Campaign Dynamics in Battleground and Nonbattleground States

Abstract

Strategic considerations rooted in the Electoral College sys- tem of presidential elections compel presidential campaigns to allocate resources disproportionately to competitive states. In contemporary cam- paigns, this results in a situation in which many voters are entirely un- exposed to activities over the duration of the campaign. The implications of lopsided communications that relegate voters in uncom- petitive states to bystander status in presidential campaigns are potentially significant and merit greater scrutiny. In this study, I analyze how the dy- namics of voter preferences in uncompetitive states compare to those in battleground states. Using data from the 2000 National Annenberg Elec- tion Survey, I find that the preferences of voters in battleground states are more variable but more stable than their counterparts in nonbattleground states. As expected, I also find stronger evidence of effects in battleground states. Survey researchers routinely probe Americans' presidential vote intentions well in advance of Election Day (Crespi 1988). Scholars have mined these data extensively to investigate the effects of events on dynamics (Gelman and King 1993; Holbrook 1996; Campbell 2000; Johnston, Hagen, and Jamieson 2004), but evidence of substantial movement in voter preferences that can be attributed to the presidential is rare. In their analyses of pres- idential elections between 1944 and 2000, for example, Wlezien and Erikson (2002, p. 978) show that the maximum range of preference variation over the fall campaign, after taking sampling error into account, is about six percentage points on average. Still, the authors conclude that, campaign events, broadly defined, do have meaningful effects, and that, (r)eal change in preferences remains and at least some meaningful portion carries over to Election Day.