In the furious fallout from the revelation that the IRS flagged applications from conservative nonprofits for extra review because of their political activity, some points about the big picture — and big donors — have fallen through the cracks. Consider this our Top 6 list of need-to-know facts on social [...] Read more »
The Gamble: High Rollers
“High Rollers” is a free eBook preview chapter from John Sides and Lynn Vavreck’s groundbreaking Fall 2013 book, The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election. Picking up where the third chapter, “All In,” left off, “High Rollers” continues the dramatic story of the 2012 campaign into the [...] Read more »
Four reasons it’s hard to campaign your way to the presidency
The narrative after the 2012 campaign was that President Obama’s victory was due to his superior campaign — better messaging, better technology, better organizing, better everything. But this narrative had a circular logic to it: Obama won because of his superior campaign, and we know that his campaign was superior [...] Read more »
Inside The American Crossroads And Koch Post-Mortems
… In the wake of big Democratic victories in 2012, the outside groups that raised and spent so much on Republicans’ behalf have spent a considerable amount of time and effort analyzing their performance. Their goals are two-fold: Improve their strategies and tactics in order to win future races, and convince [...] Read more »
How Much Did the 2012 Air War and Ground Game Matter?
In this third and final post in our mini-symposium on campaign effects in the 2012 presidential election, I’ll report on some of what Lynn Vavreck and I have found in our work for The Gamble. Lynn and I were able to do something that, to our knowledge, has not been [...] Read more »
Center Will Act as Information Clearinghouse and Offer New Tools for Measuring Impact of Media
What is the difference? If your question is like that one, more practical than philosophical, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism may soon have an answer. With $3.25 million in initial financing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the John S. and James L. [...] Read more »
In Political Campaigns, Do You Get What You Pay For?
Mark Hanna, the Republican Party political boss, famously declared at the outset of the McKinley-Bryan campaign of 1896: “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can’t remember the second.” In the wake of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act and the [...] Read more »
You May Not Have Posted It, but Facebook Knows
… In late February, Facebook announced partnerships with four companies that collect lucrative behavioral data, from store loyalty card transactions and customer e-mail lists to divorce and Web browsing records. … Targeted advertising bears important implications for consumers. It could mean seeing advertisements based not just on what they “like” [...] Read more »
If Campaign Effects Are Minimal, Why Even Try?
Last week, I participated in a symposium at Iowa State University entitled “Social Science, Presidential Campaigns and Political Reporting.” Among those who examined last year’s presidential election, the consensus seemed to be that the actual influence of the things we call “the campaign”—including advertisements, candidate visits, volunteer activity, etc.—was very [...] Read more »
Overwhelming Hispanic Support for Obama Wasn’t Preordained in 2012
… Given the key role that Latinos had played in Obama’s 2008 win, this particular leg of his coalition looked pretty wobbly just a year and a half before Election Day. Little wonder that when pollsters, including Gallup, Peter Hart and Bill McInturff for NBC News and The Wall Street [...] Read more »