US Presidential Campaigns and Their Impact
This annotated bibliography surveys the scholarly literature on the effects, strategies, and consequences of US presidential campaigns, including their impact on voter behavior, participation, policymaking, and campaign strategy.
Why It Matters
The publication begins with a motivating question: What are the major themes, findings, and debates in the scholarly literature on US presidential campaigns and their impact?
Its central contribution is to show that this annotated bibliography surveys the scholarly literature on the effects, strategies, and consequences of US presidential campaigns, including their impact on voter behavior, participation, policymaking, and campaign strategy.
It matters because the findings connect institutional choices to the way authority, public responsibility, and political behavior are experienced in practice.
Key Findings
- Early studies found minimal persuasive effects of campaigns on vote choice, but more recent research documents campaign effects on voter mobilization and turnout.
- Field experiments and voter file data show that campaign efforts, especially get-out-the-vote activities, can increase turnout.
- Campaigns influence policy outcomes by incentivizing presidents to favor electorally important states and constituencies.
- Presidential elections have consequences for down-ballot races (coattails), individual attitudes, and policymaking.
- Campaign strategies are shaped by the Electoral College, resource constraints, and available voter information.
Research Design
- Design
- Chapter
- Data
- American National Election Studies; Cooperative Congressional Election Study; National Annenberg Election Surveys; Dave Leip’s Atlas of US Presidential Elections; Federal Election Commission; Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org); Wesleyan Media Project; Wisconsin Advertising Project; The American Presidency Project
- Geography
- United States
- Methods
- Annotated bibliography summarizing published books and articles.; Synthesis of empirical studies, field experiments, and formal models as described in cited works.
Citation
Reeves, Andrew, David Miller, and Bryant Moy. 2018. "US Presidential Campaigns and Their Impact." In Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science, edited by L. Sandy Maisel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/OBO/9780199756223-0156.
- Venue
- Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science
- DOI
- 10.1093/OBO/9780199756223-0156