General Election Campaign Research Articles

The Race Problematic, the Narrative of Martin Luther King Jr., and the Election of Barack Obama

On November 4, 2008 Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. He became the first Black person to be nominated for and win the presidency as the standard bearer of one of the two major political parties in the United States. Obama's Democratic Party primary and caucus campaign for the nomination and his general election campaign confronted both overt and subtle attributions to his race and derisions to race as a determining factor in the outcome to the election. However, Obama did not run race-specific campaigns. Other than self-identifying as a Black man, Obama did not call specific attention to his race or race in general. This essay is an attempt to analyze the race problematic as it played out within Obama's quest to become the first Black person to run for and win the presidency as the standard bearer of one of the two major political parties in the United States. My effort is to interrogate the race problematic within the paradigm of Martin Luther King Jr.'s narrative of a beloved community and Barack Obama's odyssey of winning the presidency while not propounding his identity as a Black man.

Introduction

It is not uncommon for a US election to be qualified as historic. Indeed, the choice of a leader in the most powerful country in the world is always consequential and most presidents do eventually manage to write a few pages, if not a whole chapter, of the world's history. But in the case of the 2008 election, it was clear long before voting day that this one was going to be very special.Throughout a long series of primaries that attracted unprecedented levels of attention, the Democrats knew they were going to write a page of history by nominating either the first woman or the first African- American as their candidate. They chose the young junior senator from Illinois with an unusual name and an even more unusual background, Barack Obama, to oppose the Republican John McCain, a war hero and an experienced senator with a reputation as a maverick in his own party - perhaps the only Republican who could manage the improbable feat of campaigning credibly against an incumbent of his own party.Indeed, there was much to campaign against after the two consecutive administrations of President George W. Bush. The popularity of the outgoing Republican president, which had reached nearly unprecedented heights in the wake of the n September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, gradually went down thereafter, to reach dismal levels, around 20 percent, in the last months of his administration.For a while, it looked like the Arizona senator might have a chance to pull it off and achieve the impossible but, in spite of his desperate attempt to reenergize his campaign with the nomination of Sarah Palin as his running mate, there wasn't much McCain could do to erase the heavy burden of the Bush administration's legacy from the voters' memories.This portion of International Journal is based on a conference held at the Universite de Montreal just a few days before 4 November 2008, when the election of Barack Ob a ma had become all but a fait accompli. The conference was held 30-31 October and organized by the chair in American political and economic studies (Chaire d'etudes politiques et economiques americaines; CEPEA) and the Centre of International Studies (Centre d'etudes et de recherches internationales de l'Universite de Montreal; CERIUM), both at the Universite de Montreal, and by the Network for North American Studies in Canada (NNASC). As director of the CEPEA, I organized this conference with Jean-Francois Lisee, executive director of the CERIUM, and Michael Hawes, director of the NNASC and executive director of the Canada-US Fulbright program.1At that point, except perhaps for the hardcore supporters of John McCain, the results of the election were all but a foregone conclusion. For conference participants, therefore, the challenge was not to forecast the election's results but rather to reflect on why the policies of the Bush administration had been so harshly judged by the electorate, what difference the election of a new Democratic president would make in important policy areas, and what this all meant for Canada and for Canadians.We chose to approach this election from the point of view of public policy, identifying four issue-areas that were central to public debates throughout months of primary and general election campaigns: the economy; health and social policy; energy and the environment; and, of course, international security. The choice must have been judicious, as these issues were boldly highlighted in passages of Barack Obama's own victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park on the night of 4 November:For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. …

Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 2005

Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 2005

Triangular Contests and Caucus Rhetoric at the 1885 General Election*

This article explores the role played by late‐Victorian political associations during parliamentary election campaigns. The central hypothesis is that party organisation, known popularly as the ‘caucus’, is best understood as a rhetorical device used by politicians and the press to gain legitimacy in the new context created by an expanded and quasi‐democratic electorate. The hypothesis is tested by examining the 1885 general election campaigns in Nottingham West and Sheffield Central. Both constituencies witnessed a triangular contest whereby an ‘additional’ candidate, standing on a radical platform, entered the campaign and pursued a distinctly ‘anti‐caucus’ agenda that was aimed primarily at the local Liberal Party Association. The manner in which the ‘caucus’ issue was articulated by all sides involved throws new light on the role played by party organisation during this period. While all sides described their association in a way that both defended and asserted its legitimacy, they equally used ‘anti‐caucus’ rhetoric to diminish the credibility of their opponent's organisation, even though they were emulating the deeds they were denouncing. Indeed, it was those within official Liberalism that indulged in the most virulent ‘anti‐caucus’ rhetoric. Thus, it is suggested that, with regard to the attitude of radicals towards official Liberalism, this ‘anti‐caucus’ rhetoric reflected not a real popular resistance against party organisation or ‘party’, but simply intense competition and imitation between rival ‘caucuses’.

Review: Dominic Wring, Jane Green, Roger Mortimore and Simon Atkinson (eds), Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 2005. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. £55.00. 288 pp

Review: Dominic Wring, Jane Green, Roger Mortimore and Simon Atkinson (eds), Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 2005. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. £55.00. 288 pp

Ad Baculum, Islamic State and Malaysian Chinese Politics: A Rhetorical Study of Selected Political Advertisements in the Local Chinese Media during the 11th Malaysian General Election Campaign

This study analyzes the rhetorical strategy of using the emotion of fear as a political tool in the 11th Malaysia General Election campaign. The three-prong objectives of this study are to analyze the main themes and issues used to address this tactic of fear, the general perceptions that non-Moslems in Malaysia have of the concept of Islamic state as a symbol of fear and rhetorical strategies used to provoke this fear. The scope of the study is confined to the conventional communication model of “Source-Message-Channel-Receiver”. The “sources” are political advertisements, the “messages” are Islamic state theme and related issues, the “channels” are symbols or rhetorical strategies and the “receivers” are the voters, with special reference to Malaysian Chinese voters. The findings concluded that the National Front party (Barisan National, BN) used the fear factor effectively in its campaign. This situation is further enhanced by the strong control of BN over the Malaysian media in addition to the character of Chinese voters who generally prefer not to leave their current comfort zone and are afraid of an Islamic state.

'This poll has not happened yet': temporal play in election predictions

Although the past plays a large part in election campaigns, predictions and promises are its lifeblood, with the various parties promising great things if elected and predicting doom if not. Indeed the `manifestos' usually published at the beginning of an election campaign are a study in pledges, promises and wishes that parties use to entice the electorate to vote for them. Whilst talk of the future often dominates election discourse, one aspect of the future that is largely passed over without comment is the actual make up of the result, despite the relentless publication of opinion polls results. However, towards the end of the general election campaign in the UK in 2001, the Conservative Party began to warn of the dangers of the Labour Party winning the election by a large majority. The media gave wide prominence to this event, seen as tantamount to conceding defeat to the Labour Party, though the reaction of all the main political parties was to downplay its significance. In this article, we explore the discursive manipulation of temporal relations in the 2001 election campaign, and the politicians' work in gaining political capital out of the Conservative Party `breach' in the routine election prediction structure.

Introduction (Special Edition – The Presidential Nomination Process)

Understanding why certain candidates get nominated is an important aspect of political scientists. This topic is a narrow one and influences a wider variety of subjects such as the political parties, general elections, and even the extent to which the United States is a democratic country. Presidential nominees matter—they become the foremost spokesperson and the personified image of the party (Miller and Gronbeck 1994), the main selectors of issues and policies for their party’s general election campaign (Petrocik 1996; Tedesco 2001), a major force in defining the ideological direction of a political party (Herrera 1995), and candidates that voters select among in the general election. This volume is devoted to presidential nominations and the 2008 nomination specifically.

“Is this News to you, Prime Minister?”

This paper presents a specific case study – a “campaign interaction” between the prime minister and a member of the public during a live BBC TV general election debate – in order to examine a number of issues around concerns over the “crisis in public communication” and political control of news information flows. In a wider political sense this episode, in which Tony Blair seemed to be unprepared for a question about family doctor appointment times, was a relatively minor element of a general election campaign dominated by issues such as asylum policy and the Iraq war. Nevertheless, analysis of the ensuing news coverage suggests that election news agendas can be diverted away (at least temporarily) from the planned communications of political agents towards issues and themes publicised by non-official, non-expert sources, while also illustrating the ultimate reliance of the media on those official accredited sources. The role of the BBC in the case study also raises the issue of its position as a public service broadcaster, and the interaction between press and broadcasting in British political news coverage.

Constitutionalism, the electoral system and challenges for gvoernance and stability in Zimbabwe

In February 2000, Zimbabweans went to the polls to vote on a draft constitution for their country. The draft contained some important provisions, amongst other things, for the reform of the country's electoral system. The draft was rejected and a bitter general election campaign ensued in the second quarter of 2000. The general election held in June 2000 and the presidential elections in March 2002 were the most violent in Zimbabwe's electoral history. These developments raise significant questions relating to constitutionalism and the electoral process in Zimbabwe. It was an admission that both constitutional and electoral reform were imperative and indeed overdue that a state-appointed Constitutional Commission (CC) was set up in 1999 after a civil society-driven one, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) had been founded earlier in 1998. In particular, the political developments since 2000 have pointedly highlighted the challenge to address the increasing deficit in democratic governance and stability in Zimbabwe. This paper attempts to assess critically developments relating to constitutionalism and the electoral system, the linkages between them, and their significance for governance and stability.

Rethinking Labour's 1964 Campaign

This article reassesses Labour's 1964 general election campaign. It questions the extent to which it marked a break with the past since, if it was underpinned by a revisionist ‘catch-all’ electoral strategy, so too had been the campaign of 1959. The article contends that, despite impressions to the contrary, the party under Harold Wilson in most respects merely ventured a bit further down the roads already established by Hugh Gaitskell. For in terms of ideology, policy and organisation Labour did not change much between 1959 and 1964. The main difference was the extent to which the party elite tried to promote what they believed was a more contemporary ‘image’—a process encouraged by Wilson but initiated by Gaitskell. If more successful in terms of seats Labour's 1964 campaign actually generated 11,000 fewer votes than in 1959. Power was won for many reasons; and Labour's electoral strategy was not necessarily the most important factor. Thus, it is argued, Labour's 1964 election campaign was not (as many believe) an example of how a party can reap electoral reward by pragmatically responding to social trends. Instead it more closely illustrates how difficult it is for any party to come to terms with the society in which it operates.

Political marketing in untraditional campaigns: the case of David Cameron's Conservative Party leadership victory

Abstract This study investigates the concept of political market orientation (PMO) in an untraditional setting, namely the 2005 contest for the leadership of the British Conservative Party. Based on a collective case‐study method, a content analysis of candidates' speeches and manifestos is provided. We operationalize four attitudinal constructs of a conceptual PMO model and adapt them to suit the novel campaign context. Our findings show further evidence for the existance of a ‘gravitational centre’ effect hypothesized in earlier studies. Furthermore, we qualify the concept of PMO through a long‐term focus and a context‐specific evaluation of the merits of alternative PMO profiles. Thus, the generic conceptual model of political market orientatation, which previously has only been used in the content of parties contesting a general election campaign, can be adapted to alternative campaign situations without a reduction in its explanatory power. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

NHS independence: can things only get better?

In the 2001 general election campaign, PM Tony Blair was publicly confronted by Sharron Storer, the partner of a cancer patient about conditions in the NHS. This incident was quite damaging for New Labour, coming as it did just hours after their manifesto launch.

Gender and Time of Voting Decision

Scholars and the media have long been concerned about gender gaps in the political sphere. This study examines gender differences in decision certainty across the 2000 general election campaign. Results suggest that during the 2000 general election campaign, women were more likely to say that they did not know for whom they intended to vote when asked about their voting intentions. Once their intentions were declared, they were no less likely than men to express certainty about their decisions. Consistent with prior studies, partisanship and party identification play substantive as well as statistically significant role in the certainty of a person's vote choice.

The Media in the 2006 Israeli Elections: Who's Manufacturing Consent? Framing the Spin-Doctors

The 2006 elections were different from earlier elections in more ways than one. It was an intriguing campaign, full of events and shifts, with a genuine agenda and new heroes. Throughout the campaign—which started with Amir Peretz’s victory over Shimon Peres in the Labour party leadership elections—voters watched the media covering the implosion of the Likud and its ensuing electoral debacle, the shrinking of Labour, Sharon’s descent from stage, the creation of Kadima. Although parties were born, split, shrivelled and withered away, the public did not notice major differences between the main parties’ platforms. In light of their ideological weakness the parties sought to brand themselves by concentrating on their prime ministerial candidate’s image and building a differentiated political agenda. Those tasks were outsourced, handed over to PR specialists. As a result, leadership grooming and platform composing were replaced by the use of vague catchphrases, well-designed sound bites, misleading examples, and the use and abuse of statistics under the spin-doctors’ guidance. The latter had to decide, among other things, whether to emphasize the issue of security, regarded traditionally as the primary focus of Israeli politics, and to discuss the Intifada, the disengagement plan and Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian elections—or to emphasize socioeconomic issues, reflecting the unprecedented number of citizens living below the poverty threshold, massive education, health and welfare budget cuts, state workers fired and salary payment delays, and pensioners condemned to hunger. Socioeconomic issues, denied centre-stage for years on the pretext of a national emergency, received greater attention and had more impact

Rethinking the funding of New Zealand’s election campaigns

The 2005 general election campaign was notable not only for its close-fought nature, but also for a range of deeply concerning, and in some cases undoubtedly unlawful, behaviour by various electoral participants. The Labour Party exceeded the statutory maximum on its ‘election expenses’ by at least $418,603, primarily due to the costs associated with producing and distributing its pledge card to voters. Furthermore, the use of parliamentary funding to pay for this campaign material prompted a post-election review by the auditor-general, which revealed widespread misuse of this source of funds by a range of parties and individual MPs (Auditor-General, 2006). The National Party’s negligence in failing to account for GST when booking election broadcast time meant that it was able to screen some $112,000 more in campaign advertising than the law allowed. Both National and Labour, and to a lesser degree some smaller parties, used anonymous donations and trusts to shield the identity of their major donors, allowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to flow into their campaign coffers from hidden sources.

‘Dislocated and Distracted’: Media, Parties and the Voters in the 2005 General Election Campaign

This study of the 2005 General Election campaign is based on a detailed analysis of all the national news releases issued by the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties from the day of the announcement of the poll up to the eve of polling day. It is also based on an analysis of the media and the parties' election campaigning strategies during the campaign. It argues that 2005 saw an acceleration in trends in political campaigning that has resulted in a reduced prominence for the national news media and an increased campaigning emphasis on other media and more direct forms of political marketing. The analysis of the parties' news releases highlights how there was not one election news agenda but, arguably, six. These agendas are the public's, the three main parties' and two media agendas - one shared by the broadsheets, broadcasters and middle-market papers and the other shared by the so-called 'Red Tops'. The analysis also reveals that, despite their protestations to the contrary, the parties' election agendas were dominated by attacks on their opponents rather than positive policy presentations, and that in policy tenus, they still believe that the economy is the central issue. Finally, it notes how the Liberal Democrats steered their news agendas closest to the media's, but the Conservatives' and Labour's agenda were closest to the public's. © 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.

Do Political Parties and the Press Influence the Public Agenda?

Mass media are considered to play an important role in influencing the perception of issues in political campaigns in terms of the way they are covered and the relative prominence they are given. Agenda setting has become the standard term for this process. The influence of political parties and public opinion on how the media and the press select issues and determine their relative prominence has received less attention and, so far, research conducted on this aspect of agenda setting has not yielded consistent results. Summaries of the agenda-setting literature and content analysis methods are presented. The empirical study examines the relationships between the national press, the public and the three mainstream political parties in the 2001 UK General Election Campaign, building on a study of press coverage of the 1997 UK General Election and subsequent work. The findings of a content analysis of all news articles that appeared in six national daily newspapers during the UK General Election 2001 campaign, with distinctions made between front page and inside coverage, editorial and straight news reporting, are presented. The relative incidence of issues is identified. A similar content analysis of press releases issued by the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties during the campaign period is carried out. Press releases are used by political parties to get messages into the press agenda and into the public domain. They are a useful source to trace the evolution of the political campaign agenda, as identified by the parties. The press releases are analysed using the same issue categories identified for the press. The results are compared and contrasted with data from two opinion polls conducted at the start and at the end of the campaign. The evidence is used to help establish the role that agenda setting played in the UK General Election Campaign 2001. The differences and relationships between the three agenda groups are shown. The results suggest that public opinion had an impact on those issues selected for priority by the political parties. Public opinion changed little throughout the campaign. There was no significant shift in how the public rated issues between the start and the end of the campaign. In this case the agenda-setting impact of the press on the public, in the short term, appears to have been limited, as was the impact of the parties and public opinion on press coverage. The extent to which these results are a consequence of the specific characteristics of this election is discussed.

Online campaign communication and the phenomenon of blogging

PurposeIn light of the phenomenon of blogging in the 2004 US presidential campaign, this article aims to examine blogging during the 2005 British general election campaign. The article seeks to establish how widespread blogging was, the extent of bloggers' partisanship, what issues blogs were concerned with, what the purpose of the messages posted by the bloggers were, and what if any impact blogs had beyond the immediate community of users.Design/methodology/approachThese questions were addressed through a content analysis of over 300 blogs and 1,300 posted messages, by additional searches of the Lexis‐Nexis newspaper archive, and via the use of internet poll data on blogging.FindingsThe research showed that blogging in the UK is in its infancy. There were few bloggers posting messages about the campaign and few people accessed blogs regularly. Most of the comments posted focused on campaign issues and were observational. While some of the bloggers exhibited an overt partisan identity, most did not. There was also some evidence of partisan networks, with blogs of a particular partisan/ideological position hyperlinking to others with a similar outlook. However, unlike the 2004 US presidential election campaign, blogs had no impact on the campaign news agenda.Research limitations/implicationsDespite extensive research it is difficult to ascertain whether the sample of blogs examined in the research represented the entirety of the election campaign blogosphere. Nevertheless, the findings provide important insights into the evolving online election communication environment in the UK.Originality/valueThe study is the first to examine systematically the blogging about the general election campaigns in the UK.

Same Campaign, Differing Agendas: Analysing News Media Coverage of the 2005 General Election

This analysis of the 2005 general election focuses on the way the formal campaign was reported, in their different ways, by national and local broadcasters and newspapers. Having assessed how much attention the various news media devoted to the election, Norris et al.'s tri-partite distinction between the so-called ‘stop watch’, ‘agenda’ and ‘directional’ balances is applied to explore the relative prominence and positive/negative attention given to competing actors and issues. The analysis also compares how the major respective broadcasters and newspapers covered the campaign from their national (UK wide, Scottish and Welsh) and local (East Midlands) perspectives. There is further discussion of how the rival sectors (i.e. ‘popular’, ‘mid market’ and ‘quality’ press, radio and television) reported the election in quite distinctive ways for their particular audiences. Various other themes, notably the ‘presidential’, ‘soundbite’, partisan and gendered nature of the coverage are considered. It is demonstrated how certain news media promoted the issues of ‘Iraq’, ‘Immigration and Asylum’ and ‘Impropriety’ onto the agenda at different stages during the campaign. By comparison other important policy areas were largely neglected. The conclusion discusses whether it is still possible to conceive of a singular ‘media agenda’ during a general election campaign.