Drawing on scholarly research and media critiques, The Third Agenda in Presidential Debates examines the most recent U.S. presidential debates from the perspective of television viewers who watched the encounters first hand. Through a national program--DebateWatch--tens of thousands of viewers had an opportunity to provide feedback to the debate sponsors, the campaigns, and the media following the 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential debates. As a result, thousands of groups met to discuss what they liked and didn't like about a particular candidate, what they learned, and what they still needed to know about the issues presented before them. These focus groups, along with various surveys and emails, allowed viewers to lay out a concise "third agenda" for the debates: the public's, one in which comparisons could be drawn between their own interests and that of the media and the candidates themselves. This book breaks down the fundamental aspects that made DebateWatch such a powerful tool for citizens. From analyzing and interpreting the public's reaction to developing recommendations for further improvements, there have been many significant changes in debate practices since the program first burst on the scene during the 1992 presidential election. Besides clearly mapping out the important aspects the public looks for when watching a debate, the authors demonstrate how citizen participation challenges candidates and their issues. In addition, the authors offer predictions for future debates and how new generations will choose to participate. Along with 14 analytical chapters, this work contains four detailed appendices, several tables, and an index.

In this book, a distinguished group of presidential campaign staff, journalists, and political observers take us inside the 2016 race for the Republican and Democratic nominations and general election, guiding us through each candidate's campaign from the time each candidate announced his or her intention to seek the presidency through the primaries, conventions, and up to election day. Meeting under the auspices of the Harvard University's Institute of Politics, the candid discussion allows us to learn about the motivations of each candidate, strategies they deployed, and lessons they learned. In addition, representatives from the major SUPERPACS share their strategies and evaluate their impact in an election characterized by unprecedented campaign spending. Campaign for President: The Managers Look at 2016 is essential reading for anyone interested in the inner workings of national political campaigns.

Everything you need to know about Vote by Mail! Successful campaign manager and three-term mayor of Ashland, Oregon, Catherine Shaw presents the must-have handbook for navigating local campaigns. This clear and concise handbook gives political novices and veterans alike a detailed, soup-to-nuts plan for organizing, funding, publicizing, and winning local political campaigns. Finding the right message and targeting the right voters are clearly explained through specific examples, anecdotes, and illustrations. Shaw also provides in-depth information on assembling campaign teams and volunteers, canvassing, how to conduct a precinct analysis, and how to campaign on a shoestring budget. The Campaign Manager is an encouraging, lucid presentation of how to win elections at the local level.The sixth edition has been fully revised to include new and expanded coverage of contemporary campaign management-from digital ads and new social media tools to data-driven voter targeting tactics and vote by mail strategies.

Though many studies of contemporary campaigns focus on brief political advertisements and the growing impact of technology on contemporary campaigns, the definitive statements of most candidates are still made in public addresses. Friedenberg examines the first public address made by an American presidential candidate on his own behalf. The circumstances giving rise to William Henry Harrison's 1840 address, and the themes that he developed in that address are strikingly contemporary, serving as an appropriate prelude to the examinations of contemporary political speaking that follow. Those examinations focus on notable campaign speeches by John F. Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and George W. Bush. Each study examines a key event that foreshadowed the speech studied. Each study presents a rhetorical biography of the speaker including a discussion of the speechwriting team and preparation techniques utilized by the speaker. Each study presents a thorough study of the campaign context in which the speeches were presented. Each also presents a close reading and rhetorical analysis of the speech itself and observations on the impact of the speech. Cumulatively, Friedenberg's studies help to illustrate how, even in today's high-tech political environment of 30-second ads and candidate Web sites, public speeches continue to play a crucial role in political campaigning. Of particular interest to scholars and students involved with political communication and political American campaigning.

In order to understand the motivations for and implications of Hillary Clinton's historic run for the White House- and her subsequent defeat-the authors explore sexism and gender bias in U.S. political and social culture. While there is some indication that overt sexism toward women in politics is declining, whether this is true for women who run for the highest office in American politics remains relatively unknown. Hillary Clinton's historic run as the 2016 Democratic nominee, however, allows scholars and journalists to contextualize decades of scholarship on sex, gender, and the American presidency. In Sex and Gender in the 2016 Presidential Election, the authors, all experts on gender in politics, analyze the nature of gender in public opinion, media coverage, social media, and culture during the 2016 presidential election. They assess whether conventional expectations and theories hold up in today's sociopolitical climate. Moreover, they consider how Clinton's foray into relatively uncharted territory might redirect the political field-and its implications for women with political ambitions-going forward. Analyzes original data such as Twitter hashtags, exit polls, and other public opinion data Goes beyond women-in-politics research to consider gender as a barrier to political equality Describes the media's involvement in perpetuating gender stereotypes Considers rape culture as an important aspect of both the Trump campaign and the general election

This handbook provides a sweeping overview of U.S. campaign and election reform efforts, past and present, from the introduction of the secret ballot to touch-screen voting. Emphasizing the major electoral reforms since 2000, this second edition of Campaign and Election Reform investigates the development of the American electoral system from colonial times to the present. It chronicles efforts to expand suffrage, reform campaign financing, and prevent vote fraud, and traces the development of election technology from the paper ballot to the lever voting machine, from the punch-card ballot to the optical-scan and touch-screen systems. The book also explores alternative voting systems, such as preference voting and proportional representation, and compares the U.S. electoral process with the voting systems of selected European democracies. Campaign and Election Reform, Second Edition is essential reading for any citizen who wants to understand the U.S. electoral system, what's wrong with it, and how it might be fixed. Includes extensive quotations from reform advocates, along with excerpts from legislation and court cases related to changing campaign and election procedures Summaries of recent research on voter turnout provide a means of evaluating legislation intended to increase voter registration and turnout rates

The Supreme Court's intervention in the 2000 election will shape American law and democracy long after George W. Bush has left the White House. This vitally important book brings together a broad range of preeminent legal scholars who address the larger questions raised by the Supreme Court's actions. Did the Court's decision violate the rule of law? Did it inaugurate an era of super-politicized jurisprudence? How should Bush v. Gore change the terms of debate over the next round of Supreme Court appointments?

The contributors -- Bruce Ackerman, Jack Balkin, Guido Calabresi, Steven Calabresi, Owen Fiss, Charles Fried, Robert Post, Margaret Jane Radin, Jeffrey Rosen, Jed Rubenreid, Cass Sunstein, Laurence Tribe, and Mark Tushnet -- represent a broad political spectrum. Their reactions to the case are varied and surprising, filled with sparkling argument and spirited debate. This is a must-read book for thoughtful Americans everywhere.

Between 1900 and 1914, the British and American suffrage movements were characterized by interaction among suffragists, their organizations, and their publications on a much broader scale than has been generally recognized or acknowledged. This study isolates and examines the various connecting links ranging from personal relationships to the emphasis on a common cause. Women participated in one another's organizations and activities, including speaking tours and visits, and each group used the experience of the other to stimulate its own progress. In addition to the prominent figures of the day, Harrison includes information about lesser-known suffragists whose names and actions have been largely lost to history. The interaction between the British and American movements began in the 1870s when a network of suffrage friendships and relationships started to take shape, and cooperation escalated in the last two decades of the century. Connections expanded and peaked between 1900 and 1914, but, with the outbreak of war in August 1914, the extensive interaction came to an abrupt end. Harrison provides a history and comparison of the two movements to give the reader context and a background against which to study the international suffrage campaign. She assesses correspondence, diaries, journals, memoirs, pamphlets, articles, and coverage within the suffrage press itself.

"Manipulation of the American Voter" is a research-based examination of the theoretical and practical reasons for successful political advertising. It provides the means necessary to analyze political commercials, and by presenting the motives behind advertising strategies and tactics used in contemporary politics, the authors seek to free their readers from the inherent manipulation in political advertising. By analyzing political advertising as both a science and an art form, the authors unlock the mysteries of how millions of voters are manipulated each campaign season. This study, therefore, offers scholars and students of the electoral process the knowledge to see through the veil of political advertising and participate more fully in the political system.

Collecting original and high-quality analysis by top scholars from Japan, the United States, Australia, and Europe, this volume analyzes the results of the 2014 election, examining each of the major political parties, central policy issues, campaign practices, and considers how the results were used as a mandate for massive policy reform.

Nigeria's democratisation efforts since attaining political independence from Britain have been tumultuous and have spanned over three successive republics. A persistent bug decimating Nigeria's democracy and repeatedly leading to military coups has been brazen electoral violence perpetrated by the nation's political elite. Nigeria's 2019 Democratic Experience analyses and explains what went wrong in Nigeria's experiment with democracy. Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and the world's seventh most populous nation, also contributes 70% of West Africa's population. She is sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producer and has remained Africa's largest economy by GDP since 2014. The country has hundreds of diverse ethnic nationalities and languages grouped into 36 states (or federating units) and an independent federal capital territory. Though recognized as Africa's largest democracy, her democratisation process since the 1960s has remained tumultuous with massive electoral violence and political intolerance. This repeatedly compelled the military to intervene in the nation's political history in the years 1966, 1983 and 1985. It is these developments that provided the motivation for this volume to capture for posterity the conduct of the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria.

As Dan Nimmo notes in his introduction, Inside Political Campaigns "endeavors to trace the sources of professional campaign wizardry by encapsulating the theories and concepts that practitioners and scholars alike claim to guide and rationalize consultants' magical weaving of strategies, tactics, and techniques into a 'winning tapestry of political communication.'" This study presents the theoretical areas political communication consultants draw upon in making strategic and tactical decisions in political campaigns. And it provides an understanding of what motivates political consultants to choose a particular campaign strategy by explaining how various strategies work with the voting public. While the book is research-driven, its academic findings are tempered and expanded by the authors' personal political consulting experiences. The text will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners alike in political communication, advertising, public opinion, political science, political rhetoric, and campaigns and elections.

This first comparative study of the political communication processes in the United States and France brings together researchers from both countries to examine differences and similarities between the media's involvement in each nation's 1988 presidential election campaign. The book analyzes the construction of mediated political reality in the two countries, and concludes that French media do not concentrate more on policy issues than do American media. The authors discuss television news and newsmagazine coverage of the overall campaigns and their particular political debates, television commercials and broadcasts, and political posters. Also assessed are the interactions between party/candidate presentations of political reality and voter interpretations of that reality. The contributions are grouped into four sections: Comparing Politics in Two Cultures, which includes discussions of constructing a political communication project and the theoretical dimensions of the studies; Mediated Campaign Messages, which contains analyses of reality construction, political advertising, and political broadcasts; Media Coverage of the Campaigns; and Implications of Mediated Campaigning, which covers the effects of television broadcasts on voter perception and possibilities for improving the electoral process. This work is a useful resource for students, scholars, and politicians interested in political communication and comparative politics, as well as for journalists and members of the media.

Imagine a presidential election with four well-qualified and distinguished candidates and a serious debate over the future of the nation Sound impossible in this era of attack ads and strident partisanship? It happened nearly a century ago in 1912, when incumbent Republican William Howard Taft, former president Theodore Roosevelt running as the Progressive Party candidate, Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, and Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs all spoke to major concerns of the American people and changed the landscape of national politics in the bargain.

The presidential election of 1912 saw a third-party candidate finish second in both popular and electoral votes. The Socialist candidate received the highest percentage of the popular vote his party ever attained. In addition to year-round campaigning in the modern style, the 1912 contest featured a broader role for women, two exciting national conventions, and an assassination attempt on Roosevelt's life. The election defined the major parties for generations to come as the Taft-Roosevelt split pushed the Republicans to the right and the Democrats' agenda of reform set them on the road to the New Deal.

Lewis L. Gould, one of America's preeminent political historians, tells the story of this dramatic race and explains its enduring significance. Basing his narrative on the original letters and documents of the candidates themselves, he guides his readers down the campaign trail through the factional splits, exciting primaries, tumultuous conventions and the turbulent fall campaign to Wilson's landslide electoral vote victory in November.

It's all here--Gene Debs's challenge to capitalism, the progressive rivalry of Roosevelt and Robert La Follette, the debate between the New Freedom of Wilson and the New Nationalism of Roosevelt, and the resolve of Taft to defeat his one-time friend TR and keep the Republican Party in conservative hands. Gould combines lively anecdotes, the poetry and prose of the campaign, and insights into the clash of ideology and personality to craft a narrative that moves as fast as did the 1912 election itself.

Americans sensed in 1912 that they stood at a turning point in the nation's history. Four Hats in the Ring demonstrates why the people who lived and fought this significant election were more right than they could ever have known.

This classic study remains the outstanding work on 19th century party history and politics. It contains the discursive new introduction which the author wrote for the second edition. The book studies the major transformation of the nature of party organisation which occurred between Disraeli's first premiership of 1868 and his death in 1881. It is full of wonderful stories, describing and analysing the different types of constituencies, showing the growth of party organisation within them, contrasting the old provincial political world with the new industrial world of working-class electors. It remains one of the half dozen essential books on 19th century political life.

Political campaigns are highly complex and sophisticated communication events: communication of issues, images, social reality, and persons. They are essential exercises in the creation, re-creation, and transmission of significant symbols through human communication. As voters and others involved with the campaigns attempt to make sense of the political environment, political bits of communication inform voting choices, world views, and legislative desires.

The essays in this book examine the key elements in that process throughout the 1996 presidential campaign. Each focuses on a specific area of political campaign communication: the communication functions and activities across the campaign phases from nomination conventions through the debates, political advertising, the discussion and framing of issues, images of the candidates and their wives, the role and impact of network and local news, political cartoons, and the digital/on-line arena. This text will appeal to students and scholars alike as well as to concerned citizens involved with presidential politics and political campaigns.

Presidential debates are forums designed to present and select candidates for national office: Their purpose is to provide opportunities for candidates to win over undecided voters, to reinforce voters who have already made a decision about who to vote for, and to change the minds of those who are willing to reconsider their initial judgments concerning which candidate seems more fit to serve as president. Edward Hinck argues that debates are not primarily about presidential policy-making. Rather, they are opportunities to demonstrate a candidate's ability to lead by summarizing, in a specific test of presidential character, the larger conflict between the candidates. Hinck develops an in-depth rhetorical analysis of the presidential and vice presidential debates of 1960 to 1988. The analysis of each series of debates begins with an introduction that focuses discussion on the most important aspects of political image for each of the candidates, then develops a case for understanding the ways in which the debates revealed the rhetorical strengths and weaknesses of each candidate's performance. Hinck's neo-Aristotelian approach asserts that debates serve both deliberative and epideictic ends because they provide important information about the candidates that cannot be disclosed except in the dramatic confrontation of the debate, and because this dramatic confrontation enacts the democratic values of rational dialogue. Enacting The Presidency is recommended to scholars in communication and political science.

The Indonesian province of Timor-Leste made international news when it decided to break away from Indonesia in 1999. The decision sparked deadly rampages by pro-integrationist militias, violence that only abated when the UN sent a force to maintain peace and help ease the way to actual independence. This book details the political history of Timor-Leste, both preceding and following the declaration of independence, and it uses the events, consequences, and lessons of that period to help us understand what to expect for similar experiments in democracy building elsewhere in the world.

G. Scott Thomas offers a complete statistical and descriptive guide to the fifty American presidential elections that were held between 1789 and 1984. The book is divided into two major sections, the first dealing with the elections as such and the second with the participation of the candidates, parties, and states. The Pursuit of the White House incorporates more than 450 charts as well as concise summaries supplying comprehensive data on all aspects of presidential elections.

Direct democracy makes you richer. Research shows that the average citizen earns nearly a $1000 for every referendum held, and that a strong correlation exists between the frequency of referendums and a GDP per capita. Referendums can also improve the quality of democracy. So why don't we see more? Drawing on a three decades of research, Qvortrup presents a definitive statement on the benefits and history referendums, including examples of how this instrument of democracy has been both utilised and abused. The book outlines the history of referendums, explains when politicians have submitted issues to the voters, why these votes have been won or lost - and ultimately why it matters. Uniquely, the book also examines the role of social media in referendum campaigns and make suggestions for improving the process of direct democracy Written in a lucid style by one of the world's leading experts on referendums, Democracy on demand is a timely reminder of the importance of democracy in our politics, offering new insights into how direct democracy can both improve our lives and at the same time strengthen our societies. -- .

Franklin Roosevelt was not only the first US president to be covered by public opinion polls, but his ratings have consistently exceeded those of all subsequent sitting presidents, save for John F. Kennedy. Moreover, Roosevelt also stands out with a popular appeal that is unsurpassed by any of his successors serving at least a full term. The key to his approval, as this book shows, was wartime leadership, not economic performance. It began with policies preparing the nation for war in the two years before formal entry. To use FDR's own coinage, it was making the United States the "arsenal of democracy" in the battle against tyranny. That pursuit, not the New Deal, earned him high marks with the American people and re-election to an unprecedented third term. World War II-and its heavy human toll-did nothing to diminish FDR's popularity. As such, the FDR experience defies major paradigms of presidential politics. Yet, Roosevelt has been relatively ignored by scholars of public opinion. What can FDR's experience teach us and his successors about rousing broad public support, particularly during wartime? What light does his success shed on the failures of Presidents Truman, Johnson, and George W. Bush in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq? On key issues, mainly with foreign policy, FDR had to contend with an American public that opposed his plans at the outset. Helmut Norpoth argues that Roosevelt had an unparalleled ability for leadership, especially through the fabled "fireside chats" and his appreciation of opinion polls, that enabled him to move the public to embrace his policies. In this book, Norpoth takes an in-depth look at how FDR's leadership swayed public opinion, comparing his experience to his successors to draw broad conclusions about what makes for successful presidential politics.

This important new text brings together an outstanding group of international scholars to look at the current state of electoral politics around the world. Elements of the modern (or American) model of election campaigning have been adopted in many countries in recent years--including the use of mass media, the personalization of campaigns, use of public opinion polls, and a general professionalization of campaigns--and conditions would seem to favor the spread of that model. Contributors to this volume, from established democracies, new and restored democracies, and democracies facing destabilizing pressure, examine the extent to which electoral politics in their countries have been affected by the emergence of high-tech professional campaigns. Countries examined provide a cross-section of today's democracies, including the United States, Britain, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Poland, Spain, Israel, Italy, Argentina, and Venezuela. The work will be of interest to scholars and students alike in political communication, political parties and elections, and comparative politics.