Democratic Presidential Primaries Research Articles

Too Old to Be President?

The overrepresentation of advanced age among elites is a rising concern in democracies such as the United States. In 2016, American voters elected Donald Trump—at the time the oldest president to enter office—and in 2020 Joe Biden beat that record. Theories of descriptive representation suggest that voters should be less likely to support older candidates when age becomes a salient campaign issue. Indeed, age raises questions about a candidate’s physical and mental health, and thus their fitness to serve in office. The present study reports on a survey experiment conducted during the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries, which featured several candidates in their seventies, all running to replace an incumbent president of the same age group. Priming age did not affect voters’ assessments of any particular candidate’s ability to win the general election. These results are inconsistent with existing studies of age effects using hypothetical candidates. Possible causes of this discrepancy are addressed in the discussion.

Measuring Alignment of Online Grassroots Political Communities with Political Campaigns

Social media reduces barriers for the formation of large, self-organizing grassroots communities. For political campaigns this poses significant opportunities to address declining party membership, but also reputational risks and potential loss of campaign coherence. While balancing these factors is often done informally, we adopt a behavioural approach by using neural community embeddings to evaluate online communities along cultural, political, and demographic dimensions. We apply this technique to the 2020 U.S. Democratic presidential primaries and the website Reddit, providing novel insights into the important tension between campaigns and third-party actors. Using two benchmark comparison classes, we demonstrate that our embedding dimensions mirror their offline analogues, but more so the views of a candidate's supporters than the candidate's themselves. Finally, we introduce temporal aspects to our community embedding to evaluate the stability of political communities and their interrelations. These analyses serve as an exploration and application of our novel embedding methodology, and give insight into the relationship between online communities and the movements they support.

Identifying voter preferences through two-stage multivoting elections: Experiments in the preface of the 2020 democratic primaries

This paper examines a method of quantifying voter preferences and behavior using a two-stage multivoting (2SMV) model. The 2SMV model gives voters an endowment of additional votes exceeding the number of policies under consideration in a direct democracy-style election. Voters may freely allocate this endowment to any of the policies up for election. Using the 2SMV mechanism, the paper provides a methodology for identifying voter preferences and voting behavior within a staged multivoting system. From this methodology, three types of voting behavior are defined: policy indifference, strictly-dominating preferences, and fixed-weight preferences. Using experimental data collected from college students, the study evaluates the performance of the two-stage multivoting system in the context of the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries, compared to the traditional “one-person, one-vote” (1P1V) system. Using the full sample of observations, the 1P1V system resulted in a tie between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, while the 2SMV system selected Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders as the nominee by a 206 net vote difference. The study finds that the 2SMV system produces more unique and distant ranks between candidates, reducing the prevalence of ties common within the 1P1V system.

“This is a patriotism check”: Political economy, corruption, and duty to America in the 2020 primary debates

The 2020 Democratic presidential primaries involved the largest and most diverse slate of candidates in the modern era of party nominee selection, a diversity that allowed some candidates to reject neoliberal discourses endemic to American politics. In this essay, we analyze the 2020 Democratic primary debates to demonstrate the emergence of an alternative political economy that stands in opposition to standard economic orthodoxy. Candidates organized their critiques of the extant political economy around corruption, presenting it as rot at the heart of the present capitalist order, with Donald Trump more symptom than cause of America’s unjust and deeply flawed economic system. That rot compelled candidates to present an alternative in “economic patriotism” which posited obligation to the collective above and in opposition to neoliberal profit. The essay concludes by unpacking the implications of this break from orthodoxy in the campaign debate context.

Lessons from the Use of Ranked Choice Voting in American Presidential Primaries

Grounded in experience in 2020, both major political parties have reasons to expand use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in their 2024 presidential primaries. RCV may offer a ‘win-win’ solution benefiting both the parties and their voters. RCV would build on both the pre-1968 American tradition of parties determining a coalitional presidential nominee through multiple ballots at party conventions and the modern practice of allowing voters to effectively choose their nominees in primaries. Increasingly used by parties around the world in picking their leaders, RCV may allow voters to crowd-source a coalitional nominee. Most published research about RCV focuses on state and local elections. In contrast, this article analyzes the impact on voters, candidates, and parties from five state Democratic parties using RCV in party-run presidential nomination contests in 2020. First, it uses polls and results to examine how more widespread use of RCV might have affected the trajectory of contests for the 2016 Republican nomination. Second, it contrasts how more than three million voters in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries backed withdrawn candidates with the low rate of such wasted votes for withdrawn candidates in the states with RCV ballots. Finally, it concludes with an examination of how RCV might best interact with the parties’ current rules and potential changes to those rules.

Expanding Medicare to Adults at Age 60 Years-Medicare-for-More?

During the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, the big health care debate among candidates was over creating a universal “Medicare-for-all” system or a public option health plan available on a voluntary basis to anyone.

Family matters? Exploring media coverage of presidential candidates’ families by gender and race

ABSTRACT Researchers have only recently begun to explore the role of parenthood and family in politics. While some scholars focus on the political attitudes of parents, others examine the advantages and disadvantages of politicians’ parental status on candidate viability. Building on the concept of politicized motherhood, we argue that focusing on candidates’ parental status alone provides an incomplete picture of the full range and symbolic functioning of family in political discourse. We coin the theory, politicized family, which includes narratives of candidates’ spouses, parents, grandparents, and children, and argue it provides a more useful frame for understanding these processes. We also move the literature forward by assessing how media coverage of families of presidential hopefuls varies along gendered and racialized lines. Using 2,458 articles and opinion pieces from the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, we conduct a content analysis of candidate coverage from the 2004 and 2008 Democratic presidential primaries to explore how national print media portrays the family narratives of presidential candidates. Our results uncover both gendered and racialized family discourses embedded in media representations of presidential hopefuls. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of such portrayals for establishing candidates’ relatability and electoral viability.

Identifying Voter Preferences Through Two-Stage Multivoting Elections

This paper examines a method of quantifying voter preferences and behavior using a two-stage multivoting (2SMV) model. The 2SMV model gives voters an endowment of additional votes exceeding the number of policies under consideration in a direct democracy-style election. Voters may freely allocate this endowment to any of the policies up for election. Using the 2SMV mechanism, the paper provides a methodology for identifying voter preferences and voting behavior within a staged multivoting system. From this methodology, three types of voting behavior are defined: policy indifference, strictly-dominating preferences, and fixed-weight preferences. Using experimental data collected from college students, the study evaluates the performance of the two-stage multivoting system in the context of the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries, compared to the traditional “one-person, one-vote” (1P1V) system. Using the full sample of observations, the 1P1V system resulted in a tie between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, while the 2SMV system selected Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders as the nominee by a 206 net vote difference. The study finds that the 2SMV system produces more unique and distant ranks between candidates, reducing the prevalence of ties common within the 1P1V system.

“Socialist” Factors in the US Presidential Election

ABSTRACTBernie Sanders, who claims to be a “socialist,” surprisingly rises from the 2016 US Democratic presidential primaries, and has created a socialist vision for future America. The “socialism” he has self-claimed for is virtually democratic socialism. Sander’s meteoric rise in the election polls indicates that capitalist crisis is increasingly exacerbated; meanwhile, socialist thought tends to revitalize in the United States and other capitalist countries. The “socialism” Sanders has claimed will not take place in the United States, yet the historical tendency that socialism will inevitably replace capitalism is not going to change.

The Gapology of the Obama Vote in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primaries

In their competition for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton developed distinct demographic bases of support. This study will analyze the demographic divides in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, focusing on the “gaps” that emerged in the support of Obama. Obama’s demographic bases of support were African-Americans, younger voters, educated voted, those with no religion affiliation, wealthier voters, males, political independents, and ideological liberals. Despite the considerable amount of attention given to the gender gap, a number of demographic gaps were more significant. Race was by far the most important gap and a key component of Obama’s victory was his tremendous support from African-American voters.

State political culture and support for Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries

Though ideologically similar, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appealed to different types of voters in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries and demographically the candidates’ support varied considerably. Relative to the demographics of the primary electorates, however, we find that state political culture played an outsized role in determining which candidate emerged victorious in a particular state. When the size of demographic groups in the 2008 Democratic primaries are utilized in ordinary least squares regression models as independent variables with state political characteristics and Daniel Elazar's state political culture typology, political culture proves to be an important determinant of the level of support given to Obama in a state. States that are characterized by a more moralistic political culture are more likely to have given Obama a greater share of the primary vote and states that are characterized by a more traditionalistic or individualistic culture were less likely to support Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

“Yes We Can”: Rhizomic Rhetorical Agency in Hyper-Modern Campaign Ecologies

This essay traces the emergence and development of the ‘Yes We Can” slogan and details its evolution as a primary argumentative trope from the Democratic presidential primaries, through the general election and Barack Obama's victory in 2008. In particular, it examines selections of campaign discourse before, during, and after the New Hampshire Democratic debates, Obama's concession speech after the New Hampshire primary, and the subsequent production of Will.i.am's music video that used portions of that concession. The troping of ‘Yes We Can “provides a critical case study of hyper-modern campaign rhetoric, and the trajectory of argument in a hyper-mediated postmodern campaign context.

Group Politics Redux: Race and Gender in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primaries

The earliest political behavior researchers documented the powerful effects of group attachments and other socioeconomic factors on vote choice and partisan identification in the 1940s and 1950s (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954; Campbell et al. 1960). Yet, research interest in the group-based origins of political behavior has waxed and waned in the intervening decades (Huddy 2003). The existence of both an African-American and female frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 provides an opportunity to consider the contemporary electoral consequences of in-group loyalties and out-group antipathies. We take advantage of select survey and poll data collected during the 2008 Democratic primaries to evaluate the power of gender and race as both positive and negative influences on voter calculus in an election in which the two major candidates were differentiated less by their issue positions and beliefs than by their skin color and gender.

Change or More of The Same?

A number of political commentators and social scientists have speculated about the implications of the election of Barack Obama for race relations. Some of the more optimistic have suggested that the 2008 election demonstrated that Whites' racial attitudes have undergone a fundamental transformation. In this article, I seek to determine whether the putative transformation of Whites' racial attitudes has extended to levels of support for policies designed to alleviate racial inequality, the role of racial prejudice in shaping these policy preferences and whether or not prejudice influenced the presidential vote choice in 2008. Much of the analyses in this article rely upon comparisons between the 1988 election, the last time an African American candidate achieved some success in the Democratic presidential primaries, and the 2008 election utilizing survey data from the American National Election Studies (ANES). In general, I find scant evidence of a decline in the racial divide. Blacks and Whites remain as far apart on racial policy matters in 2008 as in 1988. Second, younger cohorts of Whites are no more racially liberal in 2008 than they were in 1988. Third, the racial divide is only partially mitigated among Obama supporters. Fourth, in analysis of Whites' racial policy preferences in 2008, I find that anti-Black stereotypes and indifference to Black suffering are among the strongest correlates of these opinions. Finally, I find that these same factors also contribute substantially to opposition to Obama in the 2008 election.

Commentary: The Election of Barack Obama: The Debt Has Not Been Paid

Many people have commented that with election of Barack Obama as 44th President of United States, this is a wonderful time to be a historian or other scholar of American experience. In person of President Obama we have coming together of multiple meanings and conceptualizations of designation While his father was from Kenya, Barack Obama understands that he and his family are Americans culturally; but unlike for many of us, Obama's African connection is as real and apparent as American. The election of President Obama in many ways is realization of social and political trends that began with launching of modern Civil Rights Movement in 1950s and Black Power Movement of 1960s and 1970s. But in many ways this is the best of and worst of times for U.S. Americans. On 29 February 2008, while Barack Obama was successfully winning Democratic presidential primaries, New York Times published an article on report from Pew Center for States stating that in 2007 U.S. prison population rose to 1.6 million, that more than 1 in 100 adults are in and that the U.S. inmate population is highest in world. For those who would like to argue that with election of President Obama, Americans have entered a new post-racial era, we need to call their attention to reports of The Sentencing Project, Human Rights Watch, and other groups that have documented disparities in rates at which Americans and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, despite roughly equal rates of illegal drug use. The Sentencing Project reports that while Americans represent about 13 percent of monthly drug users, they represent 35 percent of arrests, 55 percent of convictions, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for drug possession. American men in 15 states were imprisoned on drug charges at rates ranging from 20 to 57 higher than those of white men. As a result, one out of every 15 black men is in prison, and for those between ages of 20 and 24, rate is one in nine. And increasingly, black women are also targeted by prison-industrial complex so that one out of every 18 black women born in 2006 can expect to go to prison in her lifetime, while for white women expected rate is one in every 108; and whereas one out of 355 white women between ages of 35 and 38 was behind bars in 2007, rate for black women was one in 100. This high incarceration rate means that on any given day, one out of every 14 black children has at least one parent in prison. The drug laws that were put into effect, and harsh sentencing rules, are not merely result of politicians wanting to demonstrate that they are tough on crime, but are also a reflection of way U.S. political system currently operates. Thus wealthy lobbyists for private prison industry not only participated in writing of these new drug laws and contributed heavily to both Democratic and Republican politicians' campaigns, they also lobby to make sure that there are no changes in these laws that would stem flow of prisoners into these private prisons. Therefore, if Americans organized to change drug sentencing laws, and thus decrease numbers of black children and adults being incarcerated by thousands for victimless crimes, we would have to compete against resources and influence of private prison industry for support among politicians. In other words, we could move beyond moral indignation and outraged rhetoric to mass marches and public protests, but we would still have to raise filthy lucre to pad pockets of politicians and their political campaigns to effect any type of meaningful legislative changes. Moreover, with economic meltdown, gross disparities in circumstances for Americans compared to white Americans further undermine arguments about onset of a post-racial era in United States. …

Racismo, grupos de interés y falta de información política: ¿por qué la mayoría de los latinos no apoyan al candidato Barack Obama en los primarios presidenciales democráticos de 2008?

La mayoría de la población hispana no votó por el candidato Barack Obama en las elecciones primarias del partido Demócrata en 2008. Hombres y mujeres latinos de todos los orígenes, edades, nivel de ingresos y estudios votaron decididamente por la senadora Hillary Clinton a lo largo de dicho proceso electoral. Las victorias clave de la senadora Clinton en Estados como California, Nueva York, Texas, Nuevo México, Arizona y Nueva Jersey, se debió en gran parte al apoyo latino. Clinton ganó dos tercios, o incluso más, de los votos latinos en casi todos estos estados. Clinton también ganó el voto hispano por un margen similar en Nevada, La Florida, Maryland y Massachusetts. Este artículo explica las razones principales por las cuales la mayor parte de la población latina no votó por Barack Obama en las elecciones primarias Demócratas. El texto sugiere que el débil apoyo de los hispanos hacia Obama se debió no sólo a cuestiones relacionadas con racismo y grupos de interés, sino también a la ausencia de información política sobre las metas del candidato al interior de los latinos, un grupo minoritario que se ha convertido en parte fundamental del electorado en los Estados Unidos.

Context and Sources in Broadcast Television Coverage of the 2004 Democratic Primary

This study examined context variables (reporter speculation, multiple viewpoints, and story emphasis) and source variables (anonymous sources and source transparency) in broadcast television coverage of the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries. Primary coverage was compared with coverage of other major stories. Primary coverage was no more focused on conflict than were other major stories. Primary coverage was, however, more focused on winners and losers, and primary reporting was more likely to include reporter speculation. Primary stories were just as likely to include anonymous sources as were other major stories, but primary stories also were more likely than other major stories to fully identify sources.

Gender and Black Presidential Politics: From Chisholm to Moseley Braun

SUMMARY Carol Moseley Braun's entrance into the 2003 Democratic presidential primaries brought Representative Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential run back into the spotlight. Numerous questions of interest immediately come to mind. Has the political environment for Black females interested in the presidency changed? Is a Black female candidate running nationally today in a better position than thirty years ago? Did Black Americans see a Black female as a serious contender in 2003 where they did not in 1972? Were Blacks more inclined to support a Black male in the race, Al Sharpton, regardless of the qualifications of Moseley Braun? While data are limited, this article attempts to address these questions and to draw some conclusions, albeit cautiously, about the current political environment for Black female candidates.

“The Most Liberal Senator”? Analyzing and Interpreting Congressional Roll Calls

Scoring lawmakers based upon the votes they cast while serving in Congress is both commonplace and politically consequential. However, scoring legislators' voting records is not without its problems—even when performed by organizations without a specific policy agenda. A telling illustration of the impact that these scores have on political debate recently arose in the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries.

Candidate Competition and Attrition in Presidential Primaries, 1912-2000

This article analyzes candidate competition and attrition in presidential primaries from 1912 to 2000. We use a modified market concentration index to measure the number of effective candidates entering presidential primaries and to calculate winnowing across presidential primaries. We test competing hypotheses about the increasing number of candidates entering primaries. We find that the number of effective candidates increased following the reforms of the 1970s. We reject the hypothesis that the number of candidates entering primaries increased gradually as a function of long-term factors. We also find similarities in the winnowing of candidates in each party during the prereform and postreform eras, which suggests the timing of candidate withdrawal owes to more than differences in each party’s delegate allocation rules. Republican presidential primaries more efficiently winnow candidates than do Democratic presidential primaries in both the prereform and postreform eras.