They are career professionals who are paid for
what they do. And they do that because they're passionate but also because they are good at what
they do. And that ability to effectively make policy and advocate for policy preference is
recognized by other groups. And it is sought out and it becomes a marketable skill. This is one
reason why if you are good at politics, you can do it professionally because others who don't
have the time or skills will pay you to use your time and your skills to advocate for policy. In
addition, those who win election and are elected into office are part of this category as well. And
these are people who either are paid or volunteer but spend large amounts of time in the
development and pursuit of public policy. So again, even if they're not getting paid they should
be considered in this professional class of actors.
Slide Nine
Audio: So now that we know what categories to put political actors, let's talk a bit about why
political action is important. And the first part of this is to talk about the importance of civil
society. Civil society is that part of the society that is a voluntary association. It is not organized
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by the government. It's not regulated by the government. It's not supported by the government. It
is people doing things with other people simply because they want to. Examples of this would be
churches. It would be people meeting in coffee houses. It would be the Boy Scouts, the PTA,
The Oprah Book Club: these are all groups of people who get together to pursue a common
interest. And it may not even be a political interest but it's a common interest all the same. The
Rosarian Society just loves gardening and culturing roses and so they form an organization to
promote their garden. That is civil society. And what I'm arguing is that this civil society is an
essential part of a functioning democracy. In fact it is so important that new democracies that
don't have a functioning civil society tend to fail. Where as societies that do have a functioning
civil society tend to develop vibrant democracies. When authoritarian regimes take over a free
society, the first thing they do is destroy or eliminate the civil society. So example: when
communist regimes would take over, they would eliminate churches for example. And the reason
is, is because civil society are places of organization that they government does not control. And
so if it's an authorization regime, that's a potential threat. So labor unions, churches, other
volunteer associations are threats to authoritarian government and the very lifeblood of a
democracy.
Slide Ten
Audio: The reason civil society is so necessary for democracy is because it is in the settings of a
voluntary association that people learn the habits of citizenship. They learn how to interact with
others in a way that is helpful. They learn how to handle meeting, how to organize, how to treat
one another. It's in all of these skills and traits that are necessary for citizenship are fostered in
clubs and groups and board meetings and all the various elements of civil society. As an
example, civil society teaches up not just the skill set of how to run a meeting, but how to treat
one another. It teaches us how to be civil in the sense of polite as well as civil in the sense of
public. If I have a disagreement with my neighbor because my neighbor belongs to a different
political party, therefore I feel that my neighbor's an idiot of course because otherwise he
wouldn't belong to that other party. So I might be tempted to think of my neighbor in conflictual
terms. He is the opponent. He is the enemy. He is someone who I have no respect for because we
have opposite views on some political issues. But then it turns out that we both go to the same
church for example. Well now when my neighbor is sitting in a church pew close to me, I'm
supposed to be thinking of that person in a different light. I'm supposed to be thinking of that
person as a fellow member of this organization: not the idiot over there who belongs to a
different political party. And maybe we work together on the Boy Scouts and now because we're
working together to teach these kids about citizenship, we develop a certain level of respect for
one another. Now I still might think my neighbor's an idiot because his political views are
ridiculous, but at least I can acknowledge the good nature of my neighbor: that his intentions
might be good even though they've gone horribly awry in his political views. Working together
in civil society builds connections between citizens that go beyond politics that cement the
society together so that despite our differences, despite the political disagreements we might
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have, we still can treat each other as fellow citizens and accord a certain level of respect to one
another. Now in societies that don't have civil society, those relationships don't form. The trust
that builds up between people who work together on projects, don't form. And so when there's a
political struggle and one side wins, the loser side might burn tires in the intersection. You know,
they're not willing to accept defeat from this other group because they don't see a common cause
in that society. So, civil society teaches us how to disagree with one another in a civil way. In
addition, it also teaches us how to engage in nonviolent conflict resolution when you belong to
school board -- well, no that's an elected position. That's not civil society. But if you volunteer
your time for the Parent-Teacher Association at the school and you want to have cookies and
someone else wants to have popcorn and you have an argument over that, and you decide to have
a vote on whether you're going to have cookies or popcorn and you lose, you come to terms with
that. Growing up in these types of associations, having the experience of winning some battles
and losing other battles, helps instill the norms of nonviolent conflict resolution. So that our
politicians - people running the country - get their experience from other political jobs and when
the experience they had before they entered political jobs was in these voluntary associations.
And so the civil society trains - not just the citizenry - but trains the leadership in how to act in a
democratic society.
Slide Eleven
Audio: This presence or absence of a healthy civil society helps explain why some democracies
fail while others succeed. Some societies are simply more prepared for democracy and are able
to maintain a democracy better than other societies. Looking at the slide of the triangle and the
diamond reminds you of the conversation earlier when we were talking about civil rights, that
societies that are authoritarian in structure like the diamond -- oh sorry, like the triangle on the
left tend to be societies where democracies do not last. And the last time we saw this diagram,
we used a class explanation for why these democracies fail. The elites who control the
instruments of power are unwilling to let a populist candidate who is elected by the poor to
overturn and radicalize society so they overthrow the democratically elected government and
impose their own authoritarian structure to maintain control over that society. Where the
societies on the right which have a strong middle class tend to elect establishment leaders who
while they may have differences with one another, none of the candidates that are being voted
for are radical, revolutionary candidates. Now the presence of civil society impacts this as well
because in an authoritarian system, civil society tends not to thrive because the poor who make
up the vast majority of society do not have the resources or leisure time to engage in social
interactions: voluntary associations. They tend to be working on a subsistence level and they are
trying to scrape and make ends meat. They don't have the energy or [inaudible] or education for
that matter to organize a viable association. This means that when they get engaged in the
political process, they tend to follow leaders from the elite who have been radicalized or they
follow an indigenous populist candidate but do not use the nonviolent norms that have been
developed in voluntary associations. On the other hand a society with its a diamond shape has a
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stable middle class. The middle class does typically have the education, the economic means, the
leisure time and the interest in engaging in social interactions: voluntary associations. And so in
these societies, civil society flourishes and becomes a solid basis for democracy to function. Now
it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation that you need a good civil society for democracy to
flourish and a flourishing democracy fosters civil society. Likewise, if you do not have a strong
civil society, your democracy will not flourish. And if you don't have a democracy, you're
probably not going to be advocating voluntary associations. So there's a complex connection
here between civil society and democracy but it is an absolutely essential one. And if we look in
the last 20 years at societies that democratized at the end of the Cold War, some of those
democracies flourished and others did not. And you can draw a direct correlation between
societies that had a vibrant nongovernmental voluntary association community and the health of
democracy versus societies that were authoritarian in structure as well has authoritarian in
culture, which means they did not have a strong society in those places. Democracy almost
always failed. This is one reason why you can't export democracy. Democracy has to gradually
develop along with the gradual development of civil society.
Slide Twelve
Audio: This is why when Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to America in the early 1800s, he very
quickly caught on that civil society was the key to the success of the American experiment in
democracy. And de Tocqueville's classic [inaudible] is "Democracy in America" is still used
today because of the insights that he gathered from his trip across America were so true to the
mark. And when he argued he said, "Americans are joiners." That America breeds civil society.
We create voluntary associations organically and quickly. And we can look at the recent Tea
Party movement as an example of this. People don't appreciate what's going on in government.
They're frustrated with the incumbents. They're feeling somewhat powerless by the amazing
amount of money being spent in Washington and as citizens feel like there's not a lot they can do
about it. So what is their reaction? Do they burn tires in the intersection? Do they wall off a
compound and declare a sovereign state? Well some people have done that but the people who
do that are people who are already disconnected from civil society within America. What other
people did is they formed a new voluntary association called The Tea Party Movement. This is a
group of citizens who are likeminded folks. They get together and they are not connected with
the government or a political party: at least initially. And they created this movement that
changed the political discourse in the first 6 months of the year 2010. So that dynamic happens
over and over and over again in America. It's one reason our democracy is so vibrant that our
culture breeds these civil societies: these voluntary associations. The Oprah Book Club, The Boy
Scouts, the churches: if we compare American's level of engagement, we're typically higher than
most other democratic states and it's because of this culture of joining that exists in the United
States.
Slide Thirteen
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Audio: There are voices however that warn that the American culture of joining is beginning to
shift. Robert Putnam in his books "Bowling Alone" put forward the thesis that American civil
society is in trouble and that it has been in decline since the 1960s and a continuous decline and
that that decline accelerated in the 1980s. Putnam blames most of that decline on television and
later on the internet. Although he published this book before the internet had really taken off.
And his argument is that because of television that Americans have changed the way they
interact with others: that prior to the advent of television when someone wanted to relax or be
entertained or socialize, they left their house and they interacted with their neighbors. They
perhaps sat on the front porch and talked to people who were walking by or they would go to a
dime store movie and hang out with people before and after that movie. They would go to the
local store or the coffee house. They went to poetry readings: something that rarely happens
these days. They played board games or they did all of these things that fostered communication,
conversation and association. Putman measured the quantity of voluntary associations in the
country. He's looking at things like The Elk's Club, The Rotary Club, The Debate Clubs, the
various entities that are out there that people belong to: formal, organized, voluntary
associations. And what he found is that with television, people's habits changed. Now to relax
and to socialize, they don't leave their home. They sit in their living room and turn on the
television and are passively entertained as an atomized individual or as a family unit perhaps.
But they do not seek that relaxation entertainment through associations with their fellow citizens.
So Putman's book was that American's are losing the habits of civil society. And that's what the
title of it - The Bowling Alone - meant, that we don't belong to the bowling clubs anymore. We
go out and bowl by ourselves. And with the internet that argument is even more stark that we
don't even watch TV as a family anymore. Now we seek our entertainment solely from the
internet or that as we're entertained by the internet, that is an individualized experience and that it
-- the internet doesn't serve the same function of civil society, meaning we seek out communities
on the internet that we already agree with. It's a giant exochamber that unlike a normal voluntary
association, The Bowling Club, where you're forced to interact with fellow citizens whose views
different with yours and come to accept them on the terms of fellow citizen. Instead, in an
internet room you typically are talking to people you already agree with or you engage in
vilifying anonymous attacks on the other side. IT doesn't foster that mutual understanding or
norms of conflict resolution. So Putnam was quite worried that civil society was in serious
decline in the United States and meant his book as a voice of warning that if our civil society
continued to decline, it was only a matter of time before our democracy began to falter as well.
Slide Fourteen
Audio: Now I should point out here that Putnam is not without his critics: that there are many
people who agree with Putnam and worry quite a bit about the health of our civil society. And
many argue that the increased tone of partisanship in our country and the inability it seems for
the two political sides to engage in a civil debate where compromise and a mutually agreed upon
solution is possible. Some argue that that is evidence that Putnam's concerns are valid: that we
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are losing our ability for nonviolent conflict resolution and that are democracy is beginning to
falter as a result. Now there are critics. There are those who disagree with Putnam. And the
primary argument is that Putnam being an aging baby boomer has looked at the artifacts of his
own culture - the culture he grew up in, in the 1950s - and saw that those institutions, those
associations are in decline. And Putnam's book is basically another example of "Those Darn
Kids" written by an aging baby boomer. Instead, these critics charge that had he looked at
modern forms of association he would have seen that American civil society is continuing to
thrive. These critics charge that while the internet can be atomizing - meaning it isolates
individuals - it can also build community and the whole social network aspect of the internet had
not really occurred yet at the time Putnam wrote his book. The argument is that by erasing the
barriers of time and distance, the internet has actually increased the viability of communication
and association: that groups can form, friendships can organize, associations can thrive among a
group of people who are distant from one another where back in the 1950s, if you were going to
join the Rotary Club, you joined your local Rotary Club. And the people you interacted with
were your immediate neighbors. Now, you can join a Facebook fan club and be joined with tens
of thousands of people from all across the country and even the world in this common interest.
Now the counter charge to that is that these associations from acquaintances but not real
relationships and that because of the relative anonymity of the internet it still does not foster
those norms of nonviolent conflict resolution or the skills of how to run a meeting, how to debate
civilly, how to speak in public, those sort of skill sets that civil society perform are not serviced
very well by internet chat rooms. Now the other counter arguments Putnam know is that if you
discard the 1950s versions of associations, if you're not looking at bowling clubs and the animal
clubs - you know the elks and the moose and the rotaries - and instead look at activities. How do
people spend their time when they're in public? What you find is that Americans are still very
publicly engaged but they're engaged in acts of service more than acts of entertainment or debate.
So service organizations have blossomed. The people seek out service opportunities. And if you - and there are people who have measured the amount of voluntary service being done and it is
dramatically increased since the 1950s. People donate more time and more money to causes they
associate with now than they did back in the 1950s and 60s. And so the argument is that civil
society is not in decline and it is not being destroyed as Putnam charges, but rather it is shifting.
It is changing the way it's organized from formal groups that have charters and attendance rosters
to informal groups that people come and go with: whether that's an internet group or a Race for
the Cure or some other voluntary group. So that's the debate on American civil society and I'll let
you decide the outcome of that debate: whether or not our civil society is in decline or is being
maintained. The one thing I will note though is that it is a vitally important issue whether or not
our civil society is in decline because if it is, our democracy is in big trouble. If it's not in
decline, then perhaps there's hope for the republic.
Slide Fifteen
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Audio: We'll now transition this discussion to looking at elections which is a particular type of
participation and is the most prominent and visible example of political participation in our
country. As I discuss this section, we'll look at the most prominent election which is the
presidency and how a candidate gets the nomination to become president. We'll also look closely
at the Electoral College. Then we'll look at campaign finance law and the impact that has on
elections. And finally, we'll look at campaign strategies that hold true for any election whether
it's a local justice of the peace race or the presidency of the United States.
Slide Sixteen
Audio: This slide shows a timeline for becoming President. And while you have to turn your
head sideways to see the timeline, if we start at the right hand side at January after an election
year, and that's when you take the oath of office. That's ultimately how you become President is
you take the oath of office. So we ask how do we decide who that person is? Well that's chosen
in December of the election year by the electoral college. And we'll discuss that in more detail in
a few minutes. So how do we decide who the electoral college votes for? Well that's determined
a month previous in November, on election day. The popular vote determines what the electoral
college will do, with a little bit of slippage, but by and large the outcome is determined in
November. So then you ask who are these people, and how did they get on the ballot? How did
they get to be the ones who are selected by the voters? Well those are determined by the political
parties in their conventions in the summer of an election season. So at the national party
conventions, the delegates to that convention decide who their nominee is going to be. So then
you can ask how do the delegates decide who to vote for. Well that's done in the early spring of
that year, by primary elections, and we'll talk about that in a little bit as well. But the other
question is who are these people that decide who the nominee's going to be? How do they get to
be in that room to cast that vote? Well the delegates to the national convention are selected by
the state parties in their conventions, in the early summer. And so those state conventions pick
who's going to go to the national convention, and then the delegate to the national convention
vote for the candidate who won the primary in their state. Now prior to that is what is referred to
as the invisible primaries, in the late fall of the year before an election. Because as we'll discuss,
primary elections are very, very expensive, as is the national election that following summer.
And so to be a real candidate, to have a hope of winning enough primaries to get the nomination
that summer, a candidate has to collect a lot of money in the fall, before the spring primaries.
And so the invisible primaries are the fundraising efforts by those candidates. And the more
effective and popular candidates attract more money, which is why it's often called an invisible
primary. Now if you want to raise lots and lots of money in the fall, that means you have to
organize yourself in the spring and summer. That kind of an organization that's capable of raising
the many millions of dollars necessary doesn't just spring up organically, it has to be organized.
And so a serious contender for the President has to have an organization in place nationwide by
the spring of the year before the election year. Which means that that winter, a serious candidate
has to announce that they're going to run for President, so that volunteers and partisans can be
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recruited in time for that spring and summer organization. So if we back up from the election
cycle, if a candidate, for example Barack Obama as the most recent successful candidate to go
through this process, was sworn into office January of '09, elected in November of '08, won
enough of the primaries in the spring of '08 in order to get the nomination that summer,
organized a nationwide campaign in the fall, and successfully fundraised. Now actually, if you
looked in the fall of '07, Hillary Clinton actually had a lot more money than Barack Obama did.
His money began to flow in in the spring. So Clinton won the invisible primaries, but lost the
real primaries in the following spring. And so Obama announced that he was going to run for the
Presidency in the late fall of 2006. And so becoming president, if you're a serious contender, is
essentially a 2-year process. And so this lecture's being recorded in the year 2010, and so
candidates are already beginning to jostle in the Republican party for who will get the
nomination to run against Obama in 2012. If you're a serious candidate, that has to be done by
December of 2010, otherwise you're not going to succeed in the invisible primaries that have to
occur in 2011. So it's a long process, so let's look at some of the details of that process.
Slide Seventeen
Audio: This is a map of the electoral college. And as mentioned in the previous slide, the
electoral college is who determines who the President is going to be. Now some students in the
past have said it doesn't matter whether I vote for President, because it's the electoral college that
decides anyways. That's not really the way it works, because the delegates from each state are
given the charge to vote for their candidate, based on the outcome of the popular vote. So when
you go to the polls here in Arizona, and you vote for President, what you're really voting for is
which party sends a group of electors to the electoral college. At that statewide convention,
which happens in the summer of an election cycle, the state convention decides who the electoral
college members are going to be. And the party that wins that state's Presidential election
popular vote is the party that gets to send their delegates to the electoral college. So Arizona gets
10 electoral votes. John McCain won the state of Arizona, which meant that those 10
Republicans got to send their votes in to the electoral college. Now that didn't mean John
McCain won the national election, because Obama won enough of the larger states to actually
win. But that's the way the process works. So the electoral college is directly connected to the
popular vote. However, it is done on a state by state basis. The numbers for each state are
determined by the number of members of House of Representatives plus Senators. So if you look
at Montana, for example, Montana is not a very populous state, so it has two Senators like all
other states, but it only has one member of the House of Representatives. So it gets a total of
three votes. Arizona has two Senators, and eight members of the House of Representatives, so
Arizona gets 10 votes. If you recall the discussion of reapportionment, when we were talking
about the presentation on Congress, the 2010 census will likely increase the number of members
of Congress that Arizona has. It may go to nine, or it may go to 10. We'll likely gain one or two
seats in Congress, because of the shifting population of the country. What that means is that after
that reapportionment happens, in the 2012 election, Arizona will have either 11 or 12 votes in the
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electoral college. Now, this has a couple of consequences. The biggest consequence is that the
largest states have the biggest voice in the electoral college. In fact, these states are large enough,
compared to the other states, that all someone has to do to become President is win the election
in five states, and they'll win the majority of the electoral college. Those five states are
California, Texas, Florida, New York, and then one of either Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Illinois. And
if you can win those four largest states and one of the three middle states, you'll have enough
votes to guarantee the electoral college. Now it doesn't usually work out that way, because
California tends to elect Democrats, and New York also tends to elect Democrats. Texas tends to
elect Republicans, and Florida vacillates between the two of them. So no one party has a lock on
those five states. But it alters the landscape of the contest to be President. Having an electoral
college means that if you're President, you need to focus on those populous states. You need to
take -- you need to focus on a large state that is in contention. Now you don't want to waste your
resources campaigning in a large state where it's hopeless. So Republicans tend to only make a
token appearance in California and New York, because they know they're going to lose those
states. Democrats tend to not even bother going to Texas, because they know there's no way
they'll win that state. They both spend a great deal of time in Florida, because Florida is a swing
state -- it doesn't have a dominance of either side. They also, knowing that they can't get all of
the big states, that means they need to get most of the medium states. And so candidates spend a
lot of time in those medium states that are competitive. So they'll compete quite a bit in
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. And then they'll also compete in Arizona recently, because
Arizona, while it consistently elects Republicans to the legislature, it also elects Democrats to
statewide office. And so its 10 votes are up for grabs, and so increasingly Democratic and
Republican candidates are beginning to come to Arizona, because it's no longer a solidly
Republican electoral state. So what the electoral college does is it focuses the Presidential debate
on the key states that are in question, they're swing states. Now some people argue that we
should get rid of the electoral college. This debate took a particular force in the 2000 race, where
Al Gore won the popular vote, meaning if you just added up all the votes that Al Gore got around
the country, and compared that to all the votes that George Bush got around the country, Al Gore
had more votes than George Bush. Yet George Bush won the electoral college after the legally
contested debate in Florida finally came down on Bush's side. And so many people have argued
that the electoral college is undemocratic, and we should get rid of it. Now if we were to
eliminate the electoral college, which is a holdover from the founding of the Constitution, where
the states and representation by the states was the key question for that generation of Americans - if we were to throw that out, say that's an archaic notion, let's just have a popular vote, what
would happen is the electoral landscape for candidates would shift from a large and medium
state centered campaign to an urban campaign, because the majority of American citizens live in
urban areas. And so candidates would go to major city centers across the country, there are about
30 of them. And they would probably completely ignore the rest of the country, because rural
America, as important as it is for our culture, is almost irrelevant electorally. There aren't enough
people living the plains states, and much of the intermountain west to bother coming there. So
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from Arizona's point of view, if we were to get rid of the electoral college, it would probably
mean an increased presence of Presidential candidates in the Phoenix valley, because Phoenix is
one of the top 10 urban centers in the nation. But it would mean that Presidential candidates
would ignore rural areas, and particularly go away from some of the more rust belt cities that
have declining populations. So the electoral college, that's how it works. And the debate on
whether or not to get rid of the electoral college is a little more subtle than is sometimes given
credit for.
Slide Eighteen
Audio: Now to win the electoral college then, you have to win a nationwide campaign, focused
on the major population centers of the country. Likewise, to get your party's nomination, you
have to essentially do the same thing. You have to win a series of statewide elections in the
major population centers of the country. And this is because the political parties have a
nomination process that looks remarkably similar to the electoral college, meaning states send
delegates to the national convention. And those -- the number of delegates at that convention are
also pegged to the populations of those states. So large states send more candidates than small
states. So a candidate who wants to be a nominee has to win those races. But here's an ironic
thing, is that the primary campaign can often be more expensive than the general campaign. And
this is because in the general election, because of the electoral college, candidates can safely
ignore states that their party is not competitive. Again, Republicans, it's a waste for their time to
go to California or New York, Democrats, it's a waste of their time to go to Texas. However, in
the party nomination, it is the Democrats in Texas, you know, both of them who are -- who send
delegates to the party. And because it's a populous state, they get to send a lot of delegates,
which means democrats have to campaign in Texas if they want to gain the party's nomination.
Likewise, Republicans need to campaign in New York and California for the nomination. And so
the primary campaigns are actually more far reaching than the Presidential campaigns are. That's
an expensive process, which raises the need for fund raising, which we'll talk about in a little bit.
It also -- another reason it is more difficult to win a primary campaign than it is to win a national
campaign is because the field of contenders are so diverse, and so it's more difficult for any one
candidate to stand out and garner support from donors and volunteers to help work with them. So
in the slide, this is the 2008 Presidential campaign. We have a slew of Republican candidates on
the top slide, and a whole batch of Democratic candidates on the bottom slide. And each of these
candidates had to compete with not one opponent, but several opponents, and not in only key
states, but across the entire nation. So the primary campaign is grueling and expensive.
Slide Nineteen
Audio: That expense then requires candidates who want to actually win, as opposed to
candidates who just want to run, to gather lots and lots of money. Now let me clarify what I just
said. There are some candidates who understand that they don't stand a chance of becoming
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President of the United States. They also realize they probably are not even going to win the
nomination of their party, and yet they run for President anyways. This is because for some
people, running for President is an end in and of itself. Whether they win is besides the point,
they want to run. And there's a couple of reasons for this. One is pure ego -- there's nothing like
being the center of attention for several months. But also, as you're making speeches around the
country, and drawing attention to the ideas in your speeches, it's a way to -- running for President
is a way to attempt to shift the debate, and move the position of your political party on an issue
that you feel passionate about. And the party will only move towards your position if you are
successful in your early primary races. What happens if there's an early candidate who's
successful, and is giving maybe a different message than everyone else is giving, is that the other
candidates will begin to adopt that same message as a way to neutralize the threat that this new
candidate poses. Once they've adopted your message, you've gained a large victory. You know,
one of the reasons you ran for President was to bring these issues up. Well now everybody's
talking about these issues, you've succeeded. You don't actually have to be elected President to
achieve your policy goals. So those are some of the reasons why people run for President, even
though they know they don't stand a chance of actually winning. Alright, but if you're serious
about actually winning, then you need to win not just a few key races to draw attention to
yourself, you have to win enough races to guarantee the vote and the party convention will go
your way. Now there's a whole dynamic to those primaries, and winning early is always good.
Because people don't like giving campaign contributions to somebody who's going to lose. And
so you need to win early races in order to attract more campaign contributions. So that means
you have to be ready with a nationwide mobilization effort before those primaries even begin.
Well that takes a lot of money, and so this leads us to the invisible primaries then. The invisible
primaries are the primaries that occur behind the scenes. The regular primary, every Joe Schmoe,
every registered voter has a voice in who the candidate's going to be. The invisible primary is
where the candidates jockey for attention, and the good will of people who have deep pockets,
people who have money they're willing to contribute to a political candidate. Now those people
are surprisingly available. There are many of them in the country. But with some organization,
you can even reach people who don't normally give, and persuade them to give, even in small
amounts. And so this invisible primary is an indicator -- an early indicator of the viability of a
candidate. And so as the bullet point says on the slide, money is a proxy for the depth of support,
and the electability of a candidate. If a candidate is running out of money, that is usually a sign
that they probably will have trouble getting people to vote for them, and also a sign that they are
not going to really be able to effectively mount a campaign against the other party in the national
election. And so the more money problems you have, the more money problems you're going to
have. It tends to be a reinforcing cycle, where the more money you get, the more money you're
able to attract, because success breeds success. So money is an important measure of support. I
have colleagues who thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win the nomination, because she
had been the front runner candidate, the media favored her, she had the experience, and the sort
of presence of a Presidential candidate. And so they all assumed she would be the candidate. And
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I said no, I don't think it's going to happen, I think Barack Obama's going to get the nomination.
And my colleagues looked at me like I was crazy, because Obama had not won the early primary
races, and nobody was really talking about him. But my argument was that in the month prior to
us having this conversation, Barack Obama had raised more than twice as much money as
Hillary Clinton had, that basically Clinton's finance machine had dried up. She'd already tapped
everyone who was going to give her money early on, whereas Obama's money machine was just
picking momentum up, and getting more and more going. So the invisible primary is important,
but does not predetermine the outcome. 'Cause as I said before, Hillary Clinton won the invisible
primary -- she had more money going into the primary season, but yet she lost the nomination.
So it's not a determining factor, but it can narrow the field as candidates who would like to be
President realize in that fall before the election year that nobody's returning their calls. Those
people will drop out, rather than run an ineffective campaign in the following spring.
Slide Twenty
Audio: So let's turn then to the role that money plays in these elections, and the regulations on
how that money's gathered, and how it's spent. And so the collective term for all that is campaign
finance -- campaign finance law, and campaign finance procedures. It is a fairly arcane concept,
and only -- not that many people are specialists in this field. In fact, if you want to make a career
as a political consultant, become an expert on campaign finance, and you're guaranteed a
lucrative career. But let me talk about some of the history of campaign finance, how the system
that we have in place got there. And I'll start the clock in the 1968 Democratic convention. This
convention was in Chicago, and it was a complete disaster for the Democrats. What was
happening was the anti-Vietnam War peace wing of the Democratic party had their candidate,
and then the establishment Democratic party, who were going to continue the war that Johnson
had begun, were on the other side of this debate. And at the time, there were not a whole lot of
primaries. Most delegates to the state conventions were determined by party caucus, which
means party insiders, and establishment party members decided who went to the national
convention. Which means that the establishment candidates got the nomination, whereas the
insurgent outsider candidates were shut out. And so the followers of the insurgent candidate
protested, and were also protesting the war. Well the organizer of the Democratic campaign was
Mayor Daley in Chicago. And he was an old-school party boss, you know, machine politics guy.
And he did not want these hippies and rabble rousers to damage the impact of his convention, or
be on TV, and he wanted a smooth convention to be shown. And so he did a couple of things.
One was he kicked the media out of the convention floor, because the convention floor was
having this debate between the establishment party and the anti-war insurgents. And they didn't
want to broadcast that debate, they wanted the party to look unified. So he kicked the media out.
Well at the same time, there were anti-war protestors going on in the streets of Chicago, and so
he called his union friends, and they had the brick layers come in wielding axe handles. And they
waded into these Vietnam War protestors, and started cracking heads open, and just cleared 'em
out of the streets. Well the national media that had been kicked out of the convention was just
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sitting around on the streets, and so they broadcast the beatings that were going on in Chicago,
rather than the arguments that were going on in the convention. It really was not a good thing for
the Democratic party to show that this is what their convention had come to. And so the party
had an emergency meeting, and they agreed to some of the demands of the anti-war party
members. They agreed to let their candidate give a speech during prime time, and they agreed to
give them a role in the convention, if they would stop the protests, and stop the arguments so that
the convention would look neat and orderly on TV. What they did was they put them in a
committee that was a boring committee that nobody wants to serve on anyways. It was the rules
committee. Figured they would -- couldn't do much harm there. Well what these people did was
they changed the rules by which delegates are determined to come to the convention. And as a
result, they drastically altered the way we pick who are Presidents are going to be. The rule
changes are listed on the slide there. They eliminated the winner take all system, unlike the
electoral college, where -- using Arizona as an example, if John McCain wins 55% of the vote,
and Barack Obama wins 45% of the vote, McCain gets all 10 of Arizona's electoral votes. Well
on the primaries, at least on the Democratic side, the winner take all system is gone. So if Barack
Obama wins 55% of the vote, and Hillary Clinton wins 45% of the vote, Barack Obama gets 6 of
the state delegates, and Hillary Clinton gets 4. So it's proportionally based, not winner take all.
That allows minor candidates to stay in the game, even though they may not win outright. And
this is one reason Obama was able to gain the nominations, because the states that Hillary
Clinton won, she barely won, and the states that Obama won, he typically won by a large margin.
And so Obama, through this proportional system, racked up more delegates than Hillary Clinton,
even though at the beginning she was winning more states than Obama was. Alright, the next
change was they changed from caucuses to primaries. So rather than have the bigwigs in the
back room -- the party bosses decide who the candidates were going to be, they would shift to
primary elections, where everyday registered members of the party get to decide who the
candidates are going to be. And then they increase the representation of women and minorities.
And this was tested then in the '72 convention when the southern states sent their usual
delegation of good old boy party members, and the Democratic party refused to seat them. They
then ran back home and got some women and minorities to bring back with them in order to go
to the convention. And ever since then, they've -- the party's been careful to ensure that the
representation of the delegation matches the representation of that state. Okay. Why did they do
this? To democratize the selection process, to make it so that the people -- the rank and file
voters members of the party got to decide who the nominees were going to be, not the wellestablished good old boys, normal everyday party bosses, as had been the case. Now, what was
the consequence of this change -- and we'll see in this discussion we're going to have lots of
unintended consequences. What it meant is that it became very expensive to become President.
Because now, rather than just making sure that the party was on your side, you had to actually
run a popular campaign to get the voters in every state to vote for you in the primary, which
increased the cost of becoming the party's nominee exponentially. Those increased costs meant
that candidates had to go to larger and larger donors to get the money to run, which led to some
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unsettling situations, where wealthy millionaires were bankrolling candidates. That's not at all
what the reformers had in mind in 1968. Now one last point on this is that when the Democratic
party changed its rules -- remember that elections in the United States are run by states -- the
Democrats controlled most of the state legislatures at the time in 1968. So when the Democratic
party changed its rules, the state legislatures changed their election laws to comply with those
rules, which forced the Republicans to follow those same rules. Now not the representation rules,
but the elimination of the winner take all system, and the changing to primaries, that altered the
Republican contest. However, the Republican party has more caucuses than the Democratic party
does, because it was not a complete one for one change. But by and large, the Republican party
was dragged into these changes, along with the Democratic party.
Slide Twenty-One
Audio: Now the problem of millionaires picking who's going to be President led to -- led
Congress to make some changes, in order to try to regulate the situation, and decrease the
influence of big money on elections. One incident that triggered these was the election of
Richard Nixon. There was a millionaire from New York who singlehandedly paid for a large
percentage of Nixon's election campaign. And after Nixon became President, this New York
millionaire spent several nights in the Lincoln bedroom, and consulted with the President on
several legislation issues. That relationship -- that overly cozy relationship with this donor led
some to worry that the electoral system could be bought. So they created these campaign finance
laws called the FECA Act, which stands for Federal Election Campaign Act. This was passed in
1971. It did a couple of things. First it set campaign contribution limits. It made it so that you
could only contribute a maximum of 1,000 dollars per candidate, per election. You also -- it
prohibited unions and corporations, and interest groups from donating money directly to a
candidate. Instead, they had to form a political action committee, where its members could give
the money to this action committee, which would donate money to the candidates. So there was
an indirect path between a union or a corporation, as opposed to the direct path that used to exist.
And those packs could only contribute 5,000 dollars per election, per candidate. Now the -- it
also allowed for public financing of federal elections for Congressional, Senate, and Presidential,
but primarily Presidential elections. If you followed -- if a candidate were to voluntarily abide by
the limits set by the FECA law, then they would be eligible for these federal campaign
contributions. If they opted out of the campaign finance system, then they were not eligible for
the federal funds, but the limits on donors did not apply either. So it led to a situation where
some candidates -- and typically most candidates do abide by these rules, while other candidates
opt out. Now let's talk about unintended consequences again. It was supposed to decrease the
influence of big money on elections. An unintended consequence that happened immediately
was political parties around the country -- the state offices of political parties began to dry up,
because donors could no longer contribute to the parties. And the national parties began to suffer
as well. And so Congress needed to change that.
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Slide Twenty-Two
Audio: They changed the law then in 1979 to allow unlimited donations to parties so you
couldn't give more than $1,000 to a candidate but you could give whatever you wanted to to
political parties. And this enabled the parties to raise their funds, to stay viable and, you know,
buy their office space, do all the things that political parties need to do that we talked about in an
earlier presentation. All right. Again, the next unintended consequence was that these unlimited
donations, which were termed soft money, now hard money was money given directly to a
candidate, soft money is given for the party for party building purposes, that soft money allowed
a loophole to allow big donors to get around these restrictions. So a big donor would give $1,000
to the candidate and then give $100,000 to the political party and the political party would use
that $100,000 to directly benefit the candidate. An example of an abuse that I read was candidate
was -- had their campaign staff and they were talking about their media strategy and they were
going to put a TV ad on Monday night and a TV ad on Tuesday night and a TV ad on Friday
night. And then the campaign manager said, you know, that's our strategy, that's all the money
we have for is to do those, I sure wish we had money to run a powerful, effective ad on
Wednesday and Thursday but we just don't, oh well. And while the person saying that, they're
looking eye contact with the party representative who's sitting in the room taking notes. So the
candidate would then run ads on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and then the political party would
run ads paid for by the political party on Tuesday and Thursday. So the soft money loophole
became a wink-wink nudge-nudge way to bypass the campaign limits and both parties were
using that soft money loophole to continue to have large donors have a huge impact on
campaign.
Slide Twenty-Three
Audio: This led eventually to the McCain Feingold Campaign Financial Reform Bill in 2002 and
the main goal of that campaign finance bill was to eliminate that loophole and so it -- what that
law did is it eliminated soft money altogether, candidates were not allowed to give these
unlimited donations and parties couldn't solicit them. Now it did recognize that it's no longer
1971 so it increased the monetary limit that is allowed from 1,000 to 5,000 and it increased the
PAC limits as well. So that, you know, sort of adjusting for inflation basically. The other thing
that it did is it allowed for bundling so a political entrepreneur could go around and collect large
donations from a number of different people and could then bundle those together into one large
donation that exceeded the FICA limits and as long as the component parts of that bundle didn't
exceed the limits, then that contribution was allowed. Now this opened the door for groups who
have access to a lot of reasonably wealthy donors to package those and become very influential.
Now the McCain Feingold process is still being determined because the Supreme Court
overturned the soft money ban in 2010, it said that Congress cannot prohibit a union or
corporation or an interest group from donating money to a presidential campaign or political
party. And the court went further and ruled that corporations are people essentially, that they
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have -- they've -- corporations have had that status for a long time but what the Supreme Court
did was it extended the First Amendment rights to corporations and said that corporations have
the freedom to speak and give money to whoever they give and whatever amounts they want to
give. And so that 2010 Supreme Court decision has effectively gutted the McCain Feingold Bill.
And so the situation of campaign finance is a little ambiguous right now which, again, is why
experts in campaign finance are in high demand. And if you want to work in politics, being a
campaign finance lawyer appears to be a growth industry.
Slide Twenty-Four
Audio: All right. So we've discussed the campaign nomination process, how you become a
candidate and we've discussed campaign finance, how you pay for a candidacy so now let's look
at the process of a campaign. And some of the strategies that successful political campaign needs
to adopt. There are essentially two main categories of strategies, there's persuasion and
mobilization. Persuasion refers a campaign that tries to convince people that they're the right
candidate, that they try to be the best candidate on the most important issue and get that message
out to the broadest array of voters they possibly can in the hopes that they'll convince those
voters to vote for them. A mobilization strategy instead, focuses on people who you know are
going to vote for you, make sure they show up and they vote. It's taking the voters that already in
your pocket and making sure that their vote counts. And then the opposite of trying to prevent or
discourage voters who are in the pocket of the other side from being able to vote so that's a
mobilization strategy. You're not trying to convince the undecideds, you're trying to make sure
that more of your people show up than their people do. Now the problem with these two
strategies is that most campaigns have to choose which one to focus on. Now all campaigns do
both but which one do you want your emphasis to be on because in a world of finite resources,
you have to make choices and you have to put your emphasis or your focus on one or the other.
Now if you're awash in money, if you're like the Obama '08 Campaign, which had more money
than they could spend, the were able to do both. But the MCain Campaign, which was short on
funds, had to decide what was their emphasis going to be on.
Slide Twenty-Five
Audio: The persuasion strategy is -- involves activities that we often associate with just general
campaigning, these are when a campaign uses speeches and advertisements and fliers to
convince voters that they are the best candidate on the most important issue. Now the way
candidates find out what the most important issue for voters is is with polls. And if you recall the
discussion on polling, there are scientific survey methods to accurately determine what people's
opinions are on particular issues, as well as how important they feel about a particular issue. Of
the opinion polls, they vary in reliability, the least reliable opinion poll is an internet or television
survey. Those are, by definition, entertainment because it's impossible to get a representative
sample when people decide whether or not to participate in a poll. The next step up above that
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would be push polls, which are intentionally deceptive but nevertheless are contacting real
people. Above that would be the campaign polls, polls that are done by a campaign in order to
promote their campaign, it's a version of a push poll. So any poll that a campaign advertises and
sends out is part of that campaign's persuasion strategy, it's an attempt to either convince people
of their position or make their popularity look stronger than it is in an attempt to persuade
independents and undecided voters to go ahead and join a winning side. Now the next step above
that are media campaigns that are often done carefully and with professionalism but they're not
the most accurate because they typically are driven by deadlines. And so that means that they are
highly topical but their sample frame is too low to be completely reliable. Now above that are
academic polls, which follow all the rules as well, they don't have a publication and so those can
be highly accurate but not exactly topical, meaning if you want to know what happened two
years ago, read an academic journal. If you want to know what happened today, go to the media,
understanding that they might have got it wrong. Now the most accurate polls are those done by
campaigns that are not made public. These are polls that are done properly and with the proper
sample frame in a short period of time, that's expensive to do. And so candidates who need to
know what their constituencies really think will fund a poll but not make the results of those poll
public because they usually have to pay a pretty penny for that kind of quick topical information.
The candidates will then use that opinion survey as part of their persuasion strategy. Now if they
were to make that campaign -- that poll result public, it would be giving free information to their
opponent. So the point here is that campaign polls that are maintained by the campaign for the
campaign's purposes tend to be the most accurate polling out there. So once a campaign can
know what the, what the constituent thinks is the most important position, they then use their
polling to find out what the best strategy is or what the most popular position is on that issue.
And that gives them a good sense of where they sit relative to other candidates on the most
important position of the day.
Slide Twenty-Six
Audio: This diagram illustrates how those poll results are used to determine a candidate's
position so here we have the important campaign of the student body president for the sixth
grade and we have three candidates, Rosy, Jacob and Sarah and they are campaigning on a few
issues, what the lunch menu is, what kind of games are going to be played at recess and how to
adequately supply the crayon box. And those are the driving issues of the grade school. Now
different students in the grade school might rank those issues with different importance, the
artists really want a full supply of crayons. The kickball kids really want to make sure that
kickball is included in the recess games and the equipment for that is there. And then other kids
want to make sure that the lunch menu has items that you can actually eat. So if we were to
conduct a survey of all the kids at the grade school, what we'd find is that the lunch menu rises in
importance, that most kids rank that as the most important issues with recess coming in second
and crayons coming in third. Now on the lunch issue topic, Sarah has the favorite position
because she advocates smoothies for everybody. Jacob has a position that is popular but not quite
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as popular as Sarah's smoothie idea. And then Rosy is advocating carrots and sandwiches and so
her platform is the least popular on that issue. Now Rosy has the best campaign on the recess
issue, she belongs to the kickball club and she wants new equipment for kickball. Sarah is also
popular but not quite as popular as Rosy, she wants to put tether ball issues in. And then Jacob
wants to pave over the kickball area in order to put the four square and use the balls for four
square, not a very popular position. On the crayon supplies, Jacob has the best position, Sarah's
comes in second, and Rosy's is third. So there's an accurate poll conducted and we find out that
this is what the student body thinks of how they rank the issues and then on each of those issues,
how they rank the candidates. Now the way you win an election is you position yourself so you
are the best candidate on the most important issue. So if the election were held today, Sarah
would probably win because her smoothie promise is very popular and the issue of what's going
to be there for lunch is the most important issue. So Sarah wins given this situation.
Slide Twenty-Seven
Audio: Now, if you're helping Jacob with his campaign, that's a problem, because Jacob's going
to lose to Sarah. And so you've got a couple of options, a couple of tactics that you can follow to
succeed in your persuasion strategy. The first tactic is to change the issue salience. Now, the
lunch menu item was the most important issue, but Jacob ranked higher on crayons than Sarah
did. So what Jacob's campaign can do is really put a push for why crayons are important, and try
to change the issue ranging so that the crayon issue which Jacob naturally is the best candidate
on, moves up in that ranking and actually can overcome the lunch issue. And if the debate on the
student body election is all about crayons, Jacob wins the election because he's the best candidate
on the crayon issue. If Sarah, though, can successfully keep the topic of discussion in the
lunchroom, then she wins. So that's one strategy is to change the issue salience. The next strategy
is to change the rank on the most salient issue. Just accept the fact that lunch is going to be the
dominant issue, and instead you want to persuade people that your position is better. So Jacob
will then take Sarah head on on this smoothie issue and argue that his position is better than the
smoothie position. And if the persuasive strategy works, then the voters will agree with Jacob
that his solution is better than Sarah's solution, and when that happens, the order of the
candidates on that issue switches and Jacob then becomes the candidate with the preferred
position on the most important issue. So that is as difficult to do as changing the issue salience,
but it leads to a direct issue-based confrontation with the leading candidate. Now, the third
strategy is to co-opt the opponent's position. Now, this is a strategy that Jacob actually will
probably not want to do, because what co-opting does is you adopt your opponent's position.
You then become indistinguishable to the voters on that issue. So that issue is then taken off the
table, because there's no way to differentiate between the candidates on that issue. At that point
the second most important issue becomes the deciding issue. So if Jacob were to adopt the
smoothie issue and so there's no difference between Jacob and Sarah on the lunch position, the
next most important issue is the playground issue, which Jacob doesn't win. Rosie wins that
issue. So this would be a viable option for Rosie to adopt, that if Rosie abandons her carrots and
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sandwich position and instead begins to say, if I'm elected I, too, will put smoothies on, the
voters then can't distinguish between Rosie and Sarah on the lunch issue. They then go to their
second most important issue, which is recess, and Rosie wins that issue. So that co-optation can
be a powerful strategy. The Republicans, for example, hated Bill Clinton because he was really
good at doing this. He would take the best ideas the Republicans were putting out there and
adopt them as his own, which meant that the voters had no reason to vote for the Republicans
because Clinton was going to do the same things, and so they would then go to their next issue,
which he was able to beat the Republicans on. So the fourth strategy is to actually change your
candidate's position. And this is similar to co-opting the other person's position but it's becoming,
taking whatever is the most popular position on the most popular issue and then adopting that as
your own. And so in this case, if smoothies at lunch is the most popular issue, then the candidate
suddenly becomes an advocate for smoothies. And on the playground, the polling shows that
Dodge ball is the most popular game, then the candidate suddenly becomes a big advocate for
Dodge ball. And by doing this, it makes it so the candidate can be optimally placed to have the
best position on the best issue. Now, there is a danger in doing this, though, is that if the voting
public is paying attention and notices when those positions shift, your candidate begins to look
like an opportunist, someone who does not have their own stable issue, their own center. They
look like they're just going with whatever's popular, and that can really hurt a candidate's
credibility. So this last strategy of changing the candidate's position to match what the polls say
can be an effective one, but it is fraught with danger if the candidate gets caught doing it. So all
of these tactics are designed to position the candidate to be the most popular candidate on the
most important issue, because that's how you win an election, using the persuasion strategy.
Slide Twenty-Eight
Audio: The next campaign strategy is the mobilization strategy. Now, this one is not attempting
to persuade the voters that your candidate is the best candidate on the most important issue,
rather this tactic is taking voters who are likely to vote for you anyways and making sure that
they turn out and vote in larger numbers than the supporters of your opponent, so you're
mobilizing voters that are already are going to vote for you rather than persuading voters to
decide to vote for you. Now, if we go back to the bell curve of voter distribution that was
introduced when we talked about the miracle of aggregation, we have the diehards reds on the
left and the leaning reds as we go towards the middle. Then we have the undecideds or
independents in the middle, which is the majority of the voters, and then you have the leaning
blues as you move to the right, and then you have the diehard blues. So what a mobilization
strategy is designed to do is to make sure that the diehards go vote, because you know they're
going to vote for you. Almost regardless of your qualifications, they will vote for you. Then the
leaners, you just need to reassure them enough to remind them that you are their favorite
candidate, and then make sure they show up and vote. The independents and undecideds, they're
random voters. They're going to cancel each other out so you can safely ignore them. The leaners
on the other side, though, you want to dissuade them from voting, and there's a number of ways
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to do that. The diehards on the other side, there's no way you can influence their voting or not, so
the mobilization strategy doesn't focus on the other side. It focuses on your own side, turning out
your supporters so that they outnumber the supporters on the other side, recognizing that the
independents and undecideds will cancel each other out.
Slide Twenty-Nine
Audio: Some of the tactics that are followed in this mobilization strategy are a registration drive.
Now, this is where you try to get people who are likely to vote for you to register, to be eligible
to vote for you. So an example of this would be in the 2008 election, the Obama campaign did a
great job of mobilizing younger voters and immigrants, people who were eligible to vote but had
never voted before. They used social media and they used peer groups to approach people who
had not voted before, to get them excited about that presidential election to get them to vote. And
the Obama campaign was highly successful in that mobilization strategy. We can contrast that
with the 2004 election, where the Republication party did a masterful job of mobilizing their
base. They in almost a stealth campaign, mobilized registered voters using churches throughout
the country, by tapping into the religious right, the people who agree with the Republican party
on their social issues, and they then did voter registration drives in those faith communities.
Those faith communities were more likely to register as Republican than as Democrat, and they
then brought a whole bunch of people out to vote who had never really voted before and turned
that election for Bush, even though many of the elite thought Kerry was going to win because of
the difficulties Bush was experiencing. The Bush campaign in '04 used a mobilization strategy to
bring a bunch of new voters , sort of to surprise that outcome. The second strategy is to
encourage early voting among the base. Most states now, or many states anyways, allow for
early voting, where if you send in a request here in Arizona, you request the Secretary of State's
office and they will mail a ballot to you long before the election. You can then fill that ballot out
and mail it in. Now, parties love this among their base, because once that ballot has been mailed
in, it's in the bank. That's a vote that campaign doesn't have to fight for any longer. That's a vote
that's impervious to the persuasion strategy of the other side, because the vote has already been
cast. And so if your base is voting early, again, it's highly likely that base, the diehards and the
leaners are going to vote for your side. So you want them to vote early. It helps guarantee a large
number of votes on election day are already in your pocket. Another strategy is to provide
transportation. This strategy is more common in urban areas, poor areas, areas with elderly.
These are all areas that are traditional supporters of Democratic candidates, and so this is a tactic
that the Democratic party employs more often than the Republican party. They'll have buses that
will drive around voter districts and precinct captains will go and take people and provide a free
ride to the polls in order to vote. There's no guarantee they're going to vote for your candidate,
but you would do this among your base. So if there is a neighborhood community center that has
young or immigrants or poor people that tend to congregate at that center, the Democratic party
is going to get a bus at that center and have a shuttle going to and from the voting booth. The
Republican Party, not interested in organizing a shuttle from that low income center to the voting
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booth. The Republican Party might sponsor shuttles from areas that have a Republican Party
advantage over others. The point again is to mobilize each oar base at the expense of the other
side's base. Which leads us to the next two strategies, to provide an incentive and to engage in
negative advertising. Providing an incentive used to be the way the American elections operated,
that you would go to vote in -- and I'm talking 1800s now -- you would go to vote, and there
would be two tents. One tent would be the Republican Party and the other tent would be the
Democratic Party, and both tents would have barbecue and beer and music and dancing, and you
would decide which tent you wanted to go to and partake in the party that was going on. And
you'd have to cast your vote in order to go to the party, to the tent. That kind of incentivizing is
frowned upon anymore, and illegal. In many cases, parties can't offer beer like they used to. They
can't have barbecues for people who voted for their party. Instead, other forms of incentives are
to have parties after, in the evening, to try to watch the campaigns. Those typically are only for
party activists. They're open to anybody, but typically only party activists attend those. So
providing incentives has dramatically decreased as a mobilization strategy. But maybe a precinct
chairperson might offer to fix someone's steps if they'll come out and vote, knowing that they're
likely to vote for their chosen candidate -- that type of thing. Negative advertising is not trying to
get your side to come out so much as trying to keep the other side at home. Everybody hates
negative advertising, the sort of black and white pictures with ominous music and some snide,
sarcastic narrator talking about how terrible the other candidate is. Nobody likes that, but yet it's
used in every election. Why is that? It's because it works, and the way that negative advertising
works is it makes everyone sick to death of advertising, negative advertising. As more and more
paths run lambasting each other, people tune out and they stop listening to political ads. They get
sick to death of it, which means if you're following a mobilization strategy and your opponent is
following a persuasion strategy, and the negative campaigning ads have caused a large part of the
electorate to tune out of the campaign ads -- I'm sick to death of it, they turn the TV off -- you've
now effectively dismantled your opponent's persuasion strategy, because the electorate is no
longer paying attention to those carefully crafted messages that the other side is giving. They've
tuned out completely. So people turn off the persuasion strategies of your opponent. The other
thing that happens is the undecideds, the independents, say those Republicans and Democrats are
throwing mud at each other; I'm sick to death of the whole thing. A Pox on Both Their Houses;
I'm going to stay home. Well, if someone throws in the towel and stays home, then your
mobilization strategy has actually succeeded, because your side, your diehards and your leaners,
are voting. Maybe you've already got them to vote early, so those votes are already in the bank.
It's the undecideds and the independents and maybe even the leaners on the other side who get
disgusted by the whole thing and stay home. That means you win. Your mobilization strategy
works. So by decreasing voter turnout, it doesn't improve the nation, but it does help you win
your election, which is why both sides tend to resort to negative advertising, even though
everybody hates it. So these are some of the strategies that you follow if you're trying to win by
mobilization rather than winning through persuasion.
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Slide Thirty
Audio: These two strategies sometimes can both be done together, but often are working at odds
with each other, and both strategies are expensive, particularly if you're using it on a national
stage. It costs a lot of money to buy television and radio ads. It costs a lot of money to send
flyers out and mailers and signs. And so that means that choices have to be made. Candidates
usually have to pick which of these strategies are they going to follow? Are they going to follow
a persuasion strategy or mobilization strategy? It's never exclusive. All campaigns that are
effective do both strategies. The issue is, where is your emphasize going to be? And this is
particularly true if they're working at odds with each other. For example, if you're doing a
persuasion strategy and you're trying to convince the electorate that you're the best candidate on
the most important issue, and at the same time, you're engaged in a negative campaign ad to
demobilize the other side and to get your independents and undecideds to tune out, well, you've
just disengaged your primary audience for your persuasion strategy. So candidates have to be
careful that they don't undermine their own efforts as they compete in these two different
strategies. Now, some candidates, like Obama in '08, have so many resources that they are able
to engage in both. And you can look at examples in the '08 campaign that the Obama campaign
effectively used both strategies. A key component of that was to avoid going negative, because
they did not want to disengage voters with a negative campaign ad. So while the Obama
campaign harshly criticized the Bush Administration, it was only towards the end of the
campaign season that he began to harshly criticize McCain. He criticized McCain's positions but
tried to stay above the fray. McCain, similarly tried to avoid negative advertising on Obama.
Now, whether that's because it was part of a persuasion strategy or the difficulty of how to
engage in a negative campaign on Obama, given that he was a young African America, it's
difficult to craft a negative ad and not suffer from blowback. But the point is that Obama was
able to do both strategies. McCain had to pick because his resources were more tighter. This also
emphasizes why fundraising is so critical for effective campaigns. The amount of money you
have on hand determines your capabilities. Money is a proxy for popularity and power. If you
have money, you have the power to do things. if you don't have money, it's probably because
you're not popular enough. You're incapable of generating the kind of support you need. Money
drives the campaign. Money is also a good support keeper for a campaign. But all of these
combined together, help determine what the campaign strategy will be for a given candidate.
Slide Thirty-One
Audio: This presentation has focused on how citizens can use the processes of politics in order
to effect the outcome of their policies. We looked at why participation is important, what keeps
democracy working, why some people participate more than others do. It's important to
remember that voting, while essential to the function of democracy, is by itself a symbolic
periodic participation, that meaningful participation typically requires more of the citizen. It
requires a monetary donations to interest groups that will advocate for causes they support, and it
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requires time to volunteer and engage in with those interest groups. In addition to engaging in
explicitly political processes, democracy requires citizens to engage in their communities and as
neighbors in voluntary associations, that as they do that they build habits and skill sets needed
for citizenship. And finally we've looked at how individuals who want to hold elective office,
need to use the campaign process in order to position themselves in a way to be palatable to
voters and to ultimately win those elections. And so participation from the individual citizen to
the candidate who wins office, is vital for making this experiment in American democracy work.
Now, this concludes this presentation. The next presentation, we'll look at how people have used
these institutions and these political processes in the past to create change and the public
policymaking process that citizens can then impact in order to get government to do what they
want it to do.
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