What does it take to get elected president of the United States—"leader of the free world"? This book gives readers insight into the major issues and events surrounding American presidential elections across more than two centuries, from the earliest years of the Republic through the campaigns of the 21st century. The race for the presidency encapsulates the broader changes in American democratic culture. This book provides insight into the major issues and events surrounding American presidential elections across more than two centuries, from the earliest years of the Republic through the campaigns of the 21st century. Readers will be able to see and understand how presidential campaigns have evolved over time, and how and why the current state of campaigning for president came into being.

When Donald J. Trump announced his campaign for president in 2015, journalists, historians, and politicians alike attempted to compare his candidacy to that of Governor George C. Wallace. Like Trump, Wallace, who launched four presidential campaigns between 1964 and 1976, utilized rhetoric based in resentment, nationalism, and anger to sway and eventually captivate voters among America's white majority. Though separated by almost half a century, the campaigns of both Wallace and Trump broke new grounds for political partisanship and divisiveness. In Fear, Hate, and Victimhood: How George Wallace Wrote the Donald Trump Playbook, author Andrew E. Stoner conducts a deep analysis of the two candidates, their campaigns, and their speeches and activities, as well as their coverage by the media, through the lens of demagogic rhetoric. Though past work on Wallace argues conventional politics overcame the candidate, Stoner makes the case that Wallace may in fact be a prelude to the more successful Trump campaign. Stoner considers how ideas about "in-group" and "out-group" mentalities operate in politics, how anti-establishment views permeate much of the rhetoric in question, and how expressions of victimhood often paradoxically characterize the language of a leader praised for "telling it like it is." He also examines the role of political spectacle in each candidate's campaigns, exploring how media struggles to respond to-let alone document-demagogic rhetoric. Ultimately, the author suggests that the Trump presidency can be understood as an actualized version of the Wallace presidency that never was. Though vast differences exist, the demagogic positioning of both men provides a framework to dissect these times-and perhaps a valuable warning about what is possible in our highly digitized information society.

How does a peanut farmer become Governor of Georgia and President of the United States? Only in America could such a story be true. br>As a small child, Jimmy Carter set his sights on the United States Naval Academy. After graduation in 1946, he married Rosalynn Smith, and six years later, Carter followed the brilliant Captain Hyman G. Rickover into the uncharted waters of the Navy's nuclear submarine program. When Carter left the Navy, he returned with his young family to the fields of the family farm in Plains, Georgia. Not satisfied with the climate of injustice he witnessed in his daily life, Carter sought a political career and was elected state senator in 1962 and again in 1964. He successfully won the 1970 campaign for Governor of Georgia. In 1975, Carter announced he would run for President. Under the new Federal Election Laws only $21.8 million would be provided for the General Election Campaign. A trivial amount compared to future campaigns. An army of loyal supporters, friends, neighbours, and elected officials, known as the Peanut Brigade, joined the campaign. They traveled across the country, joining Jimmy and Rosalynn, knocking on doors, standing at factory gates, walking streets, asking voters to vote for Jimmy Carter for President. In 1976, Carter was elected the 39th President of the United States and served one term. Since leaving office, Carter has not stopped working on behalf of not just Americans, but for people worldwide. While the basics of his story are well known, they have never been told from the perspective of a ""soldier"" in the Peanut Brigade. Dorothy ""Dot"" Padgett, with an earthy, honest, and Southern voice, tells the story as if new to all of us. Humour and insight abound in this direct telling of how a peanut farmer from Georgia became President and leader of the United States. The secret is in his character, his morality, and in his being truly human.

This book presents the most systematic and consistent study to date of the 'consequences of context' for the process through which citizens' decide on their electoral behaviour. It derives contextual variation from cross-national and within-country comparisons. The contextual dimensions investigated pertain to the political, economic and social domains, and their impact is investigated on the factors that drive citizens' decision to participate in an election and on their subsequent decision which party to vote for. The book thus focuses not on whether people vote and for which party, but instead on more fundamental questions about contextual effects on the determinants of electoral participation and the vote. The analyses are based on an integrated database of national election studies conducted in European countries and utilises an innovative multi-level logistic regression methodology. This methodology, elaborated in detail early on and subsequently applied in each of the following chapters, identifies the moderating effect, or the "consequences", of altogether nine classes of different context conditions on individual level determinants of electoral participation and party choice.

From Pandemic to Insurrection: Voting in the 2020 US Presidential Election describes voting in the 2020 election, from the presidential nomination to new voting laws post-election. Election officials and voters navigated the challenging pandemic to hold the highest turnout election since 1900. President Donald Trump's refusal to acknowledge the pandemic's severity coupled with frequent vote fraud accusations affected how states provided safe voting, how voters cast ballots, how lawyers fought legal battles, and ultimately led to an unsuccessful insurrection.

This book provides an in-depth look into key political dynamics that obtain in a democracy without parties, offering a window into political undercurrents increasingly in evidence throughout the Latin American region, where political parties are withering. For the past three decades, Peru has showcased a political universe populated by amateur politicians and the dominance of personalism as the main party-voter linkage form. The study peruses the post-2000 evolution of some of the key Peruvian electoral vehicles and classifies the partisan universe as a party non-system. There are several elements endogenous to personalist electoral vehicles that perpetuate partylessness, contributing to the absence of party building. The book also examines electoral dynamics in partyless settings, centrally shaped by effective electoral supply, personal brands, contingency, and iterated rounds of strategic voting calculi. Given the scarcity of information electoral vehicles provide, as well as the enormously complex political environment Peruvian citizens inhabit, personal brands provide readymade informational shortcuts that simplify the political world. The concept of "negative legitimacy environments" is furnished to capture political settings comprised of supermajorities of floating voters, pervasive negative political identities, and a generic citizen preference for newcomers and political outsiders. Such environments, increasingly present throughout Latin America, produce several deleterious effects, including high political uncertainty, incumbency disadvantage, and political time compression. Peru's "democracy without parties" fails to deliver essential democratic functions including governability, responsiveness, horizontal and vertical accountability, or democratic representation, among others.

Political Action Committees (PACs) are a prominent and contentious feature of modern American election campaigns. As organizations that channel money toward political candidates and causes, their influence in recent decades has been widely noted and often decried. Yet, there has been no comprehensive history compiled of their origins, development, and impact over time. In The Rise of Political Action Committees, Emily J. Charnock addresses this gap, telling a story with much deeper roots than contemporary commentators might expect. Documenting the first wave of PAC formation from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, when major interest groups began creating them, she shows how PACs were envisaged from the outset as much more than a means of winning elections, but as tools for effecting ideological change in the two main parties. In doing so, Charnock not only locates the rise of PACs within the larger story of interest group electioneering - which went from something rare and controversial at the beginning of the 20th Century to ubiquitous today - but also within the narrative of political polarization. Throughout, she offers a full picture of PACs as far more than financial vehicles, showing how they were electoral innovators who pioneered strategies and tactics that came to pervade modern US campaigns and reshape American politics. A broad-ranging political history of an understudied American campaign phenomenon, this book contextualizes the power and purpose of PACs, while revealing their transformative role within the American party system - helping to foster the partisan polarization we see today.

Combining primary sources with expert commentary, this timely book probes critical moments in U.S. presidential elections in the last 20th- and early 21st-centuries, empowering readers to better understand and analyze the electoral process. Presidential Campaigns: Documents Decoded illuminates both the high stakes of a presidential campaign and the gaffes, controversies, and excesses that often influence the outcome. With a view to enabling readers to develop skills essential to political literacy, the book examines crisis points in modern presidential elections from the early 1950s through the late 2000s. Chronologically organized, the study focuses on key events pertinent to each election. It provides an original account of the event, such as a debate transcript or news report, as well as a discussion detailing how the issue emerged and why it was important. This unique and engaging approach enables students to experience the actual source material as voters might have. At the same time, it shows them how an expert views the material, facilitating a deeper understanding of the narratives every presidential campaign constructs around its candidates, its party, and its opponents. Primary sources such as speeches, advertisements, candidate platforms, press coverage, internal campaign documents, and more are presented side by side with accessibly written, expert commentary A contextualizing introductory essay explains the logic behind the selection of documents and pinpoints narratives that can be traced through the collection Novel stories about many behind-the-scenes events will engage reader interest Photos, quotes, artwork, slogans, commercial stills, and other illustrative campaign media help bring history alive

This easy-to-use handbook presents a fascinating and fresh take on American presidential elections and makes a wide range of statistics available to serious researchers and political fanatics alike. Counting the Votes: A New Way to Analyze America's Presidential Elections isn't your typical history book about presidential elections. Nor is it like most statistical analyses of election results. What this unusual book does offer is an array of innovative statistics-campaign score (CS), potential index (PI), return on potential (ROP), and equalized vote totals (EV*EQ), among others-that provides a provocative, intriguing, and fresh perspective on past presidential candidates and campaigns. Presenting information that has never been compiled and presented before, author G. Scott Thomas provides reams of statistics for all 57 presidential elections (1789 to the present) as well as essays inspired by those races that explore new interpretations of electoral trends. The book also includes lists of outstanding political performances in 179 statistical categories in addition to complete statistical records for 289 presidential candidates. The unique information and metrics introduced in this book will be invaluable to historians, political scientists, and students who are conducting research into voting trends and will serve as additional tools for their work. Includes a "Record Book of Presidential Politics" that spotlights the best and worst performances by presidential candidates highlighted in 179 statistical rankings, identifying which nominee was the youngest, came from the smallest state, and won by the smallest margin of popular votes Written by an accomplished journalist with more than three decades of experience and who has authored four books focused on national politics Provides an alphabetical directory of the career records of 289 presidential candidates between 1789 and 2012 presented in tabular form for easy reference

While significant attention in political science is devoted to national level elections, a comprehensive look at state level political dynamics in the United States is so far sorely missing, and state level electoral developments and shifts are treated as mere reflections of national-level dynamics and patterns. This book argues that this significantly impacts our ability to understand macro-level electoral shifts in the United States in general. The book analyzes gubernatorial, congressional, and presidential election results in the state of Alabama from 1945 through 2020. Comprehensive maps of county-level partisan shifts over time and comparisons between trends for different offices make it possible to isolate pivotal elections and compare state-level and national trends over time. When and where did Alabama's electorate break with the Democratic Party, and were these breaks uniform across the state? Which counties shifted the most over time, and was this shift gradual or characterized by change elections? Comprehensive electoral data, on the county- and precinct-level, make it possible to answer these questions and place state-level electoral behavior in its regional and national context. Detailed county level demographic and economic data is used to provide local context for electoral patterns, shifts, and continuities.

In January 2009, Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States. In the weeks and months following the election, as in those that preceded it, countless social observers from across the ideological spectrum commented upon the cultural, social and political significance of "the Obama phenomenon." In "At this Defining Moment," Enid Logan provides a nuanced analysis framed by innovative theoretical insights to explore how Barack Obama's presidential candidacy both reflected and shaped the dynamics of race in the contemporary United States. Using the 2008 election as a case study of U.S. race relations, and based on a wealth of empirical data that includes an analysis of over 1,500 newspaper articles, blog postings, and other forms of public speech collected over a 3 year period, Logan claims that while race played a central role in the 2008 election, it was in several respects different from the past. Logan ultimately concludes that while the selection of an individual African American man as president does not mean that racism is dead in the contemporary United States, we must also think creatively and expansively about what the election does mean for the nation and for the evolving contours of race in the 21st century.

Women are significantly underrepresented in politics in the Pacific Islands, given that only one in twenty Pacific parliamentarians are female, compared to one in five globally. A common, but controversial, method of increasing the number of women in politics is the use of gender quotas, or measures designed to ensure a minimum level of women's representation. In those cases where quotas have been effective, they have managed to change the face of power in previously male-dominated political spheres. How do political actors in the Pacific islands region make sense of the success (or failure) of parliamentary gender quota campaigns? To answer the question, Kerryn Baker explores the workings of four campaigns in the region. In Samoa, the campaign culminated in a "safety net" quota to guarantee a minimum level of representation, set at five female members of Parliament. In Papua New Guinea, between 2007 and 2012 there were successive campaigns for nominated and reserved seats in parliament, without success, although the constitution was amended in 2011 to allow for the possibility of reserved seats for women. In post-conflict Bougainville, women campaigned for reserved seats during the constitution-making process and eventually won three reserved seats in the House of Representatives, as well as one reserved ministerial position. Finally, in the French Pacific territories of New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna, Baker finds that there were campaigns both for and against the implementation of the so-called "parity laws." Baker argues that the meanings of success in quota campaigns, and related notions of gender and representation, are interpreted by actors through drawing on different traditions, and renegotiating and redefining them according to their goals, pressures, and dilemmas. Broadening the definition of success thus is a key to an understanding of realities of quota campaigns. Pacific Women in Politics is a pathbreaking work that offers an original contribution to gender relations within the Pacific and to contemporary Pacific politics.

When Scotland voted no to independence, it was hailed as a victory for the unique Better Together alliance, a triumph of cross-party collaboration, a coup for Westminster.But the unionist relief proved to be premature.Despite bitter referendum defeat, the Scottish National Party went on to conjure stunning general election success, almost eviscerating their rivals with an overwhelming surge of public support.In this compelling insider account, Joe Pike goes behind the battle lines to uncover the secrets of the much-maligned No campaign, dubbed 'Project Fear'. Drawing on exclusive interviews with over sixty sources at the heart of the action, he reveals the tears, the tantrums and the tactical failings that saw a double-digit poll lead reduced to a nail-biting finale, with victory eventually coming at a catastrophic cost to the Labour Party.Now, as the future of the union looks as uncertain as ever, this new, updated edition explores the striking parallels between the Scottish and EU referendums, and asks: where now for Scotland in the wake of a political landslide?

This timely Research Handbook offers a systematic and comprehensive examination of the election laws of democratic nations. Through a study of a range of different regimes of election law, it illuminates the disparate choices that societies have made concerning the benefits they wish their democratic institutions to provide, the means by which such benefits are to be delivered, and the underlying values, commitments, and conceptions of democratic self-rule that inform these choices. Comparative Election Law features a wide scope of coverage, from distribution of the franchise, to candidate qualifications, to campaign speech and finance, to election administration, and more. Contributions from a range of expert scholars in the field are brought together to tackle difficult problems surrounding the definition of the democratic demos, as well as to lay bare important disjunctions between democratic ideals and feasible democratic regimes in practice. Furthermore, a comparative approach is also taken to examine democratic regimes at a theoretical as well as a descriptive level. Featuring key research in a vitally important area, this Research Handbook will be crucial reading for academics and students in a range of fields including comparative law, legal theory, political science, political theory and democracy. It will also be useful to politicians and government officials engaged in election regulation, due to its excellent perspective on the range of regulatory options and how to evaluate them.

The 2006 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, the first in which both Fatah and Hamas fielded candidates, resulted in a resounding victory for Hamas. Winning 74 out of the 132 seats (compared to Fatah s 45), Hamas election strategy had proved effective against Fatah s ineffectual campaign and failure to properly consider public opinion. Erika Schwarze offers here an in-depth examination of these two separate campaigns, and how Fatah s lack of responsiveness to the popular mood in the run-up to elections following Arafat s death and beyond, led to its defeat in spite of its considerable experience of electioneering. She analyses the conduct of Palestinian leadership during this critical period, exploring the reasons for Fatah s inability to prioritise responsiveness to public opinion, and providing insights into the movement s electoral prospects in the future and its chances of survival and revival."

Journalist and "Salon" writer Rebecca Traister investigates the 2008 presidential election and its impact on American politics, women and cultural feminism. Examining the role of women in the campaign, from Clinton and Palin to Tina Fey and young voters, Traister confronts the tough questions of what it means to be a woman in today's America.
The 2008 campaign for the presidency reopened some of the most fraught American conversations--about gender, race and generational difference, about sexism on the left and feminism on the right--difficult discussions that had been left unfinished but that are crucial to further perfecting our union. Though the election didn't give us our first woman president or vice president, the exhilarating campaign was nonetheless transformative for American women and for the nation. In "Big Girls Don't Cry," her electrifying, incisive and highly entertaining first book, Traister tells a terrific story and makes sense of a moment in American history that changed the country's narrative in ways that no one anticipated.
Throughout the book, Traister weaves in her own experience as a thirtysomething feminist sorting through all the events and media coverage--vacillating between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and questioning her own view of feminism, the women's movement, race and the different generational perspectives of women working toward political parity. Electrifying, incisive and highly entertaining, "Big Girls Don't Cry "offers an enduring portrait of dramatic cultural and political shifts brought about by this most historic of American contests.