2004 Presidential Election: An Introduction

Abstract

This special issue on the 2004 presidential election marks the second time that Presidential Studies Quarterly has devoted an issue to articles on the most recent election. This journal plans to make this a quadrennial tradition, recognizing the crucial importance of elections in the study of the presidency. Although scholars of the presidency naturally focus primarily on presidential actions, much of what presidents do is influenced by how they made it into the office. This issue covers some of the many aspects of who voted to reelect Bush and why. Whether one approves or disapproves of George W. Bush's politics, his controversial handling of the job has proved to be a boon to the study of the presidency. The Bush presidency has certainly stimulated more public interest in politics, as evidenced by public participation in the 2004 presidential election. The first two articles in this issue address two important aspects of this phenomenon. First, Alan Abramowitz and Walter Stone examine the increase in election turnout and political activism in 2004. They argue that the polarization over George W. Bush's presidency was largely responsible for the surge in public participation in electoral activities. Another aspect of participation in the election that increased markedly involved financial contributions to presidential campaigns. Costas Panagopoulos and Daniel Bergan compare 2000 and 2004 data from the Federal Election Commission and employ the National Election Studies to examine the types of people who contributed. After every presidential election, analysts want to know the makeup of the party coalitions and how patterns of voting behavior are changing. Harold Stanley and Richard Niemi examine the nature of group support for the parties in 2004 and put these recent data into historical perspective. Kate Kenski and Russell Tisinger focus specifically on Hispanic voters, a topic of special interest given that the Hispanic population of the U.S. citizenry is projected to increase substantially in the coming decades. Two articles in this issue are devoted to the topic of voting behavior by religious groupings. The 2004 election was the first since 1960 to have a member of the Catholic faith nominated by one of the two major parties for president. Mark Gray, Paul Perl, and Mary Bendyna examine the Catholic vote in 2004 and show how Catholicism was much less related to the vote than during the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960. …