Campaigns and Elections

The presidential election of 2000 was one of the most memorable in a century, a race so close that it was decided by only 537 votes in Florida. Two months after the Supreme Court put an end to the Florida recounts, key strategists from the Gore and Bush campaigns gathered in Philadelphia to analyze their successes and failures. In an unusually frank discussion, they disclosed the intentions, the research, and the tactics behind their decision-making on matters ranging from message development to campaign advertising to debate strategy. Why did the Gore team not enlist President Clinton's help more extensively in the campaign? How did the Bush campaign undercut Gore's strategy on Social Security? Why was Gore unable to take credit for the strong economy? Was the press fair to the candidates? Did the mistaken calls made by the networks on election night affect the election's outcome? In Electing the President, 2000, campaign insiders offer their answers to these and many other questions. Both candidates' inner circles are well represented. Representatives of the Bush campaign include senior adviser Karl Rove and ad producers Mark McKinnon and Alex Castellanos. Representatives of the Gore campaign include advisers Bob Shrum and Carter Eskew and pollster Stanley Greenberg. With its wealth of behind-the-scenes information, Electing the President, 2000 will be an essential guide for future campaign and political strategists and will benefit anyone seeking to understand this most unusual presidential race.

The Internet is now a part of American democracy. A majority of Americans are online and many of them use the Internet to learn political information and to follow election campaigns. Candidates now invest heavily in Web and e-mail campaign communication tools in order to reach prospective voters, as well as to communicate with journalists, potential donors, and political activists. How are their efforts paying off? Are voters influenced by what they see on the Internet? Do they use online resources to learn about issues and candidates that mainstream media are not covering? Is the Internet empowering the shrinking electorate to return to the polls?L Campaigning Online answers these questions with a close-up look at the dynamics of the 2000 election on the Internet. Examining how candidates present themselves online, and how voters respond to their efforts - including measures of whether they learn from candidates' web sites and whether their opinions are affected by what they see, the authors present the first systematic depiction of the role of campaign web sites in American elections. L The authors paint a portrait of the voters' side and the candidates' side of campaigning on the Internet that has been unavailable so far. They report on a wealth of new data and evidence drawn from national and state-wide surveys, laboratory experiments, interviews with campaign staff, and analysis of web sites themselves.

Clean Elections - Clean Elections, also called Clean Money is a term given by its proponents to describe a system of public financing of political campaigns (a form of campaign finance reform), which is currently being advocated and implemented on the state level in the United States. Some form of Clean Elections legislation has been adopted, mostly through ballot initiatives, in Maine, Arizona, North Carolina, New Mexico, Vermont, and Massachusetts (though in the latter two it has been weakened or repealed).

Cook Political Report - The Cook Political Report is an independent, non-partisan newsletter that analyzes elections and campaigns for the US House of Representatives, the US Senate, Governor's offices and the American Presidency. Coverage also focuses on particuarly important initiatives and more general devlopments in American political culture.

Political party - A political party is an organization that seeks to attain political power within a government, usually by participating in electoral campaigns. Some parties are not permitted to or choose not to seek power through elections and so may turn to other forms of pressure, by lobbying, working on the public opinion (even clandestine), sometimes even violence such as terrorism.

Federal Election Campaign Act - The Federal Election Campaign Act is an American law passed in 1971 to increase disclosure of contributions for federal campaigns and amended in 1974 to place legal limits on the campaign contributions. The amendment also created the Federal Elections Commission (FECA) in 1975.

Campaigns and Elections

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