Turning Out the Base or Appealing to the Periphery? An Analysis of County-Level Candidate Appearances in the 2008 Presidential Campaign
In the 2008 presidential campaign, McCain-Palin targeted core Republican counties while Obama-Biden focused on counties with significant population growth, reflecting divergent base and peripheral campaign strategies.
Why It Matters
The publication begins with a motivating question: Did the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns in 2008 pursue a base strategy (targeting core supporters) or a peripheral strategy (targeting new or swing voters) in their county-level candidate appearances within swing states?
Its central contribution is to show that in the 2008 presidential campaign, McCain-Palin targeted core Republican counties while Obama-Biden focused on counties with significant population growth, reflecting divergent base and peripheral campaign strategies.
It matters because the findings connect institutional choices to the way authority, public responsibility, and political behavior are experienced in practice.
Key Findings
- McCain-Palin pursued a base strategy, targeting counties with strong prior Republican support and avoiding counties with population growth or electoral volatility.
- Obama-Biden pursued a peripheral strategy, targeting counties with significant population growth and not focusing on prior Democratic strongholds.
- There was little evidence that either ticket targeted swing counties; Republicans actively avoided electorally volatile counties.
- Both campaigns focused on populous counties, but within those, their strategies diverged by party.
Research Design
- Design
- Article
- Data
- County-level campaign appearance data from The Washington Post, The New York Times, and NEXIS searches.; County-level voting data from the 2008 presidential election, compiled by David Leip.; County-level socioeconomic and demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
- Geography
- United States, county-level analysis within swing and leaning states in the 2008 presidential election
- Time Period
- September 5, 2008 (end of Republican National Convention) to November 4, 2008 (Election Day)
- Unit of Analysis
- county
- Methods
- Quantitative analysis of county-level campaign appearance data for the McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden tickets during the 2008 general election.; Poisson regression and other statistical models to assess the relationship between candidate visits and county characteristics (e.g., prior vote, population growth, demographic variables).
Full Abstract
We examine county-level campaign appearances by the Republican and Democratic tickets during the 2008 general election. Our analysis reveals that the McCain-Palin ticket campaigned in a way that was quite different from the Obama-Biden ticket. McCain-Palin pursued a “base” strategy that was focused on counties where Bush-Cheney performed well in 2004. They also stayed away from counties that showed vote swings from 2000 to 2004 or population growth. On the other hand, the performance of the Kerry-Edwards ticket in 2004 was a very weak predictor of where Obama-Biden campaigned in 2008. They pursued a “peripheral” strategy that targeted counties that had experienced significant population growth. Their efforts to target peripheral, rather than base constituencies, have significant implications for our understanding of presidential campaign strategy.
Citation
American Politics Research 39 (3): 534-556.
- Venue
- American Politics Research
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 534–556
- DOI
- 10.1177/1532673X10385286