Political Parties, American Campaigns, and Effects on Outcomes

Abstract

For almost 150 years, two facts about American elections seemed incontrovertible. First, campaigns were an integral part of elections. It is the campaign that conveys information to voters who, in turn, use it to reach individual and collective judgments about the relative merits of candidates. The apparent rationality of election outcomes in the United States – candidates presiding over failing economies or unpopular wars lose, while candidates presiding over economic growth and popular wars win – strongly suggested that political information was reaching the public. Furthermore, it validated the perception that campaigns, as the most obvious conduit of this information, were important institutions. Second, the role of parties in democratic processes was no less critical. The parties developed the capacity to contact individual voters, to advertise through partisan newspapers and pamphlets, to publicize and carry out events such as picnics, carnivals, parades, and rallies, and to print and distribute ballots. These capacities cannot be overemphasized. Candidates were recruited and controlled by parties. It is true, of course, that certain popular individuals had a greater say in how the party handled their candidacy and campaign. But it is equally true that parties dominated the relationship. The perceived importance of campaigns and parties was largely unchallenged by practitioners, pundits, and scholars well into the 20th century. Three developments, however, called the conventional wisdom into question. First, as scholars collected data from surveys in the 1940s and 1950s, they began to realize that the American public was not nearly as informed about or interested in politics as they had assumed. This finding shook the broader assumption of voters as attentive observers of the day-to-day events and policy pronouncements of the election campaign. Second, the development of broadcast technologies – especially the emergence and proliferation of television – fundamentally changed the way in which information is disseminated. In particular, by the 1960s television had allowed individuals to communicate and to develop personal connections with an audience without the human resources necessitated by face-toface contact. This, obviously, had the potential to empower candidates at the expense of political parties. Third, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the American parties reformed their internal nomination processes to increase democratic input. The direct result was an almost complete reliance on primary elections to determine candidates. The indirect result was a forfeiture of party control over nominating processes. In the words of Alan Ehrenhalt (1991), candidates were asked to ‘nominate themselves’. Furthermore, as candidates began to contest primary elections, they developed campaign organizations and expertise independent of the political party. These candidates not only were not beholden to the party when they won the nomination, but also often had personal campaign organizations and did not need help from the party as they turned their attention to the general election contest. 13