Debatable Humor represents the first systematic foray into understanding the use of humor by politicians on the campaign trail. Using content analysis of primary debates for both Republican and Democratic parties during the 2008 presidential election, Patrick A. Stewart considers not just how humor was used, who used it, and how successful these attempts at humor were, but he also gives readers insight regarding why humor and the laughter that results is an important part of politics. Not only can humor reveal a candidate s intelligence, values, personality, and his/her connection with the audience, it also reveals the underlying values of egalitarian political systems.

The Political Geography of Campaign Finance examines the distribution of political campaign contributions in the 2004, 2008, and 2012 preprimary election periods. Using aggregated individual level data, the authors determine if certain areas contribute more to presidential candidates in different stages of the campaign, and if these patterns are independent of wealth and partisanship. Unlike previous research, this book examines individual counties over multiple election cycles.