Not All Votes Are Created Equal
Presidential Campaign Strategy with and without the Electoral College
Benjamin Theodore April 18, 2011
Political Science 400: Thesis Advisor: Steve McGovern Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to Professor Steve McGovern, who supervised this entire process during the past year. Thanks to his guidance, constructive criticism, and motivation, this project turned out better than I could have hoped for. I would also like to thank Professor Anita Isaacs for teaching me how to think and write like a political scientist, and for first exposing me to academic consideration of how institutions affect democratic participation.
Further, I am deeply indebted to Jim Miller, who graciously and rapidly responded to my pleas for help, and explained how to navigate the labyrinthine structure of California’s campaign finance reports. His experience using these reports, the only journalist or scholar I could find who did so, was crucial in allowing me to finish this project. I am also grateful for the enthusiastic assistance of Reed Galen, Don Sipple, Paul Maslin, and Thad Kousser, who agreed to share their personal expertise in statewide campaigning, truly enhancing my project.
I would also like to thank New York State Assemblywoman Sandra Galef and her former Chief of Staff, Catherine Borgia. They gave me my first opportunity to become involved in politics, and it was during my internship with them that I began researching the National Popular Vote bill. That experience is what sparked my continued interest in the Electoral College, and it is the primary inspiration for this thesis.
I am particularly appreciative of my dad’s time and effort to help me navigate Microsoft Excel and hone the way I approached my data. Finally, I am truly grateful for the support of all my friends and family, who provided support and encouragement throughout this process, and have all put up with learning far more about the Electoral College than they ever wanted to know. Table of Contents I. Introduction…………………………………………………………………….p. 1 A state-based plan to end the Electoral College Brief history of previous attempts Progress of the National Popular Vote proposal Roadmap II. Literature Review: the Participatory Influence of the Electoral College…..p. 12 Electoral College Structural Perspective p. 13 Mass Electoral Response Model p. 15 Voting Power The Elite Response Model p. 19 Voter Rationality – Strategic Politician Hypothesis How the Electoral College affects campaign strategy p. 21 Campaign Effects – how campaign strategy affects voter behavior p. 26 Counter argument: Do campaigns actually activate anyone? Analysis of the National Popular Vote p. 32 III. Research Design: Modeling a New Era of Presidential Campaigning...…...p. 37 Evaluation of Previous Research p. 37 Hypothesis p. 40 Definition of Concepts p. 40 Measuring the Battleground Effect p. 44 Measuring a Hypothetical p. 46 Case Selection p. 47 IV. The Status Quo: Campaign Strategy with the Electoral College…….…..…p. 51 2004: Bush v. Kerry p. 52 2008: Obama v. McCain p. 55 Conclusions p. 56 V. Popular Vote Campaign Strategy in California….………………………….p. 59 Campaign Background p. 59 2006: Schwarzenegger v. Angelides 2010: Brown v. Whitman Conclusions about California Politics Data: Observations p. 71 The problem with Los Angeles Political characteristics of targeted markets Economic characteristics of targeted markets Ethnic/racial characteristics of targeted markets Who gets left out? Data: Discussion p. 85 VI. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...p. 92 VII. Appendix A: Media Markets by County……………………………………..p. 98 VIII. Appendix B: Basic Campaign Spending Data……………………………….p. 99 IX. Appendix C: Other Market Data…………………………………………….p. 100 X. Appendix D: Without Los Angeles…………………………………………...p. 101 XI. Appendix E: Procedure for Campaign Finance Data Analysis…………….p. 103 XII. Works Cited…………………………………………………………………....p. 104 Introduction
Vice-President Al Gore won the most votes for president in November of 2000, as a majority of American voters clearly indicated their preference for him to lead their country. Yet
Gore could only look on as his opponent took the oath of office the following January. If this scene unfolded in another region of the world, there would be violent protests and demonstrations, intervention by international watchdogs, and cries of authoritarian suppression and voter fraud by the disenfranchised majority. Yet there were few protests, and no claims that the Constitution had been undermined or the republic overthrown. This was not the first time such a subversion of a nation‟s democratic will had occurred in the United States, yet the
Electoral College – which allows the certification of a president whose opponent was preferred by a majority of citizens – has endured for over two hundred years in its present form1. But although this was “only” the fourth time in American history that the popular vote loser had taken the presidency, we have witnessed a fair share of near misses. A shift of fewer than 8,000 total votes spread over just four states would have cost President Kennedy an Electoral College majority in 1960, while President Carter would have lost to President Ford in 1976 with a shift of fewer than 10,000 total votes in two states. Even in 2004, when President Bush finally captured a sizeable three million vote margin in the popular vote, a shift of 20,000 votes across Iowa,
Nevada, and New Mexico would have sent the election to the House of Representatives. 2
Our political system collectively accepts a rulebook that threatens every four years to invalidate the will of a majority.
The stubborn endurance of this institution conflicts with decades of public opinion clearly in favor of reforming or removing the Electoral College entirely. As early as 1944, 65% of the
1 The winner of the most popular votes nationwide lost the Electoral College in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000. 2 Richie, Rob, “Ties Go to the Loser: A 2012 Electoral College Scenario.” Huffington Post, 25 January 2011.
Though some complaints about the supposed unfairness of the Electoral College did emerge in the bitter aftermath of the 2000 election, they were largely constrained by partisan divisions (as Republicans saw no reason to undermine their new president‟s mandate by critiquing the institution that put him in office) and quickly faded after the results were certified.
For Republican legislators to strike down the Electoral College so soon after its existence was
3 Koza, John R., Barry Fadem, Mark Grueskin, Michael S. Mandell, Robert Richie, and Joseph F. Zimmerman, Every Vote Equal: A State-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote. National Popular Vote Press, Second Edition.
A state-based plan to end the Electoral College
However, in this politicized context, a group of scholars, most notably a computer scientist at Stanford University, began development of a strategy to eliminate the influence of the
Electoral College while bypassing the process of passing a constitutional amendment.
5 Adler, Ben, “Would the National Popular Vote Advantage Red State Republicans?” The American Prospect, 9 January, 2009.
A pair of law professors, Akhil Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar, first proposed a
“National Presidential Vote” system that would rely on Article II of the Constitution to circumvent the requirement of thirty-eight states plus two-thirds of both the House and Senate to change the nature of the Electoral College. The Amar brothers noted, “Article II of the
Constitution says that „each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct‟ its allotted share of presidential electors” (emphasis added by original authors).6 This would enable a state legislature to direct its electoral votes to be awarded automatically to the winner of the national popular vote. Though one state acting alone in this manner would merely eliminate its own influence under the current vote-counting system, a majority of electoral votes pledged in the same way would effectively bypass the Electoral College. Around this same time,
Robert Bennett, a law professor at Northwestern University, suggested a similar concept.7
In 2006, Jon Koza, having originally gained fame for his invention of the scratch-off lottery ticket, and thus having gained experience working through state legislative processes to promote adoption of lotteries, teamed with Barry Fadem, a lawyer specializing in election law, and a bipartisan group of several prominent former congressmen.8 Together, they formed
National Popular Vote, Inc. Operating as a non-profit corporation, the group unveiled its
National Popular Vote proposal to be introduced and enacted state-by-state until the Electoral
College reflected the will of the nation as expressed by direct popular vote.9 Termed the
6 Amar, Akhil Reed and Vikram David Amar, “How to Achieve Direct National Election of the President Without Amending the Constitution.” FindLaw, 28 December, 2001.
4
“Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote,” the group‟s draft would serve as an interstate compact, assuring each joining state that its peers will honor the arrangement, as bound by the U.S. Constitution, and would not take effect “until it is enacted by states collectively possessing a majority of the electoral votes.”10 Indeed, the group specifically cites a decision by the Supreme Court asserting that “an interstate compact could be employed by the states for electoral purposes.”11 Thus, while the Electoral College would retain its existence and basic functionality, its tally would become a mere formality, with a majority of electoral votes being automatically awarded to the candidate who received more votes nationwide.
Brief History of Previous Attempts
This is not the first time that a coordinated effort has emerged to replace the Electoral
College, though constitutional amendments on the subject have rarely seen floor time.
Congressional Research Service reports that between 1889 and 2000, roughly 587 constitutional amendments dealing with the Electoral College were proposed, more than on any other subjects.12 However, votes were only taken in the House in 1950 and 1969, while the Senate only acted in 1826, 1934, 1950, 1956, 1970, and 1979. The amendment in question only passed a chamber on two occasions – the Senate in 1950 and the House in 1969.13 The debate in 1950 centered on a proposal to allocate electoral votes proportionally, advanced by Senator Henry
Cabot Lodge Jr. (R-MA) to mitigate the undue influence of so-called “pivotal states” (later termed swing states). Opposition in the House stemmed primarily from representatives of these
10 Koza et al., p. 246-247 11 Koza et al., p. 269; Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970). 12 Whitaker, L. Paige and Thomas H. Neale, “RL30804: The Electoral College: An Overview and Analysis of Reform Proposals.” Congressional Research Service, hosted by National Council for Science and the Environment. 16 January 2001.
The very close and uncertain outcomes of the 1960 and 1968 presidential campaigns spurred a new Electoral College reform movement, highlighted by several Senate hearings and the crucial endorsements by the American Bar Association and the United States Chamber of
Commerce.15 Interest in the subject increased, as Gallup conducted its first poll in twenty years on the direct vote idea, finding that 63 percent of respondents favored its enactment.16 Academic circles also began studying the Electoral College in earnest for the first time; Neal R. Peirce published an influential, “monumental” piece, The People‟s President, while John Banzhaf III published “One Man, 3.312 Votes: A Mathematical Analysis of the Electoral College” in 1968, pioneering the field of systematic analysis of the Electoral College “which heretofore had been marked by speculation and hunch.”17
President Nixon publicly lobbied for some form of electoral reform in the early days of his term, quite possibly driven by the memory of the 1968 outcome, in which George Wallace won 46 electoral votes as a third-party candidate.18 and within a few months of deliberation, both houses had considered versions of the direct vote constitutional amendment. On September
18, 1969, the House passed House Joint Resolution 681 by an overwhelming 338-70 margin, where the only notable source of opposition came from southern conservatives, likely for the
14 Bugh, p. 12 15 Longley, Lawrence D. and Alan G. Braun, The Politics of Electoral College Reform. Yale University Press, 1975, p. 133 16 Longley and Braun, p. 134 17 Longley and Braun, p. 136-137 18 Whitaker and Neale, CRS:
Electoral College reached its height here, likely because of the attention given to the issue by national political leaders and publications. A Gallup poll showed 81 percent in favor, state legislatures had largely favorable reactions to the potential for action on the subject, and the attention of the White House and party leaders in Congress was drawn to this seemingly popular issue.20 In fact, writing in the National Review, W.H. von Dreele penned the following ode to the prospects for eliminating the Electoral College:
“Electoral reform? Don‟t chuckle, chum. You‟re knocking „an idea whose time has come.‟ It passed the House though 70 demurred; It‟s possible the Senate has concurred. Now watch the pressure build upon each state Until three-quarters of them (38) Abolish the electors from the scene. Then, rid of that archaic in-between The people will be grateful for the chance To vote exactly as they do in France.”21
However, the amendment struggled for months to narrowly be approved by the Senate Judiciary
Committee, President Nixon failed to lobby his own party on behalf of the plan, and its floor manager, Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), fought desperately to squeeze its consideration into the frenzied final weeks of the legislative session in the fall of 1970.22 Ultimately, cloture votes were unsuccessful, blocked by southern Democrats and a split Republican conference, sending the proposal to defeat.23 In part, opposition was organized by proponents of alternative reforms, such as district or proportional plans, though the bulk of conservative opposition resulted from a
19 Longley and Braun p. 150 20 Longley and Braun, p. 154 21 Longley and Braun, p. 127. 22 Longley and Braun p. 163 23 Longley and Braun, p. 175 7 fear of federalization and the potential for expanding, disproportionate influence of minority groups in large cities. One senator, wary of urban minority control of the government through their influence on the national popular vote, termed this the “Federal-city complex.” These congressmen argued that this was already a problem in the Electoral College, and that a proportional or district plan would mitigate these concerns, while direct election of the president would only make it worse.24
As Josephson and Ross describe, this was the last serious effort to change the Electoral
College. In 1979, the Senate tried again after a particularly close presidential race in 1976, holding hearings on a direct election proposal at the behest of Senator Bayh, but it was ultimately defeated 51 to 48, failing to reach the required two-thirds.25 Since that time, numerous members of Congress have pushed various types of reforms through the amendment process, but none have advanced very far or garnered much attention or support from either party‟s leadership.
Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. has introduced a resolution on several occasions to abolish the
Electoral College, generally without much success.26 More recently, Senator Bill Nelson (D-
FL), an unlikely ally of the cause given how clearly his state benefits from the current arrangement, introduced a similar reform package in the Senate.27 However, the 1979 Senate vote was, in fact, the most recent floor action on any presidential election reform measure, reinforcing the view held by the National Popular Vote organization that the prospects for eliminating the institution via the traditional amendment process are dim.28
24 Bugh, p. 15. 25 Josephson and Ross, p. 150. 26 Jackson Jr., Jesse, “Abolish the Electoral College: House Joint Resolution 36.” Huffington Post, 22 September 2008.
Progress of the National Popular Vote proposal
Having chosen this state-based legislative strategy because they envisioned a higher chance of success, the National Popular Vote advocates have seen their proposal gain some ground. In October 2010, Washington, D.C. became the seventh jurisdiction to enact the compact, joining Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington.
Together, these member-states account for 74 electoral votes, over one quarter of what is necessary to put the NPV plan into effect.29 Additionally, the plan has made enormous progress in several other states, though has failed at critical junctures. After the New York State Senate overwhelmingly passed the NPV bill, it stalled in the Assembly, even though 70 of the 150 members had signed on as cosponsors.30 Furthermore, both houses of the California legislature approved the plan, before it was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2006. The Governor explained his opposition stemming from states‟ rights, indicating that the proposal could ultimately assign California‟s electoral votes to the candidate who the state‟s residents opposed, undermining the “unique pride and identity” of the state.31 With a new governor in California and a near miss by the New York State Assembly that had previously endorsed the plan on several occasions, supporters like billionaire philanthropist Tom Golisano remain optimistic of its eventual adoption.32 With just the addition of these two states, the electoral vote total of the member states would more than double, and the organization would be well on its way to its ultimate goal of an Electoral College majority.
29 National Popular Vote, Inc. DC Mayor Fenty Signs National Popular Vote Bill. Business Wire. 13 Oct. 2010. Web. 15 Feb. 2011.
Of course, the arguments in favor of the National Popular Vote plan tout its merits as an easy way to eliminate the purportedly undemocratic influence of the Electoral College. But all of these scholars and activists who are promoting the initiative assume that a direct popular vote system would indeed be favorable to the status quo. This thesis seeks to address this question, by considering the influence of the Electoral College on our presidential election system, and how we could predict the effects of changing that system. By examining presidential campaign strategy under the status quo, we can actually measure the validity of the arguments made for and against this institution during congressional debate. The Electoral College arrangement benefits a few states that meet specific criteria of size and competitiveness, and disadvantages the rest, which exert little influence over the selection of the president. Voters in these special states are courted and encouraged to get involved, while the rest are left on the sidelines.
President Obama‟s 2012 reelection campaign began by asking his supporters “Are you in?”33
The more accurate question that his campaign strategists actually care about is “Are you in
Florida, Ohio, or Pennsylvania?” As we will discuss, campaigns as well as the electoral structure itself can have a profound influence on civic engagement, particularly the fundamental act of voting Given how narrow the battlefield has become (this will be illustrated later on) it is hard to imagine an alternative structure disenfranchising more voters. This alone lends gravity to our discussion, for however restrictive and undemocratic the Electoral College might be, all that is proven about a national popular vote election is our ability to speculate about its effects.
Roadmap
From here, I will review the prevailing academic debate surrounding the Electoral
College and its effect on candidate behavior, as well as the effects of that behavior on voter
33 "Get Involved." Obama for America | Barackobama.com. Obama for America, Apr. 2011. Web. 7 Apr. 2011.
10 turnout. I will then lay out the structure of my argument, and explain what I hope to demonstrate with my analysis. This section will explain how the rest of my study unfolded, and what sources
I utilized to examine this hypothetical scenario of a presidential election without the Electoral
College. The next section will examine in greater detail the empirical effects of the Electoral
College by examining candidate spending state-by-state over the past two presidential elections.
I will draw on spending data as well as turnout information that distinguishes between battleground and spectator states all the more precisely.
After having clearly established that the Electoral College significantly narrows the national campaign to a small handful of states, I will devote the bulk of this project to analyzing popular vote campaign strategy using my case study that will be explained later. Finally, I will draw on these observations from past experiences to propose some significant implications for what a national popular vote election might look like. This project seeks to go beyond the theoretical debate surrounding the merits of how the Electoral College or NPV might count votes unequally, and instead proposes that a change in this institution would have a profound and noteworthy impact on where candidates choose to focus their time during the height of a presidential campaign.
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Literature Review: the Participatory Influence of the Electoral College
The Electoral College has inspired heated rhetoric on both sides of the debate surrounding its potential elimination. Defenders cite federalist principles while opponents point to the sheer number of states that receive no attention during the height of presidential campaign seasons. However, despite the extent of the debate surrounding this institution, very little is really known about how the Electoral College affects participation, and much less is known about how a direct vote system would affect these same voters. Much of this can be attributed to the simple fact that in its two hundred-plus years of existence, the republic has had no opportunity to experiment with alternative structures, so there is no actual case study for academic comparison. However, scholars have taken a variety of approaches to determining how the Electoral College operates on the American citizenry, and how that might compare to an alternative arrangement (generally a system based on direct popular vote).
The first necessary step is reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the Electoral
College structure. Scholars have devoted a great deal of energy to discussing the fairness of how the Electoral College weighs voter preferences, and the manner in which it privileges some votes over others. However, we will then move to a more central question, asking how the institution actually affects voter turnout. There are two primary answers to this question – the mass electoral response model and the elite response model. In addressing the former, attention will also be paid to the concept of voting power. Scholars who claim that voters are aware of how the
Electoral College privileges their votes must also contend with measuring the realities of how each vote is weighed under that system. In addressing the latter model, the literature is broken into two parts – how campaign strategy is formulated under our current system, and how presidential campaigns affect voter turnout. Both of these models rely on our understanding of
12 the strengths and weaknesses of the Electoral College structure itself, as it is the understanding of this structure by both voters and candidates that alter voter behavior.
Electoral College Structural Perspective
To understand the controversy surrounding the National Popular Vote plan is to understand the long academic and political debate over the democratic influence of the Electoral
College. Scholars and politicians have debated the merits of this institution for centuries, but the modern discussion has been primarily sparked during the past fifty years. Critics of the status quo have been more vocal in their academic opposition to it. Driving this distrust of the
Electoral College is its potential to elect the “wrong man” – the loser of the popular vote. Neal
Peirce and Lawrence Longley note that in the nine elections (through 1976) in which the margin of victory was less than three percentage points, the popular-vote loser was victorious a full third of the time.34 George C. Edwards explains,
It is difficult to find a contemporary theorist who argues that some people‟s votes should count more than other people‟s votes….If members of Congress were to pass a law that established a system that counted votes in certain states more than the votes of citizens of other states, there can be little doubt that those members supporting such a law would have brief legislative careers.35
Though it has not happened very often, history dramatizes the distinct possibility of the popular vote loser becoming president. For example, in 1916 Woodrow Wilson would have lost reelection with a 2,000 vote shift in California despite a 500,000 vote national advantage.36 John Heyrman further posits, “If we are to hold elections that tally the votes of all citizens, the burden of proof would seem to be on those who would hold them
34 Peirce, Neal R and Lawrence D. Longley., The People‟s President: the Electoral College in American History and the Direct Vote Alternative. Yale University Press, New Haven: 1981, p. 116. 35 Edwards III, George C., Why the Electoral College is Bad for America. Yale University Press, 2004, p. 32-33. 36 Patterson, Thomas E. The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty. New York: Vintage, 2003. Haverford College Library. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Supporters of the Electoral College often point to some of these as beneficial, as the two-vote addition to each state magnifies the influence of small states. Because states, though heterogeneous, are still united by common concerns (such as the allocation and management of local resources), they argue that the best quality of an electoral structure as requiring successful candidates to pull support from many different states, rather than merely bolstering turnout and support in densely populated, one-sided states.39
The Electoral College provides this incentive, Judith Best argues, because candidates have no motivation to aim for more than 51% of the vote in any state, due to the winner- take-all rule. This being the case, candidates would be expected to expend their resources and energies appealing to voters in other states, casting a wider net and forging a coalition across many states, rather than just a handful of large states.40 Moreover, she disputes Peirce and Longley‟s conception of the “wrong man,” instead insisting that the
“right winner” is not a matter of arithmetic, but a matter of broad, group support that enables a governing mandate.41
37 Heyrman, John, “The Electoral College: A Critical Analysis.” Delivered at 2003 annual meeting of Kentucky Political Science Association. Greenup, KY.
Edwards disputes this supposed benefit empirically by disagreeing that small states have common interests to protect, and philosophically by insisting that the president was envisioned by America‟s founders to govern on behalf of the people, not the states.42 He and his researchers also analyze large compilations of speeches by the major presidential nominees in both 1996 and 2000, and determine that it is very uncommon for candidates to actually focus their remarks on local issues, suggesting that the Electoral College does not actually promote an interest in state-based, parochial interests in favor of broad, national concerns.43
These observations indicate that the design of our national vote-counting scheme is far from incidental to the operations of presidential elections. Civic influence and even electoral outcomes are dependent on this structure. These studies devote their attention to the structural biases of the Electoral College, but do not look closely enough at how the institution actually interacts with its two primary actors: voters and candidates. Given that this study‟s primary interest – turnout – is ultimately a behavior exclusive to voters, citizen behavior in presidential election must be of deep concern.
Mass Electoral Response Model
By looking at the impact of political institutions on voter turnout, the implicit assumption is that individuals choose to vote based on some sort of rational calculation. This is especially true of the Electoral College, which has no direct impact on voters, unlike other institutional features like registration and ballot access laws. Thus, those scholars that subscribe to the Mass
Electoral Response model, as Cox and Munger term it, suggest that voters are aware of their own influence on electoral outcomes, and weigh participatory decisions on their own voting power.
42 Edwards, p. 94-95. 43 Edwards, p. 101-103. 15
Considering voters to be rational agents, some scholars argue that voters in non-swing states realize that their vote will not make the slightest difference, creating a large disincentive to vote because the potential benefits of such participation are outweighed by the costs of informing oneself about the candidates, traveling to the polls, and casting a ballot. Meanwhile, voters in competitive states have a higher likelihood of influencing the outcome with their vote, making it more likely that the benefits will outweigh the costs of voting.
These arguments are dependent upon the view that voters rationally calculate their chances of influencing the outcome with their ballot,44 and several authors have devoted their energies to measuring citizen voting power state-by-state within the Electoral College (as cataloged above). James Kau and Paul Rubin argue that the probability of casting a tie-breaking vote has a direct relationship with the likelihood of participation, and do note their prediction that this probability would be higher with direct voting than the Electoral College, leading to higher turnout under a direct vote system.45 They advance a statistical model demonstrating that theoretical voting power does actually influence voter decisions, in their view validating the rational voter model.46 Unfortunately, this model suffers from an over-simplification of voting power, as they assume that the probability of changing the outcome necessarily decreases with state size, though election observers realize that state size is not necessarily correlated with the closeness of results.47 One pair of critics, Ron Shachar and Barry Nalebuff, identify past analyses of “pivotal-voter theory” as “incomplete at best,” arguing that scholars rely on ex post
44 Cebula, Richard J. and Dennis R. Murphy, “The Electoral College and Voter Participation Rates: An Exploratory Note.” Public Choice, Vol. 35, No. 2, 1980.
Voting Power
Scholarship has also been devoted to careful calculation of the voting power of various demographic groups. Several studies have suggested that different geographic subgroups have disproportionate sway in presidential elections – some have focused on urban and suburban residents, while others propose that coastal states carry the most weight.49 Edwards calculated the ratio of electoral votes to population state by state, finding that in 2003 a Wyoming voter would have four times as much influence in assigning an electoral vote as a California voter.
However, because a smaller voting electorate increases the influence of each individual voter, he notes that voters in low-turnout states (like Hawaii) have far more personal influence than those in high-turnout states (like Minnesota).50 In other words, between states of similar population sizes, the state with lower voter turnout will lend each voter a higher share of influence over the state‟s outcome. Of course, this assumes that turnout does not vary directly with uncertainty of the outcome, which it has been shown to. A 1978 study attempted to create a stochastic model of voter influence, and argued that presidential contests are generally decided by the votes in large and heterogeneous states.51 Two authors later undertook a similar study, looking at state voting power under both an Electoral College and direct popular vote scenario, and argue that they correct for flaws in previous studies of state turnout differences, as these “have been almost universally ignored by scholars….It is generally assumed either that all eligible residents vote or
48 Shachar, Ron and Barry Nalebuff, “Follow the Leader: Theory and Evidence on Political Participation.” The American Economic Review, Vol. 89, No. 3 (Jun., 1999) < http://www.jstor.org/stable/117031> p. 526. 49 Sayre, Wallace S. and Judith H. Parris, Voting for President: The Electoral College and the American Political System. Brookings Institution, 1970, p. 45; Peirce and Longley, p. 127. 50 Edwards, p. 39-40. 51 Merrill, Samuel, “Citizen Voting Power Under the Electoral College: A Stochastic Model Based on State Voting Patterns.” SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Marc., 1978).
College and direct elections based on such assumptions are thus seriously flawed.”52 Indeed, these scholars concluded that a state‟s importance under the direct election system would be dependent on indices of voter indecisiveness and instability in voting patterns rather than size.53
Another study posits that the Electoral College depresses turnout by restricting voting power to state jurisdictions, which provides strong disincentives to vote for citizens in noncompetitive states.54 Though this is a relatively common finding, Cebula and Murphy in particular argue that voters actually react to the level of competitiveness in their state. They argue that residency in a safe state is an active disincentive to turnout because the Electoral College reduces the expected benefit of voting (the benefit of voting being generally understood as having some chance to affect the outcome).
However, several studies dispute the notion that the election‟s closeness really matters to individual participation decisions, as even in an unusually close race, there are extremely low odds that one‟s vote will make a difference. Consistent evidence of higher participation in presidential than local elections, where the voting pool is smaller, further undermines this claim.55 Of course, these individual voting decisions could still be rational, despite not being based on a mathematical, political science consideration of civic influence. Some scholars accept the premise that voters respond rationally to the information and messages they are presented about the election, the candidates, and their own votes‟ importance. However, though some suggest that voters may merely overestimate their potential decisiveness, others hesitate to predict that a significant number of voters consistently “misperceive their chances” of being
52 Smith, Eric R. A. N. and Peverill Squire, “Direct Election of the President and the Power of the States.” The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 40, No. 1: 1987.
The Elite Response Model
Instead, many scholars insist that voters are not all that affected by the electoral structure.
Part of the basis for this perspective seems intuitive – how many people think about the Electoral
College when deciding whether to drive to the polls on Election Day? Instead, it is the second group of significant actors in elections – politicians – that is motivated by the institutional structure. Candidates desire to win, and must plot their optimal strategies to achieve what the
Electoral College defines as victory.
Voter Rationality – Strategic Politician Hypothesis
John Aldrich, in a definitive article on rational choice theory, suggests that the view of voters as rational is fundamentally valid, but that individual turnout decisions are not explained by simple cost-benefit analyses by the voter, because turnout is usually “a low-cost, low-benefit action” – characterized as a “marginal decision.” Thus, small changes in the costs, or perceived benefits, of voting can change turnout decisions dramatically. There are several implications of this argument, including the fact that this makes the riddle of determining why some people vote while others stay home impossible to solve completely, as for many people it is a close call.
Aldrich does note that “citizens may not care whether the election is close,” a critique of the view that voting power actually affects participation.57 But this only confuses us in light of observed turnout in presidential elections that maps fairly accurately to the closeness of the
56 Cox, Gary W. and Michael C. Munger, “Closeness, Expenditures, and Turnout in the 1982 U.S. House Elections.” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Mar., 1989).
Munger were among the first to propose this two-step hypothesis regarding turnout, in their influential study of U.S. House elections, proposing that competitiveness stimulates campaign expenditure, and that turnout is a function of this spending.60 Focusing on the statistical relationship between “margin” and turnout, but denying that there is a potential pathway for influence of institutional structure (through competitiveness) on voting decisions, they claim to show, significantly, that closeness elicits an elite-level response, not a mass-level electoral response.61 However, even controlling for campaign expenditures, they do find a correlation between closeness of House races and turnout, suggesting that citizens may indeed respond somewhat to an environment of uncertainty regarding the outcome.62
Other authors propose that, due to liberalization of registration laws and other structural changes that have substantially decreased the costs of voting, the stagnation of electoral turnout may be dependent on voters not perceiving substantial benefits to their participation and not being mobilized sufficiently.63 Similar to Aldrich, they argue that voter turnout increases where candidates devote more of their resources to targeting swing voters, while other voters lack the mobilization efforts of campaigns and thus have a lower propensity to vote. Still, this provides one answer to the puzzle of how turnout is correlated with the closeness of the election despite the competitiveness having no significant relation to individual turnout decisions.
58 Kau and Rubin, p. 104 59 Aldrich, p. 268 60 Cox and Munger, p. 219. 61 Cox and Munger, p. 219 62 Cox and Munger, p. 220 63 Stein, Robert M., Paul Johnson, Daron Shaw, and Robert Weissberg. "Citizen Participation and Electoral College Reform." Choosing a President: The Electoral College and Beyond. Ed. Paul D. Schumaker and Burdett A. Loomis. New York: Chatham House, 2002, p. 128. 20
Many scholars of the Electoral College do not see direct voter interaction with the
Electoral College as the sole mechanism by which voting decisions are impacted. Though perceptions of importance, expediency, and influence drive the decision to participate or not, these perceptions are shaped by an intermediate variable. It is not voters whose decisions are primarily affected by their institutional structure, but the presidential campaigns whose awareness of the Electoral College‟s prescribed path to victory leads them to target their resources in the way that most efficiently brings them towards 270 electoral votes. This is the crucial significance of the institution. Victory in presidential elections is decided exclusively by the Electoral College, which means that all campaign activities by presidential candidates will be designed accounting for the biases and incentives of this vote-counting institution.
How the Electoral College affects campaign strategy
Substantial literature exists demonstrating that the Electoral College exerts a large influence on how campaign strategists choose to allocate their limited resources. The first influential study of this subject, published in 1974, proposed a linear relationship between state size and campaign attention, as more populous states offered a larger prize of electoral votes
(under a winner-take-all system) and thus would be more competitive. Assuming that the two candidates will match each other‟s expenditures state by state, given that a state is only competitive if both campaigns agree that it is, Brams and Davis argue that, if campaigns were to act perfectly rationally and seek to optimize their chances, they would allocate their resources in a pattern increasing with voting population size in proportion to the 3/2‟s power of the state‟s electoral votes.64 Later scholars would criticize this model as extremely simplistic, and empirical evidence of candidates ignoring the three biggest states (California, Texas, and New York)
64 Brams, Steven J. and Morton D. Davis, “The 3/2‟s Rule in Presidential Campaigning.” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 68, No. 1 (March, 1974).
After analyzing theories of states‟ respective Electoral College weightings, Bernard
Grofman and Scott Feld dispute the simple model based on electoral vote share, because in the real world, candidates have substantial knowledge of each state‟s propensity to vote Republican or Democratic (based on prior experience and a proliferation of pollsters).66 But they do find that campaign investment will be proportional to the collective voter power in each state to change the Electoral College outcome, complicating the traditional view with the view that states with the most uncertain outcomes will be most likely to be visited by candidates. Their model explains up to 69% of the variation of campaign attention, presenting a compelling confirmation of the casual intuition that these candidates will focus on “battlegrounds.”67 Nager and Leighley agree that though competitiveness is the most important factor in deciding which states will receive campaign resources, pivotal states – or those that have a higher likelihood of swinging the election‟s result – will command a larger share of the attention.68 Shachar and Nalebuff, mentioned earlier, find that political parties‟ efforts are a “positive function of predicted closeness and a negative function of the voting population size.”69 Thus, they like Aldrich believe in the ability of elite political actors to encourage turnout, and it is their actions that are a function of perceived closeness.
65 Pearson, Christopher, Rob Richie, Adam Johnson, Jeff Rezmovic, Presidential Election Inequality: The Electoral College in the 21st Century. FairVote: 2008.
Moving beyond the theory of campaign strategy to empirical observation, Daron R.
Shaw has published the most influential studies of actual Electoral College strategies from 1988 through 2004. Of course, all of the aforementioned models suffer from the necessary unpredictability of campaigns, because a candidate‟s strategy is dependent on the strategy of his opponent, whose decisions and perceptions regarding competitiveness in each state will undoubtedly affect the strategic situation.70 This doesn‟t even take into consideration the further possibility of strategic “head-fakes” (or “flashing some armor” as James Carville called it) – the public appropriation of resources to a presumably less competitive state as a gambit designed to force the opposition into wasting their limited resources in a non-battleground due to fear of information inequality regarding closeness.71 This uncertainty will always make the prediction of campaign behavior imprecise, but Shaw thankfully combines access to precise data regarding candidate appearances and television advertising with primary source explanations of the motivating strategies of each campaign – to judge how these strategies were formed and affected resource allocation, rather than being forced to reconstruct strategies based on those spending decisions.72
Most importantly, in all of his cases, Shaw notes a clear symmetry between candidates‟ characterizations of states into five categories: Base Republican, Lean Republican, Battleground,
Lean Democratic, and Base Democratic. He does present a clear model of how campaigns grouped states into these categories, based on a consideration of electoral vote share, advertising costs, and competitiveness, though it is worth noting that campaigns can only target a certain
70 Shaw, Daron R., “The Methods behind the Madness: Presidential Electoral College Strategies: 1988-1996.” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 61: 1999. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/2647547>, p. 895. 71 Smith, Ben, “Obama‟s Aim: 14 Bush States and Local Races.” Politico, 25 June, 2008.
270, details his experiences as an Electoral College strategist in both the 2000 and 2004 elections, and his first-hand account of creating a “target list” is very illuminating. Even after the process of dividing states into the five categories, and then choosing how aggressively to target the “lean” categories, Shaw still had to determine how to allocate amongst the battlegrounds. He cites several factors that influenced their decision, including past voting history, recent poll numbers, organizational development and endorsements, the existence of other competitive races whose efforts could be piggybacked (thereby limiting the necessary expenditures by the presidential campaign itself), tailoring of local issues to the campaign narrative, and (to a lesser degree) whether one of the major candidates came from the state.74 Though Shaw insists that side constraints or incentives may come into play, especially for front-runners who may seek to either gain an electoral mandate or impact congressional races in otherwise uncontested states, he concludes that television advertising was the most predictable campaign tactic, and that it was clearly correlated to the competitiveness of past elections in the state.
Shaw differs from many of his peers on the topic of how campaigns actually target their resources. Once the list of battlegrounds is defined, he argues that the focus shifts to media markets, which is the level at which most political communication takes place. Obviously the expensive demands of television advertising (by far the most costly campaign activity) play a role, but Shaw also notes that campaign visits are often designed to win favorable local media coverage.75 This complicates a breakdown of resource allocations purely in terms of states,
73 Shaw 1999, p. 904. 74 Shaw, Daron R., The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
It can be gleaned from all of these studies that campaigns, as perceived by mainstream political observers and academics, are “rational actors attempting to optimize the probability that their activities will produce an Electoral College victory.”76 However, several authors argue, a bit counter intuitively, that campaigns will often pursue goals that may not immediately promote, or even distract from, victory. One account from the 1988 Bush campaign illustrates how even the immediate motivations of strategic decisions might vary throughout the campaign – later in the fall as Bush began to seem like the likely winner of 270 electoral votes, his advisors were split on how to proceed. Some argued for concentrating resources in the states that would guarantee a bare majority, while others wanted to target wavering states in order to increase the size of the winning coalition (and presumably expand the candidate‟s mandate for action once sworn in).77 Through a comprehensive study of the 1976 Carter campaign resource allocations,
Larry Bartels notes that while campaign appearance were allocated in accordance with strategic rationality, state-level organization and personnel allocations did not fit the traditional model of rationality because they served “ornamental” rather than strategic purposes, such as coalition maintenance or congressional election influence.78
Though most authors acknowledge that campaigns are strategic and rational, Reeves,
Chen and Nagano dispute the findings in Shaw‟s original article. They point out that Shaw misrepresents his statistical model, and argue that when his intended method is applied, they can find no statistically significant way to prove his substantive conclusions. Though in their article
76 Shaw 2006, p. 45. 77 Shaw 1999, p. 899-900. 78 Bartels, Larry M., “Resource Allocation in a Presidential Campaign.” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Aug., 1985). < http://www.jstor.org/stable/2131218>, p. 935. 25 they do not dispute that candidates act strategically in the allocation of their resources, they posit that there is still some uncertainty as to whether candidates stick to their original campaign strategies or if they merely “respond to each other in dynamic equilibrium.”79 Generally, however, it is argued that campaigns do not overhaul their strategies mid-election. General predictions about states‟ relative competitiveness have tended to be validated by electoral results, and there has usually been an overwhelming degree of correlation between initial battleground status and campaign spending, even though that list may narrow somewhat as the campaign reaches its climax.80
Campaign Effects – How campaign strategy affects voter behavior
Substantial attention has been paid to how campaigns behave in the institutional context of the Electoral College. Attention must also be paid to how, if at all, campaign activities actually affect the decision to vote. Intuitively, the correlation seems straightforward, as Hill and
McKee write, “Greater resource allocation should lead to greater campaign visibility, greater interest in and knowledge of candidates among citizens, greater mobilization, and, ultimately, all of this should amount to an increase in voting.”81 Aldrich‟s explanation is straight-forward – that campaign mobilization efforts are heightened within more competitive environments, and that these decrease the costs of participation.82In studying the 2000 election the aforementioned Hill and McKee find a substantially higher turnout rate among the 12 battleground states than in the
79 Reeves, Andrew, Lanhee Chen, and Tiffany Nagano, “A Reassessment of „The Methods behind the Madness.‟” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 66 (2004).
To briefly set aside the question of whether this observation is valid, the literature also digs into the more difficult question of how exactly campaign activities affect citizens. In particular, the most scholarly attention has been given to television advertisements, perhaps because, as noted earlier, it is the most expensive campaign activity. If we are to view campaigns as rational, they would be expected to allocate their resources to the most effective means of mobilization and persuasion, which would indicate that television advertising is the most effective strategy. Notably, a passionate debate has emerged regarding the impact of negative messaging on voter turnout. Though noting the many pitfalls to actually measuring voter exposure to negative advertisements, Goldstein and Freedman argue that in the 1996 election, the volume of overall advertising was negatively correlated with turnout. However, this decrease is “more than offset by the stimulating effects of advertising that contains negative information about a candidate,” demonstrating that negative ads had a substantial mobilizing
83 Hill and McKee, p. 713. 84 Hill and McKee, p. 715. 85 Lipsitz, Keena. “The Consequences of Battleground and “Spectator” State Residency for Political Participation.” Political Behavior, Vol. 31 No. 2, 2008.
“due to the countervailing influence of positive and negative ads.”88 Clinton and Lapinski, meanwhile, find no evidence to support the hypothesis that negative advertising actually decreases voting, and find only marginal evidence that in the short-term, turnout may be increased by exposure to a handful of negative advertisements.89 An additional study of the 2000 presidential election, utilizing the National Annenberg Election Survey, finds little evidence of mobilization or voter education by presidential advertising, though citizens may be persuaded by them.90 Other mobilization methods have also been examined. For example, Gerber and Green found that while phone calls were decidedly ineffective at mobilizing voters, personal canvassing and face-to-face contact were very effective. They point out that as campaigns have gradually switched to a more impersonal set of mobilization strategies, they may have sacrificed some effectiveness in their turnout operations.91 A 1998 study also found that in a presidential election, a major party candidate visit increased turnout in that media market by roughly half a
86 Goldstein, Ken and Paul Freedman, “Campaign Advertising and Voter Turnout: New Evidence for a Stimulation Effect.” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 64, No. 3, August 2002.
Indeed, Patterson finds a strong correlation between campaign activities and turnout, arguing that though nationwide turnout declined in 1996, battleground turnout rose by 3.4%.93
Academic inquiries have found a great deal of evidence of campaign effects, though these effects certainly do not apply to all citizens equally. One study of the 2000 election conceived of voter preferences as transitory throughout much of the campaign season, and concluded that different voters respond differently to campaign activities. Particularly, undecided voters and independents were most strongly affected by campaigns, in part because they are often the most targeted demographics, but also because engaged partisans have already made up their minds based on party loyalty.94 In other words, campaign effects are dependent on political context and preexisting dispositions. Other scholars disagree with this model; Holbrook and McClurg focused their attention on the “mobilizing effects” of presidential campaigns, and argue that campaigns will focus this attention most directly on those very loyal partisans, whose turnout will more reliably increase that candidate‟s vote share. Their study expects campaign activity to increase education, enthusiasm, and motivation, particularly of core supporters, and lead to higher turnout – this is most strongly correlated with party transfers and candidate appearances,
92 Jones, Jeffrey M., “Does Bringing Out the Candidate Bring Out the Votes?: The Effects of Nominee Campaigning in Presidential Elections.” American Politics Research Vol. 26, 1998.
Gimpel and Kaufmann, by using 2004 ANES data on political interest, found that political interest levels were increased in battleground states by campaign activities, but that this effect was particularly noteworthy among lower-income voters, which seems to be premised on the general trend of political participation being correlated with socioeconomic status, as higher- income voters would be more likely to have been already interested in the campaign and thus less susceptible to campaign mobilization effects.97 Counter to this perspective, Keena Lipsitz argues, based on her study of 2000 presidential campaign advertisements, that battleground voters were significantly more informed due to their residence in a “rich information environment,” but also that this effect held even with disengaged or uninterested citizens, implying that citizens of states inundated with campaign advertising will overall see an increase in political knowledge.98 However, Holbrook and McClurg conclude that overall, candidate visits and advertisements cause no observable effect on overall turnout, and they are not alone in this conclusion.99
Counter-Argument: Do campaigns actually activate anyone?
Some argue that battleground turnout is not actually affected by campaigns, and that more generally, campaign effects are not actually significant with respect to the decision to participate. Gerber et al. criticize past studies of the impact of battleground status on turnout,
95 Holbrook, Thomas M. and Scott D. McClurg, “The Mobilization of Core Supporters: Campaigns, Turnout, and Electoral Composition in United States Presidential Elections.” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 49, Issue 4, September 2005.
100 Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Conor M. Dowling, David Doherty, and Nicole Schwartzberg, “Using Battleground States as a Natural Experiment to Test Theories of Voting.” APSA 2009 Toronto Meeting Paper.
Other authors contend that higher turnout in battlegrounds is not the result of campaign efforts at all. Rather, it is because of the inherently partisan and motivated nature of these state- electorates that campaigns choose to focus their energies on them in the first place – campaigns recognize battlegrounds instead of turning states into them. One study concludes that residence in battleground states increases political education levels, but that any increases in political engagement and discourse are more attributable to state context than campaign resource allocation.106 For example, competitive local or state-wide races, or cultural factors in the state can improve levels of civic activism. Though this does not entirely deny the existence of campaign effects, it does reinforce the view that the influence of campaign strategies on voter turnout is conditional.
Analysis of the National Popular Vote
Much of the literature advocating for, or defending the status quo against, the abolition of the Electoral College, necessarily attempts to predict and analyze the effects and structural realignments that an alternative system would cause. Though several alternatives have been considered, this review will only concern itself with those in reference to a direct, nationwide popular vote system similar to that envisioned by the NPV. Longley and Braun advocate for a direct popular vote system over the alternatives because it would equalize the average voting power of each states‟ citizens – that is, every single vote would be counted equally.107 The proponents of such a change tend to trumpet the same basic points regarding preventing runner-
105 Nagler and Leighley, p. 323. 106 Wolak, Jennifer, “The Consequences of Presidential Battleground Strategies for Citizen Engagement.” Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 3 (September 2006).
These concerns do not directly address the problem of determining if voter turnout would actually be enhanced by an alternative electoral arrangement. This is the question that my thesis project hopes to answer. Some authors are skeptical. Stein et al. propose two pathways by which voter turnout could be increased: first by increasing the perceived benefits to voters, and second by equalizing party resource allocation. The former pathway reflects the perspective of the Mass Electoral Response model, by proposing that spectator-state citizens in a popular vote structure would realize that their votes have a larger impact than before. The latter emphasizes the effects on campaign strategy, arguing that a more even distribution of campaign resources would stimulate a more even distribution of voter turnout. These authors are, however, skeptical that a popular vote system would accomplish these goals. They perceive little evidence that perceptions of one‟s importance in voting actually increases the tendency to vote, and though they think an institutional change would have a positive effect on the most informed voters, they argue that these citizens are already most likely to vote, and that turnout would be minimally
108 Best, Judith. "Weighing the Alternatives: Reform or Deform?" The Longest Night: Polemics and Perspectives on Election 2000. Ed. Arthur J. Jacobson and Michel Rosenfeld. Berkeley: University of California, 2002, p. 350. 109 Best 2002, p. 351. 33 increased.110 They also cast doubt on the presumption that campaign strategies would substantially change, as candidates would still be concerned primarily with persuading swing voters and mobilizing partisan loyalists, and doing so in the most cost-efficient manner. Because strategies are already closely tied to media markets, these scholars see no reason to expect a substantial change in resource allocations, and thus little change in mobilization.111
Others argue that there would actually be a substantial shift, as candidates would have incentive to target the highest-density media markets to reach the most voters as possible. One political pundit suggested that campaigns would merely divide the electorate into ten primary media and cultural markets, encompassing 135 million people, and focus their time exclusively on the concerns of those citizens at the expense of the other half of the voting population.112
However, other scholars cast doubt on the urban-centric hypothesis. They point out that metropolitan areas tend to contain diverse populations, making it unlikely that either major candidate could count on capturing a lion‟s share of the vote in those areas. Further, campaigns would seek to maximize their total support, and ignoring the non-“megalopolis” half of the electorate would seem to be an irrational strategy.113 Still, authors like Goux and Hopkins echo the arguments that media markets would remain a dominant factor. They suggest that campaign resource allocations would necessarily shift. Although under a direct popular election candidates would no longer acknowledge state boundaries, modern campaigns would still be waged primarily through the media, implying that media markets would become the “relevant
110 Stein et al., p. 129. 111 Stein et al., p. 131. 112 Dwyer, Paula and Paul Magnusson, “The Pitfalls of One Person, One Vote.” Bloomberg Business Week, 27 November, 2000.
Systematic comparisons of the Electoral College and a direct popular vote for many years failed to account for turnout differences among states, which made their conclusions about state voting power under the different systems flawed.116 Smith and Squire attempted to correct this deficiency, and by utilizing game theory calculated the relative influence of states under a direct election structure. Presuming that all states contain roughly the same proportion of undecided voters, they propose that a rational campaign strategy would be to merely allocate attention in proportion to the number of votes cast in each state.117 This suggests that under the National
Popular Vote plan, size matters, and that any biases of the Electoral College towards large states would only be exacerbated under an alternative arrangement. However, proponents of the NPV proposal argue that campaigns would naturally seek votes in all fifty states, since a lack of attention paid to a state by one candidate could enhance the opportunity for persuasion and motivation by the other candidate. At the very least, even if the NPV would not actively promote attention to each of the fifty states, it would remove the structural disincentives under
114 Goux, Darshan J. and David A. Hopkins, “The Empirical Implications of Electoral College Reform.” American Politics Research, Vol. 36 No. 6, November 2008.
Despite all of these analyses, a large degree of uncertainty remains, in part due to relative negligence on the part of political science researchers, but mostly because we can‟t know for sure how candidates or voters would react to a new arrangement. Some scholars actually cite this uncertainty as reason to favor keeping the Electoral College: “We would trading (sic) an institution whose pluses and minuses we know for one whose evils are yet to be determined.
Personally, this seems to us to argue on the side of caution.”119 However, as the possibility for
Electoral College reform rises to its highest level in more than three decades, more systematic evaluation of these pluses and minuses is required.
118 Richie, Robert, “A Binding Agreement: Reforming the Electoral College with Interstate Compacts.” National Civic Review, Vol. 96, No. 1, (March 2007)
Research Design: Modeling a New Era of Presidential Campaigns
Evaluation of Previous Research
At this point, many scholars have attempted to better understand the way that the
Electoral College alters campaign strategies, and the extent to which those strategies promote or deflate voter turnout. These are broken down in my literature review into two primary camps: those who favor a Mass Electoral Response model and those who favor an Elite Response model.
Though I do not doubt the validity of the claim that some citizens are affected by awareness of their own vote‟s relative importance, my thesis will rely primarily on the latter of these two perspectives. My first concern with the Mass Electoral Response model is pragmatic; given my limited time and resources, measurement of these sorts of precise civic opinions on the Electoral
College across state boundaries is far beyond the capability of this project. Furthermore, there is an acute lack of empirical research done on this subject, which is precisely why Gregory D.
Webster of the University of Illinois proposed adding questions on the Electoral College to the
2007-2009 ANES Panel Study.120 More work is required on this subject before an undergraduate thesis could successfully or usefully measure the direct impact of electoral, vote-counting structures on the decision to vote.
Secondly, it stands to reason that this awareness would only be found in the segment of the electorate that was the most educated and politically-aware. But Lipsitz points out that these variables are two of the strongest indicators of high political participation rates.121 This casts some doubt on the hypothesis that Electoral College voting weights have a particularly powerful effect on the decision to vote, as it is this very demographic that one would expect to vote at
120 Webster, Gregory D. “Voter Turnout and Electoral College Attitudes.” American National Election Studies, 2007.
37 lower rates in spectator states. Further, Darshan Goux finds that the media coverage of campaign strategy has changed substantially in the past few decades, as references to
“battleground states” doubled in the elections of 2000 and 2004.122 If the battleground-spectator state classification system was not a salient feature of presidential elections for the media, and by extension many voters, until recently, then turnout gaps in previous decades could not be accounted for by the Mass Electoral Response model alone.
Turning our focus primarily to the Elite Response model, this study will examine the effects of campaign strategy on voter turnout. Recent research on Electoral College campaign strategy seems to have reached a consensus that campaigns will focus most of their time and energy on a selection of battleground states which both sides believe they can win (see Loevy
1995; Shaw 1999, 2006; Patterson 2002; Gimpel and Kaufmann 2005). Thanks to his empirical research, interviews with campaign managers, and personal experience, Daron Shaw‟s analysis has shaped most of the research done since. In particular, the typical campaign categorization of states into the five categories (battleground, lean D/R, base D/R) has become a staple of campaign analysis, and is a system that all campaigns in the past several cycles seem to subscribe to.123 One would expect the most resources to be devoted to battleground states, a great deal of resources (but not quite as many) to marginal states, and hardly any attention paid to base states (also known as spectator states). Because a campaign‟s targeting strategy is fundamentally about where to spend its money, campaign spending is the quantitative representation of campaign strategy.
122 Goux, David, “A New Battleground? Media Perceptions and Political Reality in Presidential Elections, 1960- 2004.” Paper presented at the 2006 APSA annual meeting, Philadelphia, PA, Aug 31, 2004.
Furthermore, the correlation between campaign spending and higher turnout does suggest a causal relationship. With years of case studies, campaign strategists likely could have determined by now if TV advertising was not having the desired effect, and would change their strategy to reflect a more optimal apportionment of resources. Though this study will not differentiate between negative and positive advertisements, perhaps certain kinds of advertising work better for different electorates – this would be an important consideration when creating more advanced models of direct vote campaign strategy in the future. Some scholars also reach the conclusion that mobilization strategies are best targeted towards partisans rather than independents, because increasing turnout amongst core supporters will guarantee a higher vote share for that candidate.124 Though this sort of strategy depends on the proportions of the electorate‟s respective political affiliations, it will be noteworthy to observe if this expectation is verified by my case studies.
Though a great deal of valuable work has been done examining the effects of the
Electoral College on turnout, campaign strategy and its effect on turnout under a NPV system has not garnered more than an afterthought from most scholars. The implicit assumption seems to be that eliminating the Electoral College would simply eliminate its effect on turnout, but of course the answer is not this simple. The absence of the Electoral College would not occur in a vacuum, as it would have to be replaced by an alternative vote-counting scheme, with its own set of institutional incentives and effects on both campaigns and voters. Beyond the broad generalities offered by political supporters and opponents of the National Popular Vote plan, there is a lack of empirical, analytical attention to this subject, which is crucial for truly understanding the advantages and drawbacks to enacting such a system. As Longley and Braun
124 Holbrook and McClurg, p. 693. 39 wrote 36 years to ago, I seek to examine a subject “which heretofore had been marked by speculation and hunch.”125
Hypothesis
By utilizing the Elite Response theoretical model, my research develops a basic research structure. My independent variable is Electoral Structure, specifically the choice between the
Electoral College and the National Popular Vote plan. My intervening variable is campaign strategy and my dependent variable is voter turnout. I expect to demonstrate that the Electoral
College positively affects turnout in a handful of battleground states, by focusing campaign strategy on the most competitive states, at the expense of the rest of the union. Under a National
Popular Vote system, I hypothesize that campaigns would devote their resources to a wider array of states, creating an aggregate increase in national voter turnout, as a higher proportion of registered voters would be exposed to campaign activities like advertisements. Of course, the future of presidential campaign strategy under an alternate system would be much more complicated. That is why I further hypothesize that NPV campaigns will focus disproportionately more attention on metropolitan areas, boosting turnout most substantially in urban and suburban districts. This will limit the attention paid to rural areas, though the extent to which these communities are already ignored under the Electoral College, as well as the policy implications for a heavier emphasis on urban campaigning, remains unclear.
Definition of Concepts
In order to proceed, I will now clarify the key terms of this thesis. The Electoral College is the existing electoral institution for United States presidential elections. Its notable features include a winner-take-all rule in all but two states, electoral votes that are allocated in proportion to population size, and an additional two electoral votes for each state to magnify the influence
125 Longley and Braun, p. 136-137. 40 of small states. The National Popular Vote system (NPV), also known as direct vote is an alternative electoral institution designed to replace the Electoral College. The winner of a presidential election would be determined by the accumulation of the most popular votes nationwide. The plan would be enacted by state legislatures, avoiding the arduous politics of a constitutional amendment.
A battleground state is one in which the statewide popular vote outcome is uncertain, and thus receives a disproportionate share of attention relative to its population size. It must be agreed upon by both sides to truly be a battleground, but given the wide availability of state polling, as well as readily available information about each state‟s past voting history and changes in voter and party registration numbers, campaigns will almost assuredly classify states in roughly the same manner. The only differences in campaign strategy will emerge from the mathematical advantages of a side‟s base states or from differences in the size of the sides‟ respective campaign war chests. If one side starts with a larger “base” number of electoral votes, they may undertake a more offensive strategy, targeting more resources to states that lean slightly in the other direction, while the other side may depend on a more defensive strategy, protecting those same states instead of putting marginal states on the other side in play. The same logic applies to a side with more available campaign funds. A spectator state is a state that receives virtually no candidate visits or campaign spending during the general election under the
Electoral College. As scholars note, if a state is not expected to be competitive, the campaigns will ignore it entirely (there is no incentive to “waste” any resources at all on these voters, whose collective decision is already decided).
Campaign strategy refers to the allocation of candidates‟ and campaigns‟ time, resources, and energies during the general election (generally centered on the roughly two months from
41
Labor Day until Election Day. With limited time and money to do a certain amount of outreach and mobilization targeting a limited percentage of the population, candidates and their advisors must decide how to apportion their resources in a way that best promotes victory. Under the
Electoral College, this means targeting an accumulation of state victories that total 270 or more electoral votes. Under the NPV plan, this would mean winning the most votes nationwide, regardless of state lines. Though campaigns engage in a wide array of campaign activities, television and radio advertisements will be the primary focus of this study for two reasons. First,
TV and radio spending represent the vast majority of campaign spending in presidential elections
(as mentioned in the literature review). Though this is partly because it is the most costly activity that candidates can engage in, this emphasis on television and radio advertising implies that campaign strategists view television as the most effective medium by which they can influence voter behavior (in terms of both persuasion and mobilization). The second reason is practical – television and radio advertising provide a metric that clearly delineates campaign strategy on a state-by-state and market-by-market basis, as well as offering clear data. This is not a perfect measurement, however. Keena Lipsitz notes that media strategies have “bleeding effects,” as media markets often cross state lines, creating a distinction between a campaign‟s state-based campaign strategy and the actual allocation of resources.126 This can weaken the effects of spectator-state residency on turnout, but I still expect a participation gap to emerge in my research of turnout. Of course, campaign spending is also not a perfect measurement in itself, because costs vary state-by-state. $1 million can do a lot more in Montana than in New
York City. To adjust for this, my measurement of spending will be based not only on raw spending volume, but on a measurement of dollars per voting-age-population.
126 Lipsitz 2008, p. 189-190. 42
The term “media markets” refers to Designated Market Areas (DMAs) as defined by
Nielsen in 2000. All counties are assigned to a television market, and with very limited exception there is usually only one market operating in a given county.127 Some markets are defined as “in-state markets” and a smaller number, usually those nearest to state borders, are labeled “out-of-state markets,” relying on the dichotomy identified by Ansolabehere, Snowberg, and Snyder (2006). An in-state market is “a media market centered within a given state,” while an out-of-state market is one that is “centered in a city outside of a given state but which covers some part of a neighboring state.”128 For example, in 2000, Californians made up less than 15% of the Medford-Klamath Falls, OR and the Reno, NV markets, and just over 47% of the Yuma-
El Centro, AZ market.129 These markets are considered out-of-state, while the other eleven markets in the state operate entirely within the borders of California.
The ultimate dependent variable of this study is voter turnout, which is the only form of political participation that I will consider. Turnout is defined as the percentage of the voting-age population that casts a ballot in a given general election. Though other forms of participation, such as campaign contributions, meeting attendance, and political discussion, are important to understanding the full effect of the Electoral College, data on them is far less available than on turnout. With limited time and resources, it makes more sense to focus on one aspect of civic engagement. Arguably, voting is the most fundamental expression of civic engagement – low turnout can imply that citizens don‟t have strong opinions about the candidates or that they don‟t have faith in our electoral system or their own vote‟s efficacy. Furthermore, as Keena Lipsitz
127 “County-Based Regions and Markets for California.” Polidata Demographic and Political Guides, 2002.
At this point, we can visualize my hypothesis as follows. Under the status quo:
(1) Electoral College narrower distribution of campaign resources lower
aggregate turnout, with higher turnout in battleground states
And under an alternative arrangement:
(2) NPV wider distribution of campaign resources higher aggregate turnout
Measuring the Battleground Effect
To draw inferences about equation 2, I must first illustrate the correlation between campaign spending and turnout under the Electoral College (equation 1). Thankfully, all of the necessary data already exists. I can measure campaign spending state-by-state in recent presidential elections, and compare this data with state turnout statistics. Of course, national trends and factors can also affect turnout in every state, not just in the battlegrounds affected by campaign activities. Thus, state turnout in each case should be compared to the average national turnout. This is the battleground effect – the extent to which campaign spending by presidential candidates can increase turnout. It is a crude calculation, given the many contextual factors that may also play a role. These include, but are not limited to:
130 Lipsitz 2008, p. 192 44
(1) Previous battleground/spectator status – if a state was a battleground the previous
election, some campaign infrastructure may remain, making it easier for candidates in the
next cycle to mobilize voters. On the other hand, if a state changes from battleground to
spectator status, its citizens may respond with a larger-than-expected decrease in turnout,
as the lack of campaigning in the state may run counter to the constituents‟ expectations
of their own importance. On the other hand, activation of voters in one election may
have lingering effects on them in subsequent years.
(2) Influence of concurrent congressional, gubernatorial, or senatorial races – presidential
candidates are never the only ones purchasing advertisements and organizing get-out-the-
vote operations in a state. Other competitive races may complicate the project of
isolating the impact of presidential advertising, but with a wide enough case study and
recognition that voters generally consider the presidential race to be the most important,
the measured effect is still significant.
(3) Demographic makeup of the state – not all voters are affected equally by campaigns.
Gimpel and Kaufmann found that engagement levels of poor, minority, and moderate
voters were positively affected by battleground status, more so than other groups.131
Thus, a poorer, more moderate, or high-percentage minority state might have a stronger
battleground effect than others.
Still, I believe that given the constraints of time and available data, this set of observations from the 2004 and 2008 campaigns is a reasonable estimation of how presidential campaign activity affects voter turnout in battleground and spectator states. Thus, I will be able to illustrate the
131 Gimpel and Kaufmann, p. 22. 45 trends under the current institutional structure towards concentrating candidates‟ resources in a small proportion of states.
Measuring a Hypothetical: A State-Based Plan to Predict the Effects of a State-Based Plan
The primary challenge for the construction of my research is its speculative nature. No presidential election in the United States has ever been fought under anything other than the
Electoral College, so no immediately recognizable comparison exists. Looking to presidential campaigns in other countries is problematic; institutional and cultural context, electorate makeup, and party distinctions can vary drastically across societies. Thus, an appropriate study is needed that can simulate the strategic incentives, political patterns, and voter responsiveness of a presidential race. To model presidential campaign strategy under a direct vote system, I will utilize gubernatorial campaign spending data from 2010 and 2006.132 Within the boundaries of a state, these campaigns are decided by popular vote. They feature the same two-party competition that marks presidential elections. These campaigns are not perfectly equivalent to presidential races, but the trends in campaign spending will be very informative for those of us attempting to predict how campaigns would react to a nationwide popular vote. I will examine metrics of campaign spending in areas based on partisan breakdown (are swing or one-sided markets targeted?), population density (do urban areas receive a disproportionate share of campaign attention?), and whether the two opponents target the same areas or if they both appeal to their own respective, geographically-distinct bases. The literature does suggest that other variables could affect this decision-making, such as the presence of other competitive races and pre-existing party infrastructure.133 However, the limited availability of data regarding organizational development in advance of a campaign makes the latter particularly difficult to
132 Credit for sparking this idea goes largely to fellow Haverford political science major Chris Steinroeder, who suggested this approach in response to my thesis proposal presentation in November, 2010. 133 Bartels, p. 935. 46 measure. Further, it is unclear how to delineate which lower-tier races might be considered by a statewide campaign – how far down the ballot might they seek political alliances? By relying primarily on more verifiable measures – partisanship, population density, and correlation of two- party spending – the conclusions will be stronger and more applicable to presidential campaigning. These observations can be generalized to a national scale, and they will allow me to make broad predictions regarding how presidential candidates would create and execute strategy.
Case Selection
In order to make these micro-models of presidential campaigns as accurate as possible, I will utilize campaign data from California – a large state that has sufficient geographic diversity and a wide array of media markets so that campaign spending can be accurately broken down by market. Furthermore, using California naturally restricts these case studies to non-presidential election years, as gubernatorial hopefuls may attempt to utilize the coattails of their party‟s presidential nominee to bolster turnout in certain areas, allowing them to concentrate resources in a less rigid fashion. I feel that California is the most appropriate state to use as a model for national demographics, as it contains a great deal of ethnic and class diversity, has multiple metropolitan areas, and is geographically large enough to necessitate a variety of campaign spending. Campaign strategy in smaller states would be less informative as there would be fewer media markets to choose from. California, with its 11 in-state markets and 3 out-of-state markets, is sufficiently large to force campaigns to make meaningful decisions about how to apportion their limited resources. Limiting myself to one state means that this study cannot be considered by any means a perfect model of popular vote strategy. Future studies with more time and access to campaign spending data (optimally from the campaign itself) in more states
47 should absolutely evaluate case studies in multiple states to control for idiosyncrasies that differentiate electoral politics within different political cultures. However, given this project‟s limitations, I feel that California is the best test case available, for the reasons mentioned above.
This study will be limited to an analysis of gubernatorial campaign strategy in California, using both the 2006 and 2010 general election cycles. Attempts to find suitably comprehensive data in other states to provide a contrast to a generally blue state proved to be unsuccessful, as were my attempts to make contact with experts in those states who could explain how to locate the information. State campaign finance sites seem to generally be poorly constructed, and
Sacramento journalist Jim Miller theorizes that this is, in fact, an intentional obstacle to researchers put in place by campaign strategists and politicians. “Candidates don‟t want this information to be easily accessible,” he explained via email on January 4th. In other words, to determine the exact geographic breakdown of a candidate‟s spending would enable other politicians to duplicate that strategy and potentially eliminate a competitive advantage. This dynamic does not exist at the national level, where the Electoral College makes candidate allocations obvious by limiting them to only a handful of state boundaries.
I will collect this data through an assortment of primary sources. I will utilize the state campaign finance database in California, Cal-Access. I had to account for both Schedule E
(direct expenditures by the campaign) and Schedule G payments (payments by the Schedule E payee to another company or person on behalf of the campaign), though some of these reports overlap and must be checked against each other to avoid redundancy. California‟s Cal-Access reporting site only has electronic copies of the original campaign filings, known as Form 460s.
This required me to copy the text manually into Excel, formatting the needed data and eliminating the unwanted passages. Jim Miller of the Sacramento Bureau of Press Enterprise
48 appears to be the only journalist who actually attempted to analyze exactly where the 2010 gubernatorial candidates, and in particular the record-setting Whitman campaign, were spending their funds.134 He very graciously responded to my email inquiry by explaining his method of navigating the Cal-Access website, and pointed me to the electronic filings that I would need to utilize. Due to filing deadlines, my data will extend from July 1st until Election Day, roughly marking the general election season.
I will be able to pair this spending data with demographic data, available at the county- level from the U.S. Census Bureau, and voter registration information from the California
Secretary of State.135 One handicap will be the still-limited availability of complete 2010 Census data – in order for my analysis to remain consistent, I will have to rely on 2000 Census results in
California. This may bias my data in some regard, as populations have shifted during the past decade; however, this was the most recent Census data that these campaigns had access to when they plotted and executed their strategies. Demographic data from the Census – regarding per capita income, ethnic/racial diversity, and population size – can be matched with voter registration data from California elections officials, and totaled at the county level. To measure this data at a media-market level, I can sum all of the counties contained within a given market and average the population breakdowns. To see the breakdown of media markets by county, see
Appendix A. For a brief overview of the process by which I compiled and analyzed my data, see
Appendix E.
In addition to this data analysis, which provides me with the empirical basis of my study,
I also spoke to several California political strategists who were involved in these races.
134 Miller, Jim, “Governor‟s Race Spending Goes Near and Far, Reports Show.” The Press Enterprise, Sacramento: 15 October 2010.
Conducting telephone interviews with Don Sipple (long-time Republican strategist, informally advised the 2010 Brown campaign), Reed Galen (deputy campaign manager for the 2006
Schwarzenegger campaign), and Paul Maslin (senior strategist for the 2006 Angelides campaign and former Governor Gray Davis), I was able to gather significant first-hand accounts of the inner-workings of these campaigns. Many of their insights confirmed my data findings, and this qualitative work was instrumental in providing insight into the actual thought processes behind complex spending decisions. Furthermore, my telephone interview with Professor Thad Kousser of UC San Diego provided an additional academic perspective on California‟s electoral landscape from a more impartial observer. I was unable to get in touch with anyone from the
Whitman campaign, which is unsurprising as they all faced intense public criticism for their mishandling of the race and have since avoided any inquiries into their performance.
Despite limiting myself to a single state, I should be able to draw some compelling conclusions regarding presidential campaign strategy. If strategies vary greatly between the four candidates involved in these races, this would validate the assumption that candidates formulate different strategies as underdogs or frontrunners, and must react to the political climate of their particular electorate. Considering the proportions of each campaign‟s total available funds that are given to certain kinds of communities, these findings can be applied to my previously- mentioned battleground effect measurement, to create a rough estimate of how turnout would be affected in different kinds of states and communities in presidential races.
50
The Status Quo: Campaign Strategy with the Electoral College
As the literature review mentions, the concept of a “battleground” or “swing” state only became salient due to media attention within the last decade. Despite society‟s relatively new familiarity with the terms, the concept has been at the heart of presidential campaigning for decades. However, the past two elections, with their record-breaking levels of spending as well as heightened media and academic scrutiny regarding the distribution of resources, provide a distinct window into how divided our nation is during elections – not between red and blue, but between swing and spectator. Note that the following analysis of presidential elections will cover both television advertising levels and numbers of candidate visits to each state, despite my case study‟s focus solely on media. Though my California model simplifies the notion of candidate attention to its most precise and available metric – advertising – several of the authors referenced in the literature review note that television may not be solely responsible for the turnout discrepancies between battleground and spectator states.136 In fact, there is no compelling way to really measure television‟s effect, as advertising is often an indicator of a campaign‟s broader focus on a given market/state. But campaign attention can be measured in a number of ways, and it all demonstrates a clear delineation between states based on perceived competitiveness.
136 I use both advertising and campaign visit information in my analysis of the Electoral College because both types of data were readily available. Given more time, it is possible that I could construct a table of candidate visits during California‟s gubernatorial campaign. However, as it seems that no one actively tracked that information on a day-to-day basis (except, perhaps, the campaigns themselves) in California, so gathering this data would require reviewing local newspapers across the state for each day of the campaign, a task that would distract from efforts put in to gathering campaign finance data. An ideal project could certainly expand on my limitation to media spending as the sole identifier of campaign strategy, but as I have previously noted in the Research Design, my reliance on media spending is not based on an assumption that this is the only activity that influences turnout. Instead, it is based on the assumption that media spending is indicative of campaign attention as a whole. Campaigns utilize a variety of tactics – advertising, grassroots canvassing, direct mail, rallies and speeches – to appeal to voters. If they choose to target a particular market with advertising, they will most certainly target those same voters in other ways. 51
2004: Bush v. Kerry
In the 2004 campaign, 27 states received at least one visit from any of the presidential or vice-presidential nominees. However, only 17 received five or more visits. To further emphasize the concentration of campaign attention on an elite group of battlegrounds, of the 297 total candidate visits tallied by FairVote during “peak campaign season,”137 146 were to just
Florida, Ohio, and Iowa, accounting for almost 50% of total candidate time. Adding in
Wisconsin and Pennsylvania brings the total to 200, over two-thirds of candidate visits. The top seven states (the aforementioned five plus Michigan and Minnesota) accounted for 78% of all visits, and television spending was similarly centered on these battlegrounds.138 In the same seven states, the Kerry and Bush campaigns, plus affiliated interest groups, spent over $197 million on television advertisements just between September 26th and Election Day, over 82% of all presidential campaign spending on television nationwide.139 In fact, residents of Florida,
Ohio, and Pennsylvania together saw over 50% of all television ads aired by the candidates throughout the United States.
Although it may seem obvious that spending 82% of the resources on 14% of the states is disproportionate, the registration and turnout statistics emphasize the effect of this spending.
The seven states that received the most attention accounted for just over 43 million registered voters in 2004, or roughly 25% of all registered voters. The “big three” swing states account for only 16% of the nation‟s registered voters.140 Because of their perceived competitiveness (based on polling, voter registration margins, and electoral history), they were the focus of the Bush and
Kerry campaigns because the ultimate destiny of their electoral votes were unknown. Of course,
137 “Peak campaign season,” for the purposes of FairVote‟s data, is from September 26th through Election Day. 138 Pearson, Christopher, Rob Richie, and Adam Johnson, Who Picks the President? FairVote, 2005.
Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania accounted for 68 electoral votes or one-quarter of the votes necessary to reach a majority of 270.
The strategies employed by Bush and Kerry in 2004 also undermine the traditional argument by Electoral College supporters that its winner-take-all system benefits small states.
FairVote‟s Presidential Elections Reform Program calculated an “attention index,” which indicates the relative attention paid to each state by the candidates. They explain, “If all states were treated in exact equality relative to population, each state would receive a measure of one in the attention index.” By grouping the states into five sets ordered by population, only the groups of states with 15 or more electoral votes had an index average above 1, implying that they received, on average, more attention than the national average. However, this result is misleading; all of the groups had a median score of .23 or below, implying that very few states in any of the groups actually had any attention paid to them. Furthermore, the 18 smallest states had a median index score of 0.141 Though the Electoral College certainly can‟t be said to bias candidates towards focusing on large states, it certainly does not seem to advantage small states either. California, Texas, and New York, the three largest states in the country, received just over $33,000 total from any of the candidates in television spending, but most of the states with five or fewer electoral votes failed to receive any notice, either.
It is clear from this data that potential voters experienced the 2004 presidential campaign in very different ways, depending on what state they resided in. In 14 states, the two candidates combined spent more than $1 per vote, topped by New Mexico with $10.71 spent per ballot.
Two other states, Missouri and Washington, received over $1 million in television advertising.
141 Pearson et al. 2005, p. 4. 53
However, 25 states received no advertising money at all during the final few months.142 With this enormous disparity, one would expect voter turnout in that election to vary substantially between the electoral haves and have-nots. The national turnout rate was roughly 59.0% among those eligible to vote. However, turnout in the 16 aforementioned battlegrounds was measured at
65.3%, a difference of 6.3%.143 The 12 least competitive states witnessed a cumulative voter turnout of only 53%. Additionally, there was a massive turnout gap among 18-29 year-old voters: 64.4% turnout in the 10 most competitive states, but only 47.6% in the other forty.144
This massive gap is troubling, as the young voters residing in non-battlegrounds appear to feel more disconnected from civic responsibility, with potential long-term consequences for their engagement in politics or elections.
There are two potential causes for the distinctions between these high-turnout battlegrounds and the lower-turnout spectator states: swing states were more narrowly divided, and thus each voter would have a higher probability of influencing the outcome, or that the candidates spent most of their energy on persuading and mobilizing voters in those 16 states.
The former explanation of the turnout differential relates to the Mass Electoral Response model, as the Electoral College‟s winner-take-all structure would incentivize these voters to participate at a higher rate. The latter explanation closely resembles the Elite Response model, by implying that it is candidates whose rational decisions are impacted by the institution, and whose resulting campaign spending activates voters by making them feel more motivated or important.
Presuming that campaign spending mirrors the rational, goal-oriented strategies of the candidates, the decision to focus almost all of both parties‟ resources on just 16 states would
142 Pearson et al. 2005, p. 15. 143 McDonald, Michael P., “Voter Turnout: The Numbers Prove that 2004 May Signal More Voter Interest.” Brookings Institution, 27 November 2004.
Electoral College defender Judith Best when asserting that the Electoral College advantages these very interests by forcing candidates to win entire states and appeal to their parochial interests.145 However, the number of voters who are ignored is even starker. 44.5 million votes were cast in those 16 swing states, roughly 36% of the total cast in the 2004 presidential election.
To privilege 36% of the electorate with almost the entirety of candidate spending and attention seems to give a third of the country an enormously disproportionate share of influence over our federal government.
2008: Obama v. McCain
These trends were only exacerbated by the 2008 campaign. Although Obama‟s sizeable cash advantage and appeal to moderates allowed him to expand his list of target states, the list of states that the candidates fought over remained extremely narrow. During the peak campaign season, 17 states accounted for over 99% of all campaign ad spending and campaign events.
Meanwhile almost half of all campaign events and 44% of advertising expenditures during this time took place in the “big three” – Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, according to CNN. They further indicate that from June 8th through November 3rd, only two states, Ohio and
Pennsylvania, received more than 40 visits from the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Eight others received over 15 visits, although candidates were likely drawn to New
York and Illinois (both with exactly 15) due to fundraising, as both states were perceived as
145 Best 1996, p. 23 55 safely Democratic.146 In fact, 31 states were completely ignored in terms of non-fundraising campaign events, and 9 received $0 in advertisements. The bottom 36 states accounted for a total of 1% of all advertisement spending during the general election.147 Only 15 states actually received advertising money from both candidates.148 In fact, these statistics might be overstating the extent to which candidates chose to target voters in multiple states. TV spending is a bit misleading on a state-by-state basis, because some markets cross state lines. So ads may have been aired in safe states as a cheaper way of reaching some voters in neighboring battlegrounds.
Additionally, some campaign events were held in safe states, but FairVote suggests that these events‟ proximity to battlegrounds was the real reason for their placement. For example, a
Tennessee event was held near the borders of both Virginia and North Carolina, which were highly competitive. Additionally, one event was held in West Virginia but an hour from the
Ohio border.149 It seems that these statistics actually inflate the actual battleground. In fact, despite the record spending in 2008, candidates focused on fewer states than ever before, and the proportions of voters ignored by the Democratic and Republican nominees are similar to those in
2004.
Conclusions
This problem isn‟t getting better, despite the slight increase in battlegrounds between
2004 and 2008. In 1960, 24 states were battlegrounds, totaling 327 electoral votes between them.150 As polling and demographic targeting has proliferated, campaigns have become more
146 "Election Tracker: Candidate Visits - Election Center 2008." CNN.com. Cable News Network, 3 Nov. 2008. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.
1992, there were still 32 such states. However, this number has declined from 27 in 1996 to 22 in 2000, then to 18 and 16 in the most recent two elections.151
Beyond simply excluding voters from the electoral process, there could very well be policy implications for this narrow battleground. During the first five months of President
Obama‟s term, he visited 16 states, but nine were states that shifted from blue to red in the previous election, and five were “among the six that posted the narrowest margins of victory for either Obama or Senator McCain.” Darrell M. West of the Brookings Institution explains,
"Every president keeps his eye on the next election, and all of them have a laser focus on the battleground states because those are the ones that matter.”152 As long as the Electoral College system privileges a few states with decisive influence, candidates and presidents will likely focus an inordinate amount of their time promoting their agenda or election in these states. Whether this translates into tangible policy designed to promote the interests of these states is uncertain, but at the very least it means that civic engagement in battleground states will likely remain higher than in spectator states, because of the time and resources devoted by major political figures to motivating and/or persuading these voters.
In conclusion, there is a clear relationship between campaign spending and increased voter turnout. This spending is limited to only a few states, and roughly one-third of the population. Now that we understand the way that the Electoral College influences campaign strategy, we must examine how candidates behave under a popular vote structure. The
151 Fairvote, 2008. 152 Wilson, Scott, “Obama‟s Travel Mixes Policy, Politics.” Washington Post, 21 June 2009.
58
Popular Vote Campaign Strategy in California
Campaign Background
To better understand the campaign expenditures resulting from the 2006 and 2010 gubernatorial elections in California, it is important to briefly consider the dynamics of those races. Not every campaign runs the same way – candidates, economic conditions, party unity, and a host of other factors can change a given campaign‟s approach, and that can translate to spending decisions as well.
2006: Schwarzenegger v. Angelides
In 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stood for reelection for the first time following his victory in the 2003 recall election of then-Governor Gray Davis. His opponent, State Treasurer Phil Angelides, emerged from the Democratic primary, winning a 48% plurality of Democratic primary voters on June 6th. This came after a brutal primary fight with
State Controller Steve Westly. The two candidates spent a combined $70 million attacking each other in the preceding months; Westly criticized his opponent‟s environmental practices during his previous career as a real estate developer, while Angelides argued that Westly‟s views closely mirrored the Governor‟s.153 Angelides seemed to be a strong nominee – having developed a reputation as the governor‟s harshest critic since his inauguration. He had already won a statewide campaign for State Treasurer, and presented himself as a clear alternative to the incumbent. He criticized Schwarzenegger for refusing to embrace tax increases to erase the state‟s mounting budget deficit154
153 Jaffe, Ina. "Democrat Angelides to Face Schwarzenegger." Morning Edition. NPR. Sacramento, California, 7 June 2006. Web.
Schwarzenegger had his fair share of struggles early in his term. Having called for a special election in 2005, the governor saw all four of his ballot propositions defeated by
California voters, including efforts to reform teacher tenure, unions‟ political campaign contributions, limits on the state budget, and redistricting. Striking at unions and educators, these propositions were targeted at the heart of the Democratic coalition. Opponents saw the election results as a personal political failure for Governor Schwarzenegger. Coupled with a
33% approval rating, as measured by the Public Policy Institute of California in October, he appeared to be particularly vulnerable to a strong challenge when he stood for reelection in one year.155 Furthermore, polls in January showed him down 8% in a hypothetical matchup with the eventual Democratic nominee, and all signs pointed to the 2006 election heavily favoring
Democrats nationwide.156
However, Schwarzenegger sought to remake his public image almost immediately after his defeat in 2005, retreating from the conservative positions he had staked out in the special election. Tellingly, less than one month after the vote, Schwarzenegger appointed Susan
Kennedy as his chief-of-staff. Kennedy‟s resume, which included a stint as executive director of the state Democratic Party, a career of activism for abortion rights, and serving as Cabinet secretary to Governor Davis, represented a shift in direction for Schwarzenegger. Frustrated by infighting in his administration, he hoped that Kennedy‟s positioning as his top aide would help promote his centrist policy goals, enabling him to work towards pragmatic compromises with the
Democrat-controlled state legislature in an overwhelmingly blue state.157 This repositioning was
155 Pitney, Jr., John J., “California‟s Day After.” National Review, 9 November 2005.
Congress, Schwarzenegger was fortunate to embrace a strategy that distinguished him from the
“R” next to his name on the ballot.
Ultimately, this attempted centrist push by Schwarzenegger defined the campaign. On the night of the candidate‟s primary victory, Angelides‟ adviser Bob Mulholland, sought to emphasize Schwarzenegger‟s ties to the Republican establishment, explaining, “We have the videos of Schwarzenegger in Ohio hugging Bush. We‟ve got the video of Schwarzenegger at the
New York Republican Convention in 2004, and we have the videos of Bush and Schwarzenegger together in California. Schwarzenegger can‟t run fast enough to get away from those videos.”158
Further, Angelides‟ campaign tried to appeal to moderate, middle-class voters in San Bernadino,
Orange, and Riverside counties, while maintaining their ties to the national, Democratic tide.159
However, Angelides struggled to define the race‟s narrative, with his campaign hampered by poor fundraising totals and staff controversy. As the governor moved towards the center, and allied himself with traditionally Democratic environmental groups, California Democrats struggled to tie him to the national Republican Party, especially as many of them were actively collaborating with him on legislation. Indeed, Schwarzenegger managed to distance himself from President Bush, then suffering historically low approval ratings, and in the process made inroads with Democratic voters, fracturing the base of support for his opponent.160 In
September, Schwarzenegger came under fire when the Los Angeles Times obtained a tape of the
158 Jaffe,
Senator in Virginia was defeated in part due to a tape of his off-the-cuff, racially-charged comments, this could have become a major embarrassment for Schwarzenegger. Additionally, both parties fought very hard to increase support from the Latino community, which was seen as a major swing demographic despite their historic support for Democratic candidates since
Governor Pete Wilson‟s support for Proposition 187, which was seen as an attack against illegal immigrants.162 However, the Angelides campaign was soon forced to acknowledge that they were responsible for downloading and leaking the tape, and the campaign was accused of hacking into a private server to facilitate a smear campaign. Meanwhile, the Latina lawmaker in question reiterated publicly that she was not offended by the remarks, and the issue did little to damage Schwarzenegger‟s public standing.163
While Angelides struggled with his own campaign‟s missteps, Schwarzenegger continued pressing to the center, racking up a string of legislative, bipartisan accomplishments that undermined the Democratic nominee‟s ability to mobilize his base. The most high-profile of these was an agreement to cap greenhouse gas emissions, the first of its kind in the United States, which put Governor Schwarzenegger at the forefront of the modern environmental protection movement.164 Though Angelides retained the endorsements of the three major environmental organizations – Sierra Club, Vote the Coast, and League of Conservation Voters –
Schwarzenegger cast himself as a powerful advocate in the fight against global warming, and
161 Phillips, Kate. "Schwarzenegger Apologizes for Hot Tape." Web blog post. The Caucus. New York Times, 8 Sept. 2006.
Angelides) in his bid to take over the city‟s struggling school system, pushed for an increase in the minimum wage, and toured the state with the Democratic Senate President Pro Tem and
Assembly Speaker “campaigning for a multibillion-dollar bond package to rebuild California‟s sagging roads, schools, and water systems.”165
Though Angelides adviser Bob Mulholland insisted that Schwarzenegger‟s partisan affiliation would undermine his appeal to moderates, polling showed the GOP candidate pulling ahead, moving from a virtual tie in July to a 45-32% lead over Angelides in the beginning of
September. Angelides was weakened by the less-than-enthusiastic support from the Democratic establishment, as many found reason to form temporary alliances with the Republican governor to get their agenda passed. In fact, polling showed Schwarzenegger leading Angelides by five percent in the heavily Democratic city of Los Angeles, where normally stalwart Democratic
Party donors like Steven Spielberg had endorsed Schwarzenegger, a former movie star, for reelection.166 Additionally, analysts pointed to a very influential ad run by Schwarzenegger in the days immediately following Angelides‟ primary victory, which showed the candidate walking backwards, arguing that only the governor had the political vision to move the state forward.167
Ultimately, with Schwarzenegger‟s approval ratings topping 50% as he experienced a political rejuvenation during the summer of 2006, he defeated Angelides handily by a margin of
165 Pomfret, John, “Schwarzenegger Keeps Wide Lead.” Washington Post, 4 September 2006.
59 percent to 37 percent. By embracing more moderate stances, Schwarzenegger made himself more appealing to moderates, and limited Angelides‟ ability to rally Democratic partisans against him.168 Democratic strategist Bill Carrick argued after the election that the negative results of the 2005 referendum, which were based on dissatisfaction rather than outright disapproval, were never going to be a long-term drag on the governor‟s public standing, and that his collaborative efforts with the Democratic legislature made it very difficult for any Democrat to have beaten him. Furthermore, Schwarzenegger got five times the amount of news coverage than Angelides in the summer and early fall, giving him more exposure and generating more voter interest in his campaign. Cathy Calfo also acknowledged that the Angelides campaign did not manage to reach their fundraising expectations – they had hoped to raise $35 million for the general election, but ultimately managed to only get $10 million to spend against their opponent. This created a significant challenge for a candidate whose primary weakness was low statewide name recognition, and made it difficult for Angelides to fight attack ads by the Schwarzenegger team.169
Still, some of those involved argued afterwards that Schwarzenegger‟s victory was inevitable. Arguing that analysts fundamentally misread the 2005 results, Chief-of-Staff Susan
Kennedy explained that following the “traumatic” recall experience, “People wanted him to succeed; they needed him to succeed because they had invested something in him. I think people didn‟t want to go through throwing out a governor again. Once we established him as an incumbent and as a credible governor, even in the fall of 2005 I thought Schwarzenegger was
168 Carlton, Jim, “Schwarzenegger Easily Wins Re-election.” Web blog post. Washington Wire. Wall Street Journal, 7 November 2006.
Arnold was popular and incumbent Governors who are popular don‟t lose.”171
2010: Brown v. Whitman
With no incumbent in the race, the race for governor of California in 2010 drew a number of high-profile contenders on both sides of the aisle, making the dynamics of the primary and general elections very distinct from 2006 when neither of the Democratic contenders had anywhere near the name-recognition of Schwarzenegger. The Republican primary came down to a top-tier battle between former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and State Insurance Commissioner
Steve Poizner. Whitman utilized her vast personal fortune to blanket the airwaves as early as
2009, opening a 50-point lead over her opponent, but the primary fight grew increasingly bitter as Poizner refused to leave the race. Frustrated, Whitman‟s campaign continued attacking
Poizner, at one point threatening to spend $40 million “to put Poizner through a wood chipper.”172 Meanwhile, the Democratic primary crystallized as a showdown between former governor, and current state Attorney General, Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin
Newsom. Despite a surprising September endorsement from former President Bill Clinton,
Newsom chose to drop out of the race by November as he found himself trailing in the polls by upwards of twenty points.173 Brown had been a popular governor of the state decades earlier,
170 Institute of Governmental Studies, “The Schwarzenegger Candidacy” 171 Email dated 2/21/11 172 Harmon, Steve, “Political Advisers Sift Through Ashes of 2010 Gubernatorial Campaign.” Contra Costa Times, 24 January 2011.
Meanwhile, Whitman never turned her sights on her presumed general election opponent, choosing to fight with Poizner over who was tougher on illegal immigration, ultimately pulling her farther to the right and driving down her favorability ratings, particularly within the Latino community.174
Ultimately, the story of Whitman‟s campaign was her record amount of spending, mostly of her own fortune. In the 18 month campaign, Whitman ultimately spent roughly $178.5 million, $144.2 million her own, totaling about $43.25 for each vote she ultimately received in
November.175 Breaking national records for candidate spending in a statewide race, Whitman blanketed the airwaves in a manner that actually dominated the narrative of the election. In fact, despite the wealth of political science literature suggesting that advertising has a positive effect for a candidate, Whitman may have reached a heretofore rare or unimaginable point of over- saturation. One GOP leader suggested, “By Labor Day, Jerry Brown, who was governor when I was in high school, was the fresh new face.”176 In an election year dominated by the Tea Party and a reaction against establishment politicians, a lifelong political figure in the state of
California managed to claim the outsider mantle. Poizner strategist Jim Bognet suggested that all of this money was a net positive for Whitman during the primary, because it allowed her to rebound from their attack ads, but that her heavy advertising load turned voters off. Bognet
174 McLaughlin, Ken and Steven Harmon, “Top Political Thinkers Do Lively Post-Mortem on How Jerry Brown So Soundly Defeated Meg Whitman.” Bay Area News Group, 24 January 2011.
TV.”177 Meanwhile, Brown‟s team saved their comparatively limited resources throughout the entire summer, waiting until after Labor Day to air their first television advertisement.
Concluding that most undecided voters wouldn‟t seriously start weighing the candidates until at least September, Brown resisted punching back at Whitman‟s many attack ads, which polls found to raise her negative ratings more than Brown‟s.178
Still, despite the level of resources at their disposal, the performance of Whitman‟s campaign team was roundly criticized. The fact that her advertisements consistently failed to improve her public image may suggest a flawed messaging approach or a flawed candidate, though the problem may have lain with the strength of Jerry Brown as a statewide candidate.
With a 30-year record of service in California, potential voters were likely to be relatively confident about who Brown was and what they thought about him. Thus, negative advertising – if it was based on what voters perceived as exaggerations or fictions – would more likely damage
Whitman‟s perceived credibility and integrity than damage Brown‟s public persona. Former
Angelides pollster Paul Maslin was more blunt, suggesting that the “moral of the story is that once the dogs don‟t like the dog food, all the money on God‟s Good Earth won‟t change that….All Jerry needed was enough to communicate in the fall to ice the deal-- but the truth is if he had spent nothing on paid communication he still wins pretty handily.”179
Controversies tainted both candidates; a tape from inside the Brown campaign recorded a staffer‟s voice calling Whitman a “whore,” while the media learned in early June that Whitman had employed an undocumented immigrant as her housekeeper for nine years despite her tough
177 Chang, Jack, “Whitman‟s Money Shaped Primary, UC Berkeley Panel Agrees.” Web blog post. Capitol Alert, Sacramento Bee, 21 January 2011.
Brown was elected to the governor‟s mansion, and Whitman and her campaign staff were criticized for an unfocused, extremely negative strategy that none of her consultants were willing to defend publicly in the months following the election (hence their absence from this study).181
In fact, it was controversy and personal attacks that drove the campaign‟s narrative more than substantive policy disagreements. In the final televised debate, the two candidates sparred over Whitman‟s personal wealth and the “whore” recording more passionately than they did about taxes. The issues were framed in very personal terms – Brown accused Whitman of seeking to enrich her fellow billionaires, while Whitman suggested that Brown was a career politician who was responsible for California‟s dire straits.182 The candidates ran on very traditional party platforms, focusing on taxes and immigration, but their identities seemed to matter more to pundits and voters than their policy disagreements. Brown ran on his experience as a governor, while Whitman ran on hers as a businesswoman. But given that the campaign staff and journalists who covered the race all seemed to analyze the outcome in terms of personal appeal and character flaws, it seems that policy took a back seat to personality in this election.
180 De Brito, Deia, “‟Textbook Example of How to Run a Bad Campaign.‟” Web blog post. Daily Report, California Watch, 24 January 2011.
Conclusions about California Politics
The eclectic nature of the last two elections has caused the four major candidates to employ very different messaging strategies in their quest for victory. Each candidate faced a unique political climate, and all four of them pursued a campaign that was shaped most strongly by the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents, as well as the temperaments of the candidate and his/her staff. Schwarzenegger had a great deal of money, a soaring approval rating, and his noteworthy incumbent/celebrity status, enabling him to control the airwaves through advertising and traditional news media. Angelides, in contrast, had nowhere near the money he needed to win, far less name recognition statewide, and a campaign that fought unsuccessfully for months to put a dent in the governor‟s armor. Whitman had an enormous personal fortune that allowed her to over-saturate the market, but seemed to undermine her ability to focus on a single message because she was able to air so many different ads simultaneously. Jerry Brown had the credibility and strength of incumbency without having held the governor‟s mansion in decades, enabling him to exploit the trust he had already established with the voters of California without taking the blame for the state‟s economic and fiscal downturn that doomed many other establishment politicians nationwide. This instant credibility that he brought to the race is probably what pushed Whitman to run such a negative campaign, because Brown was better known than she was. To win, she would have had to change Californians‟ impressions of their former governor. Brown also knew, given Whitman‟s wealth, that he couldn‟t outspend his opponent, and so had to pursue a long-term strategy of withstanding her attacks during the summer months.
Still, despite these varied circumstances, the basic structure of the electoral battlefield remained more or less constant. “California is a fairly static battleground,” Paul Maslin, a
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Democratic pollster and former strategist for Gray Davis and Phil Angelides, explains. “With the only interesting exception being the growing Latino vote, the fundamental media and geographic calculations remain the same.” Though having either a huge sum of resources
(Whitman) or a large lead (Schwarzenegger) in the final weeks of the campaign can enable a candidate to broaden his or her approach, reaching out to markets or voters removed from the mainstream thrust of the campaign, Democratic and Republican candidates running for statewide office in California seem to fight over the same swing voters. The “where” of campaign spending seems to be the constant, though; campaigns employ different messaging tactics, trying to control the narrative of the race, but as Maslin colorfully notes of Meg Whitman‟s defeat, “It‟s not a problem with where they put the dog food, the voters just don‟t want to eat it.”183
But it is the “where” of campaign spending that interests this study. Though messaging may vary depending on which voters or communities are targeted by the major parties, there is an empirical link between the volume of advertising and the voter turnout levels in that market.
As the previous review of the literature makes clear, voters feel more engaged in the race when one or both of the candidates vie for their affection, through TV spending, mail, and candidate visits, to name a few. Thus, using these state-level popular vote elections, I hope to draw some conclusions about where presidential candidates in a national popular vote campaign would choose to allocate their funds.
183 Phone interview, dated 3/3/11 70
Data: Observations
A summary of the 2006 and 2010 spending data can be found in Appendix B. Over $12 million were spent on advertising by the two candidates in the 2006 general election, compared to more than $70 million in 2010. Though the 2010 race was indeed much more expensive, this difference is deceptively large. In 2006, much of the candidates‟ funding was actually spent through their respective state party apparatuses, while in 2006 Whitman relied mostly on her own money, making the state GOP of little importance as an advertising structure. Similar to the dynamic of a presidential election, the major party nominees co-opt their state parties and use them as an additional legal entity through which money can be raised and spent. Unfortunately, this data was not immediately available for this study. However, as Schwarzenegger campaign strategist Reed Galen notes, the campaign staff that oversaw the Schwarzenegger campaign was also personally involved in the operations and spending decisions of the state party; thus, media spending would have continued in much the same proportion as reported by the campaign proper.184 So while the totals for the 2006 candidates may be small, the proportions spent on each market should be appropriate.
The most obvious fact is that in both elections, the Republican nominees dramatically outspent their Democratic opponents. In fact, Whitman and Schwarzenegger both spent almost as much in the Los Angeles market alone as Angelides and Brown, respectively, did in the entire state. This observation points to a large spending gap as well as to the preeminence of Los
Angeles as a crucial market. With over 7.3 million registered voters as of October, 2010, Los
Angeles has more potential voters than the next three largest markets – San Francisco-Oakland-
San Jose, San Diego, and Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto – combined. It actually includes the city of Los Angeles itself, Orange County (with the second most registered voters in the state),
184 Phone interview, dated 2/23/11 71 and San Bernadino County (the fifth most), to name a few. Los Angeles County actually has 4.4 million registered voters, more than San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, and San Jose combined. Thus, both Galen and Angelides strategist Paul Maslin argued that Los Angeles is the most important battleground in the state, with Galen going as far as to argue, “If you win Los
Angeles County, you are almost assured of winning the rest of the state.”185 The following graphs, presenting the proportions of each campaign‟s war chest that was devoted to each market, demonstrate the emphasis on the largest markets, particularly Los Angeles.
2010 Proportions of Candidate Spending 60.000% 50.000% 40.000% 30.000% 20.000% 10.000% 0.000% Brown Proportion
Whitman Proportion % ofTotal %Campaign Media Spending
Media Market
185 Phone interview, dated 2/23/11 72
2006 Proportions of Candidate Spending 50.000% 45.000% 40.000% 35.000% 30.000% 25.000% 20.000% 15.000% 10.000% 5.000% 0.000% Angelides Proportion
Arnold Proportion % ofTotal %Campaign Media Spending
Media Market
The problem with Los Angeles
Los Angeles as a data point does appear to bias this analysis. If California is to be taken as a miniature model of the United States, in order to draw conclusions about national popular vote strategy, then Los Angeles has no national analog. The market contains over 42% of all registered voters in the state, and obviously there is no metropolitan area in the United States that contains even close to 42% of the nationwide population. For some perspective, Los Angeles
County represented roughly 2.28% of all registered voters in the U.S. in the 2008 election.186
Los Angeles requires the largest share of gubernatorial campaign resources by far because it is larger than the next three largest California markets combined. I feared that it was biasing my results in favor of large cities because it is a uniquely significant market. So I redid the previous analysis of campaign spending excluding Los Angeles voters and media spending from the data set. The results can be found in Appendix D.
186 Boyle, Alan, “Voter Registration Smashes Records.” MSNBC, 31 October 2008.
Despite my apprehension, the presence of Los Angeles does not appear to alter the fundamental dynamics of campaign strategy very much. The next three largest markets – the
Bay Area, Sacramento, and San Diego – all received a disproportionate share of spending relative to their population in both elections, out-distancing all the other areas of the state. Thus, we can conclude that even in the absence of a mega-metropolis like Los Angeles, candidates will still invest heavily in television and radio advertising in densely populated markets.
The strongest correlation in either race, as indicated by the aforementioned graphs, was between the Democratic and Republican candidates‟ spending decisions. The candidates may have had different levels of available funds, but the data indicates that they matched each other in terms of proportions and targeted the same markets. The correlation between the Republican and Democratic per voter spending was calculated as 89% in 2010 and 91% in 2006, strongly positive in both cases. This has some interesting implications for a potential national race. One of the most significant criticisms of the Electoral College is that it causes candidates to fight for victory in a few select states. Battleground states, as has been noted earlier, are defined as such by both campaigns. The two major candidates have access to most of the same data, indicating which states could still be swung in either direction, and both of them allocate their resources to those states. It seems that a similar dynamic plays out in popular vote races. Both candidates seem to evaluate markets the same way, and both devote a higher proportion of their resources to the same markets which are considered the most important. For that matter, this pattern seems to play itself out in both election years as well. Paul Maslin, who has worked on multiple statewide races dating back to the first Gray Davis campaign in the 1990s, argued that “the fundamental media calculations and geographic calculations remain the same. Social media may diversify the approach, but the link between dollars and different regions is pretty static.” This, of course,
74 raises the question of how the candidates figure out which are the most important markets. This is the subject of the rest of this analysis.
Political Characteristics of Targeted Markets
The most obvious result of this data analysis is that markets with the largest populations
(or more importantly, the largest number of registered voters) garner the most candidate attention. In California, these are Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Sacramento, and San Diego, which are large media markets punctuated by cities. These four markets actually account for roughly 82% of the state‟s population. In 2010, they received over 90% of the candidates‟ media spending; in 2006, it was over 89%. This suggests a slight but significant bias towards large markets. Indeed, there was over a 98% correlation between the media spending of each of the four candidates and the number of registered voters in each market. The following graphs illustrate how candidate spending in each election varied by size of the market.
40000000 2010 Candidate Spending by Market
35000000 Population
30000000
25000000
20000000 Whitman $ 15000000
Media SpendingMedia Brown $ 10000000 Total $ 5000000
0 0 2000000 4000000 6000000 8000000 Media Market Population Size
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2006 Candidate Spending by Market
6000000 Population
5000000
4000000
3000000 Arnold $ Angelides $ 2000000
Media SpendingMedia Total $
1000000
0 0 2,000,000 4,000,000 6,000,000 8,000,000 Media Market Population Size
The similarity in the shape of these graphs is striking. It underscores the earlier point that campaign media strategy in California has not changed very much in the past two cycles.
There were a number of other results related to voter registration. When measuring spending in terms of raw dollars spent, the correlation between candidate spending and the number of registered independents is between 97 and 100% for all four candidates. However, this correlation is slightly lower than that between the spending and the number of registered voters. This suggests that candidate spending is driven fundamentally by the absolute number of voters in a market, rather than a consideration of how many independent voters exist. Because the number of registered independents and the number of total registered voters are themselves highly correlated across markets, the very high correlation between independent voters and spending can be explained as circumstantial. It is true that just measuring independents is an over-simplification of how candidates identify swing voters, but this result is still surprising nonetheless. Indeed, when calculating standard deviation, there is less variation in candidate dollars per voter across media markets than there is in dollars per independent, dollars per base
76 voter (Democrats for the Democratic candidate, Republicans for the GOP candidate), or dollars per base-or-independent voter.
What is more interesting is spending per voter, as it seems obvious that candidates would spend more money on advertisements where there are more voters to see them. Still, there was a significant correlation between size of the market and spending per voter for all the candidates, particularly Whitman at 68%. Not only did the candidates spend more in larger markets, but they spent more per voter. This implies that statewide candidates in California generally found larger markets to be a more efficient use of their resources, and concentrated a disproportionate share of their attention on these populations. Candidates generally spent more dollars per voter in larger markets than smaller ones, implying that residents of more populated markets receive a disproportionate share of candidate attention. Angelides spent significantly more per voter in the four largest markets than he did anywhere else in the state. There are a number of possible explanations for this – parties may have more useful demographic-targeting information about these voters because their markets receive more attention from advertising firms, other campaign activities could be less effective in urban areas – but the most compelling is that these markets remain the most cost-effective options for political candidates. Though Los Angeles is one of the most expensive media markets in the country, it is still a very efficient way to broadcast one‟s message to a disproportionate number of households.
Indeed, the few differences in the strategies of the 2006 and 2010 nominees can generally be explained by the dynamics of their respective races. Meg Whitman increased the proportional size of her spending advantage in Los Angeles, while Schwarzenegger‟s more or less remained constant. This makes sense given her position in the race and her cash advantage. Desperate to close her deficit in the polls, Whitman needed to find additional voters and had the money to
77 remain on the air in the Los Angeles market as long as she wanted. Schwarzenegger was comfortably ahead for most of the campaign, and didn‟t need to expend additional resources on this market. Meanwhile, in 2006 Schwarzenegger‟s highest dollars per voter totals were in the four in-state markets with the highest proportion of independents – the Bay Area, San Diego,
Eureka, and Los Angeles. This is logical given his campaign‟s centrist bent, as well as the need for a Republican candidate to win the independent vote to counter the sizeable Democratic registration advantage in the state – over 2 ¼ million.
Meanwhile, despite being heavily outspent across the state, Brown‟s media spending more or less equaled Whitman‟s in just three markets: Chico-Redding, Bakersfield, and Fresno-
Visalia. These are among the most Republican leaning in-state markets in California, with partisan differentials (% Democrat - % Republican) ranging from -2% to -11%. Despite all of the bluster surrounding Whitman‟s war chest, the total was still finite, and in a blue state like
California, Whitman‟s strategists likely realized that they needed to devote most of their attention to bluer areas, hoping that they could carry their base even without giving them their full attention. Brown, on the other hand, had a lead and enough resources to be more aggressive with his campaign‟s approach. In Gray Davis‟s first campaign, his lead in the polls gave his strategists, as Paul Maslin remembers it, “the luxury of broadening their approach in the last few weeks. They had more money, had a lead, and could afford to appeal to a more diverse voter base, including starting a Republicans for Davis group.” This dynamic played itself out with
Brown‟s campaign as well, as he sought as large a victory as possible (to guard against unexpectedly close returns in more traditionally Democratic areas as well as to seek a strong governing mandate).
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Overall, this data suggests that candidates will spend more money on advertising in larger markets; more importantly, they will spend more money per voter on advertising in larger markets, suggesting a perception that these markets are the most efficient way of reaching enough voters to win the election. Additionally, it suggests that the proportion of registered independents can be a determining factor in campaign spending, if in fact the candidate targets the center of the electorate. In California, with the large Democratic voter advantage, Brown and
Angelides would not have needed to win the independent vote in order to win the state, provided they carried the lion‟s share of their own party. Finally, the candidates appear to try to match each other market by market. This could be the result of relatively unvaried gubernatorial campaign logic in California, or it might suggest that candidates are very concerned with the behavior of their opponents. Campaign strategists assume that advertising will improve their standing with the voters, which makes sense given how much money they allocate to this pursuit.
Thus, strategists choose to counter their opponents in each media market because, based on this assumption, unanswered media spending will improve their relative standing in the electorate.
Economic Characteristics of Targeted Markets
I had hypothesized that candidates would tend to target more wealthy markets. Previous research has indicated that higher-income individuals tend to vote at higher rates, and it seemed logical to infer that candidates would tend to focus their attention on voters with the highest propensity to turn out. Of course, these measurements are a bit tenuous, as many of these markets encompass a very economically diverse area. The Bay Area market, for example, includes Marin County –with the highest per capita income in the state – as well as Lake County, which has a per capita income $30,000 less than Marin. Still, markets with an overall higher per capita income should be expected to contain a higher share of wealthier residents, and make
79 them more appealing to candidates who hope to not only persuade voters, but those voters in particular who have the highest likelihood of turning out on election day.
Indeed, my data seems to indicate exactly such a trend, which can be seen below.
2006 Total $/Voter $1.00 $0.90 y = 0.0424x - 0.3531 R² = 0.382 $0.80 $0.70 $0.60 $0.50 2006 Total $/Voter
$0.40 $ PerVoter $ $0.30 Linear (2006 Total $/Voter) $0.20 $0.10 $- $- $5 $10 $15 $20 $25 $30 $35 Per Capita Income (in thousands)
2010 Total $/Voter $6.00
$5.00 y = 0.1748x - 0.9658 $4.00 R² = 0.2244
$3.00
2010 Total $/Voter $ perVoter $ $2.00 Linear (2010 Total $/Voter)
$1.00
$- $- $5 $10 $15 $20 $25 $30 $35 Per Capita Income (in thousands)
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In 2006, the correlations between both candidates‟ per-voter spending and per capita income were both over 60%. In fact, the two numbers were almost identical, reinforcing the notion that the candidates evaluated markets in much the same way, but the significance of the correlations suggests that wealth is a factor that campaign strategists either overtly or implicitly consider. In
2010, the data still suggests a positive but slightly weaker relationship, especially for Jerry
Brown. This finding is actually somewhat surprising, as I would have suspected that Brown would be more drawn to wealthier markets in an effort to court potential donors. I theorized that targeting richer areas could also be attractive to campaigns because advertisements could not only facilitate potential support but also potential contributions; and Brown‟s campaign actually relied on outside donations as opposed to Whitman who almost entirely self-financed. However, richer voters also tend to be more Republican-leaning than the population as a whole, so it is conceivable that Whitman was more interested in targeting potential wealthy voters who would be more amenable to her policy positions and also less turned off by her own lavish wealth.
Ethnic/Racial Characteristics of Targeted Markets
To measure these qualities, I first obtained 2000 Census data on the numbers of whites,
African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Latinos in each county, and totaled them within each media market. I then simplified these numbers by calculating each group‟s percentage of the entire market demographic. For comparison‟s sake, the statewide breakdown is roughly 54% white, 30% Latino, 10% Asian-American, and 6% African-American. I then calculated the correlation between per-voter spending by each candidate and the percent of each racial group in that population. The results are shown in the table below:
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Correlations Between $/Voter and % Ethnic Group of Market Population
Whitman $/voter Brown $/voter Arnold $/voter Angelides $/voter
% White -19% -31% -9% -15%
% Black 34% 32% 19% 29%
% Asian 64% 62% 65% 72%
% Latino -5% 10% -14% -11%
These figures seem to suggest that the highest correlation is between spending per voter and the percentage of Asians in a given market, for all of the candidates. However, my next step was to calculate the correlations between the size of a market (in terms of registered voters) and the percentage of each of the ethnic/racial groups. I found a negative correlation with whites, who make up a larger share of the population in more sparsely populated, rural communities.
This data suggested that Asians are more prevalent in larger markets, as are African-Americans to a lesser extent. Therefore, the above figures may be capturing a second order effect, implying that these results are merely a side-effect of candidates‟ real focus on densely populated areas.
Thus, one would expect that any racial or ethnic bias in candidate strategy would merely be the result of a concentration on metropolitan media markets. This is somewhat surprising, given the emphasis placed on the important Latino swing vote by many California political observers and strategists. However, this emphasis on appealing to Latino voters may be found in the actual messages expressed by candidates‟ advertising, rather than in where they choose to air them.
Furthermore, the dynamic of appealing to certain racial or ethnic groups might be altered by the presence of a minority candidate in the race. This small sample size of two elections cannot account for this potential bias.
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Underlying this whole analysis is the understanding that the geographic placement of advertisements is not the whole story. It is also crucial to note what these advertisements actually say, and to judge which voters they might be designed to appeal to. The battle to persuade a voter isn‟t measured in terms of dollars – citizens don‟t choose candidates based on the volume of advertisements they saw, but based on how those messages may have convinced them. However, message, policy, and narrative vary in every race at every level – there is no way to control for or predict what candidates might say to the camera. Instead, this model just looks at where they get to say it, which presumably increases their chance of saying the right thing to the right person at the right time.
Who Gets Left Out?
There were three media markets in which some of the candidates did not spend any money. In 2006, neither Angelides nor Schwarzenegger spent any money in the out-of-state markets of Medford-Klamath Falls, Reno, and Yuma-El Centro. In 2010, Whitman spent under
$3,300 in Medford-Klamath Falls and Reno, while Brown spent under $2,200 in Yuma-El
Centro. This total represents less than 0.01% of all media spending during the 2010 campaign.
All of these markets are centered in other states, making it less cost-effective for advertising as a majority of viewers would be Oregon, Nevada, or Arizona voters. However, the decision to not spend any money on advertising in these counties is surprising as they still represent a fair number of potential voters. The three markets combined have 102,186 registered voters, or more than the Eureka media market in which the two candidates spent a combined $318,740 on advertising. It is possible that the campaigns may have spent a sizeable amount on other voter outreach activities in these areas, such as direct mail, because they would not want to waste money on exposure to non-Californians. However, these voters were essentially relegated to
83 spectator markets much like residents of non-swing states in presidential elections. Obviously this dynamic played itself out on a much smaller scale – together these markets represent less than 0.6% of California‟s registered voters. But it still points to an interesting facet of statewide races, and its translation to a national race also has some interesting implications.
Looking to the in-state markets, it is surprising to see that every potential voter actually saw a decent amount of campaign advertising. Every in-state market in the state received at least
$1.79 per voter in media purchasing by the two campaigns in 2010, with one exception – Palm
Springs – which as Appendix A notes has its population overstated by my data model, so this outlier is not cause for alarm. Though some smaller markets did not receive as much money per voter as the larger ones, it is clear from the data that the campaigns did not ignore any of them.
Every in-state market in 2010 received over $300,000 in candidate spending, which indicates a deliberate decision on the part of these strategists to reach all of those voters. However, these smaller markets did suffer from under-representation. The markets of Bakersfield, Chico-
Redding, Eureka, Fresno-Visalia, Monterey-Salinas, Palm Springs, and Santa Barbara-Santa
Maria-San Luis Obispo account for just over 17% of the state‟s registered voters. However, they received only 9.5% of the media spending in 2010 and 10.7% in 2006. This reinforces the trend discussed earlier that campaign spending is skewed towards larger markets, because the potential to reach more voters draws candidate attention. However, unlike under the Electoral College, where non-battleground states are completely isolated from all campaign activities (besides spillover from out-of-state markets), these markets still do receive some substantial amount of advertising.
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Data: Discussion
Obviously, the biggest takeaway is that markets with larger populations will take a greater share of candidates‟ resources. Though these markets are generally more costly to run advertisements, experience with gubernatorial campaigns in California suggests that candidates will devote the resources necessary to tap into this pool of potential voters. Some of the largest markets in the United States – Philadelphia, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Cleveland-Akron, Miami-Ft.
Lauderdale, Denver, Orlando-Daytona Beach, and St. Louis, to name a few – are already the recipients of a disproportionate share of campaign spending. Though Ohio, Florida, and
Pennsylvania benefit disproportionately from the Electoral College structure, it is apparent that given their large amount of densely-populated markets, they would still receive a large amount of attention from presidential candidates. However, a popular vote election would lead candidates to focus their attention on heretofore ignored regions, particularly those with large media markets. In fact, of the ten largest markets according to Nielsen, only one – Philadelphia
– already gets a lot of attention from candidates. Most of the largest markets are ignored under the Electoral College, as residents of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco,
Boston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and Houston are all stuck in spectator states.187 These may be some of the largest population centers in America, but presidential candidates do not seem to care how any of these citizens vote on Election Day. This would presumably change under a direct vote structure.
One thing that might stay the same is the pattern of battlegrounds. Under the Electoral
College, as has been noted before, Democrats and Republicans spend money in roughly the same proportions in the same select markets in an attempt to win crucial swing states. However,
187 Nielsen Company, “Designated Market Area Sizes.” 27 September 2008.
California gubernatorial campaign strategy seems markedly similar in this respect – both candidates targeted the same markets, and seemed to assess the importance of each market in roughly the same way, contributing the same rough proportion of their campaign funds to each area. The key difference, of course, is that they matched each other everywhere in California; every market received some advertising money (with the exception of the out-of-state markets), but there were a handful of large markets that were focal points for Democratic and Republican candidates. Thus, we can assume that presidential candidates in a direct election scenario would spread their money around, but that any market that received advertising from one candidate would likely also receive money from the other. The cause appears to be different – candidates will want to maintain relative parity in terms of message and narrative instead of statewide popular vote margins, but the fundamental pattern seems the same. In this respect, this could be a positive development for presidential elections, as voters likely benefit from hearing from both sides of the race. Although campaign advertisements may be misleading or uninformative, they still contribute to a dialogue that can allow citizens to make more informed decisions at the polls.
At least they may gain stronger opinions about the two candidates that may actually motivate them to vote when they otherwise wouldn‟t.
Another key point is regarding the distinction of in-state versus out-of-state markets. In a statewide race, residents of other states do not matter to candidates, and thus they bias media spending away from border counties like Siskiyou and Imperial. However, this observation does not apply to a presidential election. Media markets do not overlap with neighboring countries, and so all media spending would become perfectly efficient – every listener or viewer of a candidate‟s commercial would be a potential voter. Thus, the biases against markets like Reno and Yuma-El Centro will not apply to a national contest.
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Furthermore, the candidates actually advertised in every single market. Though the level of advertising varied, thousands of dollars were poured into every available market by both campaigns, which is a substantial difference. This raises the question: how much money must be spent in a market for it to be considered “targeted,” in the sense that it would increase turnout?
Obviously, airing a single commercial in a market won‟t make many voters feel involved or passionate about the candidates, so at what volume of spending does presidential campaigning actually boost turnout? This is a subject that requires further study, as the answer will further clarify this project‟s analysis of campaign attention as a scaled phenomenon that is presumed to have a scaled effect on turnout. It is thus unclear, based on current scholarly inquiry, to what extent a smaller investment in advertising and campaign outreach in a particular campaign would bolster turnout. Still, it seems difficult to argue that more voters will feel engaged if advertising is more spread out. Compared to the status quo, in which dozens of states were entirely ignored by the presidential nominees, this could only be an improvement in the civic engagement of potential voters.
Translating this into a presidential campaign, it is possible that a sufficiently-financed candidate would seek to reach every single voter in the United States, which is more or less the optimal scenario under my theoretical model to increase turnout. It is important to keep in mind, though, that candidates might not behave in exactly this way in a national election. In California,
Republican and Democratic candidates should be expected to behave in roughly the same way, as there are only four major metropolitan areas to focus their attention on. With only 11 in-state markets to choose from, we should not expect much variation from the candidates in terms of emphasizing some markets over others. In a national race, this dynamic might change. With
215 Designated Market Areas nationwide, candidates may have more variation in which markets
87 they choose to target. It is possible that they may actually have the money necessary to advertise in every single market, but their resources will be limited to some extent, and some markets will be more amenable to that party‟s message than others. Given these factors, it would not be surprising for the nominees to not match each other precisely, especially as advertising may be more effective in markets that one‟s opponent has not yet targeted (if only one candidate is running advertisements in a market, allowing his/her message to reach viewers without a rebuttal or counterpoint, it can only help to sway undecided voters).
Additionally, it is possible that under a national popular vote structure, TV advertising would become less of a focus. Reed Galen noted, “TV and radio are passive means of communication, because they go to everyone, but mail is more targeted,” because it can be sent to individual voters who the campaign identifies as on the fence but likely to vote.188 He was not the only strategist I spoke to who seemed unconvinced of the effectiveness of television. Don
Sipple argued that “voters watch less and less television,” and that a large share of viewership has been eliminated by Tivo and the internet. In fact, despite having worked on Bob Dole‟s presidential campaign, he seemed suspicious of the proposition that television spending is a good use of a candidate‟s resources on a high-profile race. As you go “up the food chain,” the news media covers the race more closely and thus eliminates much of the effectiveness of advertising;
Sipple suggested that the 70-80% of candidate money that goes towards television “doesn‟t do a whole lot.” The geographic specification of cable and radio advertising seems to moderate some of these concerns, though, and Sipple pointedly disputed the notion that a national popular vote election would cause candidates to do national media buys, because money specifically targeted towards swing voters will give campaigns more bang for their buck.189 Still, there is a clear
188 Phone interview dated 2/23/11 189 Phone interview, dated 2/7/11 88 correlation between turnout and television spending in presidential campaigns, and it is quite unlikely that campaign strategists will depart from the longstanding expectation of widespread television advertising. The fact that higher level strategists on these campaigns, like Galen and
Angelides, spent time every single day evaluating how best to spend money on television advertising, combined with the fact that television still consumes the vast majority of campaign resources, suggests that candidates presume that television is still the most effective way to reach a wide audience. Given that this spending will still be geographically-targeted, it can still be informative for those political scientists looking to study where candidates will spend money.
But tactics may shift somewhat, and direct mail may be an important part of that. As
Professor Thad Kousser notes, “Campaign spending is either broadcast so widely that it is hard to target at a specific audience, or it is targeted at a micro-level. For example, 12,000 pieces of mail were sent to swing voters, by labor groups in the last week of the 2010 election.”190 Swing voters live everywhere – there are no towns or counties or media markets filled with nothing but undecided moderates, and so the most efficient use of campaign funds may turn out to be targeted mailings rather than national or even cable television advertising. Practitioners have in recent years began to reexamine the efficacy of direct mail as a tool for both fundraising and voter contact. Anil Mammen, president of a Democratic mail firm, argues, “Direct mail is actually becoming more prevalent. It‟s a larger chunk of the advertising budget to a lot of these campaigns. As the television viewing audience becomes more fractured, direct mail actually does something more effectively, relative to television, than it did 10 or 15 years ago.”
Furthermore, several other direct mail consultants insist that, despite the draw of exciting, new technologies, direct mail allows for more precise targeting of specific demographics, as well as
190 Phone interview, dated 2/9/11 89 efficacy of reaching older voters.191 It would also seem that despite its high costs (though nowhere near the level of funding required by television), mail still has the potential to reach a wide number of voters, as a recent survey found that 85% of respondents review their mail daily.192 Still, this would dispute previous scholarly analysis of the effectiveness of direct mail.
Gerber and Green determined that direct mail has limited influence on turnout, far less than door- to-door canvassing, although slightly more than telephone contact.193 Later study furthered that negative mailings might actually depress turnout.194
New media strategies are unlikely to supplant the traditional pattern, spending on television and radio supplemented by direct mail, any time soon. Despite the heavy media focus on the Obama Campaign‟s historic use of social networking and Internet advertising, Senator
Obama still spent very heavily on broadcast television, which can reach a broader audience more aggressively than Internet ads. However, as campaign strategists have increasing access to new technologies and information that allows more precise targeting of crucial demographics, the scale may tilt somewhat away from more broad-reaching approaches like television advertising and towards direct mail and other, narrower expenditures.195
191 “Shop Talk: The Mailbox is Still Where It‟s At.” Campaigns and Elections, 25 May 2010.
My study does suffer from a static model of campaign spending that looks at how much in total was spent in a given market from July through November, rather than examining the fluidity of spending as the candidates‟ relative focus shifted week by week. Don Sipple explained that “sometimes [a campaign] can afford to be on the air in San Diego or Sacramento before Los Angeles”196 because of relative costs. All campaigns are limited by their available funds, and sometimes choose to scale back advertising purchases in certain regions if those markets are depleting their funds or if polling indicates that they already have a comfortable advantage there. Maslin suggested that a Democratic candidate could consider going lighter on
San Francisco or delaying an advertising buy if their opponent was stretched for cash. Galen emphasized this problem most pointedly in his description of the day-to-day operations within a gubernatorial campaign. After initially determining the campaign‟s vote goals for individual counties and media markets, his job was to analyze tracking polls and constantly reassess whether an advertising buy should be increased or scaled back. In addition, he mentioned the importance of at least maintaining a base level of advertising, because there “is something to be said for repetition.”197 All of these first-hand accounts indicate that spending levels vary week- by-week as well as market-by-market. Though conventional political wisdom is that most voters do not pay much attention until after Labor Day, there has been little conclusive study of how the timing and repetition of television and radio advertising affects voters.
196 Phone interview, dated 2/7/11 197 Phone interview, dated 2/23/11 91
Conclusion
Despite its shortcomings, this model of California elections does actually provide a compelling look at the dynamics of a popular vote election. We cannot know for certain how presidential candidates might behave if the Electoral College was finally eliminated, but the microcosm of a gubernatorial election does provide a rational basis for our expectations. In fact, it is extremely troubling that so many arguments have been made regarding the presumed advantages or complications of the National Popular Vote proposal without any systematic attempts to predict its actual effects on campaign strategy. Examining strategy in statewide races provides a useful framework for advancing this debate.
Ultimately, it seems that the National Popular Vote proposal would lead, as many have expected, to a wider distribution of campaign resources. With the increased efficiency of media markets and with state boundaries no longer representing meaningful distinctions for presidential candidates, advertisements will be used to reach out to more than just the one-third of all voters currently involved in these campaigns. In California, almost every voter received some candidate attention through television and radio spending, even though the level of this spending varied by market size. Given the well-established correlation of campaign spending and increased civic participation, these observations seem to validate the hypothesis that the NPV plan would substantially increase turnout by involving more media markets in the campaign discourse, which is used to both persuade and mobilize, increasing the number of potential voters who are exposed to campaign efforts which have been empirically shown to increase turnout in presidential elections. However, it does seem that campaigns would focus their attention most heavily on metropolitan media markets, appealing to these more densely populated areas in an effort to reach as many voters as possible. This could certainly bias policy discussions during
92 these campaigns towards issues affecting urban and suburban voters, though more research is required regarding the impact of geographic campaign focus and issue emphasis.
These findings do validate several scholarly perspectives on campaign strategy. Whether or not campaign spending actually enhances the chances of winning for a candidate (and as noted earlier, some observers believed that Whitman‟s media blitzkrieg alienated many voters), it seems that campaigns act rationally in targeting the voters most likely to provide a path to victory. Under the status quo, spending is concentrated in states whose uncertain outcomes can swing the Electoral College‟s majority. In a popular vote setting, campaigns try to reach every possible voter, but do focus their attention heavily on concentrated markets where more voters will see a single advertisement. My findings in California also reaffirm Shaw, Goux, Hopkins, and others‟ insistence that media markets play a major role in shaping campaign strategy, as a majority of resources are devoted to television and radio broadcast. Furthermore,
At the very least, every vote would count equally, and all citizens would actually have a chance to impact the outcome of the election. My model minimizes the emphasis of this impact on turnout, choosing instead to take a limited perspective and try to find more meaningful, direct impacts of Electoral College reform on voters – through campaigns. But this effect still exists for many voters, who are discouraged from participating due to residing in safe states. I know this from personal experience. I first began researching the National Popular Vote plan four years ago, on the day I received my acceptance letter from Haverford College, as an intern for my local New York State Assemblywoman, Sandra Galef. She was co-sponsoring the bill, and asked me to examine its merits and its potential effect on our state. It was immediately apparent that any change to the Electoral College couldn‟t make New York‟s position any worse in presidential campaigns; during the 2004 race, deemed one of the closest in decades, not a single
93 candidate advertisement was seen on my television. Our community‟s voice would not be heard, and it was obvious that the Kerry and Bush campaigns didn‟t particularly care. The opposite was true when I got to Haverford. When I volunteered with the Obama campaign in 2008, they emphasized repeatedly that Pennsylvania would be the most decisive state in that election.
Campaign staffers told us that our efforts were important because of the state were in – I could have just as easily been in New York in 2008, but because I switched residences, presidential candidates suddenly wanted to invest time in persuading me.
Is a national popular vote the best way to conduct our presidential elections? This project does not seek to answer that question – I have not engaged with other vote-counting ideas, like rank voting or a proportional allocation of electoral votes. But it is clear that the NPV plan is better than the status quo. Only a handful of states are meaningful, and their citizens are the only ones taken notice of by candidates. And they are chosen fairly arbitrarily. There is nothing inherently more representative about Ohio voters than New York voters – each individual is distinct.
The only states that should be hesitant of such a change would be those whose perpetual swing-state status gives them a disproportionate share of candidate attention. However, states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida are sufficiently populated that their residents would still receive a great deal of attention from these candidates, although this advertising could perhaps be more limited to media markets surrounding major cities. Experience in California indicates that densely-populated markets and metropolitan areas will draw a great deal of advertising and attention from both parties – candidates go wherever they can find voters. Though this might indicate a bias against small, rural communities, it is important to note two key points. First, these areas are ignored in the status quo; as noted earlier, small states rarely if ever receive a
94 great deal of candidate attention, because the electoral vote prize of winning the state is not large enough to tempt campaigns to spend precious resources there. Second, sparsely populated areas of California did in fact receive advertising. Even though the proportion of advertising was less than in metropolitan communities, candidates aired their commercials all over the state, because every potential voter mattered. Again, this suggests that further research is required regarding how much campaign attention (How many contacts? How many dollars spent? How many ads aired?) is necessary to boost turnout in a given area. Furthermore, scholars should examine how the medium and content of different advertisements might affect turnout in different ways.
Gerber and Green have already performed some of this research, comparing the effectiveness of different get-out-the-vote strategies by state campaigns.
Obviously, the largest ignored states like New York, Texas, and California would benefit tremendously from this shift, as they all contain enormous media markets filled with potential voters for both parties. This bias towards larger populations should increase the chances of the
National Popular Vote plan‟s ultimate passage, as these states would be able to contribute their combined 122 electoral votes towards the necessary 270. However, this assumes that state legislators will act rationally to serve their constituents‟ interest in garnering presidential attention to the state‟s interests. In actuality, their record has been more mixed. In general, voting on the NPV plan has broken down on party lines. Republican governors have vetoed the plan after Democrat-controlled legislatures passed it in California, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and
Vermont.198 In part, this can likely be attributed to suspicion that this plan is an insidious attempt by Democrats to undermine the results of the 2000 election, or broader concerns about increased federal control of elections. Some state legislators may respond to party loyalty over
198 “State Action on National Popular Vote.” National Conference of State Legislatures, 25 March 2011.
Responding to criticism of the plan from his own party, former Michigan GOP Chairman Saul
Anuzis wrote, “I believe we are a „center-right‟ nation. A national vote system would give our center-right coalition a greater voice in electing the President. Rather than having to campaign in battleground states only, every one of our coalition‟s members would matter.”199 The debate over which party would benefit more from eliminating the Electoral College is far from decided.
Though a direct vote campaign might focus more on urban areas that traditionally lean
Democratic, a sudden burst of attention by both parties in communities that have previously been shunned by presidential politics could have unexpected and unpredictable results in terms of which voters it might mobilize.
The National Popular Vote system would enhance America‟s presidential campaigns, by involving more voters in more states. The occupant of the White House would have to truly represent voters in every state, who were all involved in the campaign through advertising, grassroots activism, and direct mailing. The policy implications of such a change are debatable, but the value of a more diverse and involved electorate should be apparent. As NPV bills continue to advance in legislatures across the country, politicians, pundits, and strategists will have to grapple more concretely with the consequences of bidding adieu to the Electoral College.
But we should not fear the unknown; though America has never had a popular vote election, there is no reason to fear an election that involves more of the nation. Further, as this project has attempted to demonstrate, such a campaign might well mimic the strategies and dynamics of statewide contests. If the Electoral College is bypassed successfully, and the longstanding
199 Anuzis, Saul. "National Popular Vote – Why I Support It." Message to Michigan Republicans & Conservative Activists. 29 Mar. 2010.
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Appendix A: Media Markets by County
Media Market County Bakersfield Kern* Butte Shasta Chico-Redding Glenn Tehama Modoc Trinity Eureka Del Norte Humboldt Fresno Mariposa Fresno-Visalia Kings Merced Madera Tulare Inyo San Bernadino Los Angeles Los Angeles Ventura Orange Medford-Klamath Falls, OR** Siskiyou Monterey San Benito Monterey-Salinas Santa Cruz Palm Springs Riverside* Alpine Mono Reno, NV** Lassen Amador San Joaquin Calaveras Sierra Colusa Stanislaus Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto El Dorado Sutter Nevada Tuolumne Placer Yolo Plumas Yuba Sacramento San Diego San Diego Alameda San Francisco Contra Costa San Mateo Lake Santa Clara San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose Marin Solano* Mendocino Sonoma Napa Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo Santa Barbara Yuma-El Centro, AZ** Imperial * Riverside is not contained entirely within the Palm Springs market; a minority of the population is actually served by the Los Angeles market. However, without any way to delineate the demographics of these two portions of the county, my data analysis assumes that all of Riverside is contained in the Palm Springs market. ** Represents markets in which the majority of the population reside outside of California, referred to as “out-of-state” markets
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Appendix B – Basic Campaign Spending Data 2006 Registered Arnold Angelides Total Media Market Arnold $ Angelides $ Total $ Voters $/Voter $/Voter $/Voter Bakersfield 116,770.00 35,984.75 152,754.75 311,585 0.37 0.12 0.490250654 Chico-Redding 84,902.00 34,425.00 119,327.00 268,740 0.32 0.13 0.444023964 Eureka 53,578.00 15,737.75 69,315.75 90,196 0.59 0.17 0.768501375 Fresno-Visalia 275,168.00 105,408.50 380,576.50 752,383 0.37 0.14 0.505828149 Los Angeles 3,538,984.00 1,745,811.00 5,284,795.00 7,310,912 0.48 0.24 0.722863987 Medford-Klamath Falls, OR 25,919 0.00 0.00 0 Monterey-Salinas 135,130.00 51,012.75 186,142.75 334,074 0.40 0.15 0.557190173 Palm Springs 179,420.00 179,420.00 857,839 0.21 0.00 0.209153466 Reno, NV 21,310 0.00 0.00 0 Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto 774,720.00 428,801.75 1,203,521.75 1,826,203 0.42 0.23 0.659029555 San Diego 778,967.00 378,033.25 1,157,000.25 1,442,161 0.54 0.26 0.802268436 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose 2,270,420.00 861,513.25 3,131,933.25 3,634,643 0.62 0.24 0.861689374 Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-SLO 153,387.00 46,639.50 200,026.50 354,961 0.43 0.13 0.563516837 Yuma-El Centro, AZ 54,957 0.00 0.00 0 Total 8,361,446.00 3,703,367.50 12,064,813.50 17,285,883 0.483715295 0.21424231 0.697957605 2010 Media Market Whitman $ Brown $ Total $ Registered Voters Whitman $/Voter Brown $/Voter Total $/Voter Bakersfield 433,947.10 400,999.05 834,946.15 311,585 1.39 1.29 2.679673765 Chico-Redding 247,506.49 233,815.90 481,322.39 268,740 0.92 0.87 1.791033676 Eureka 219,722.40 99,018.50 318,740.90 90,196 2.44 1.10 3.533869573 Fresno-Visalia 1,227,869.82 1,274,186.00 2,502,055.82 752,383 1.63 1.69 3.325508179 Los Angeles 24,840,874.95 12,780,207.30 37,621,082.25 7,310,912 3.40 1.75 5.145880876 Medford-Klamath Falls, OR 1,564.00 1,564.00 25,919 0.06 0.00 0.060341834 Monterey-Salinas 544,253.45 312,642.70 856,896.15 334,074 1.63 0.94 2.564989044 Palm Springs 501,562.40 305,878.75 807,441.15 857,839 0.58 0.36 0.941250223 Reno, NV 1,705.10 1,705.10 21,310 0.08 0.00 0.080014078 Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto 4,697,495.51 2,350,589.80 7,048,085.31 1,826,203 2.57 1.29 3.859420508 San Diego 3,785,632.00 2,062,471.57 5,848,103.57 1,442,161 2.62 1.43 4.055097572 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose 7,900,305.40 4,959,255.50 12,859,560.90 3,634,643 2.17 1.36 3.538053366 Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-SLO 548,332.70 321,090.20 869,422.90 354,961 1.54 0.90 2.449347675 Yuma-El Centro, AZ 2,191.80 2,191.80 54,957 0.00 0.04 0.03988209 Total 44,950,771.32 25,102,347.07 70,053,118.39 17,285,883.00 2.600432464 1.452187723 4.052620187
Appendix C – Other Market Characteristics
% Partisan Media Market # of Independents Independent Diff. Per Capita Income Bakersfield 51,053 0.163849 -0.08777 $15,760.00 Chico-Redding 51,295 0.190872 -0.1132 $17,176.91 Eureka 19,582 0.217105 0.134585 $16,727.58 Fresno-Visalia 100,142 0.1331 -0.02215 $14,990.52 Los Angeles 1,475,346 0.201801 0.146381 $21,635.79 Medford-Klamath Falls, OR 4,915 0.189629 -0.07099 $17,570.00 Monterey-Salinas 55,965 0.167523 0.312488 $22,432.89 Palm Springs 147,237 0.171637 -0.05579 $18,689.00 Reno, NV 4,421 0.207461 -0.15237 $17,351.07 Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto 321,211 0.17589 0.022162 $20,402.01 San Diego 334,514 0.231953 -0.00345 $22,926.00 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose 854,740 0.235165 0.312879 $30,686.60 Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-SLO 70,323 0.198115 0.035474 $22,598.23 Yuma-El Centro, AZ 9,952 0.181087 0.250196 $13,239.00
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Appendix D: Without LA 2010 Registered % of % of Media Market Whitman $ Brown $ Total $ Voters Population Spending
Bakersfield $433,947.10 $400,999.05 $834,946.15 311,585 3.12% 2.57% Chico-Redding $ 247,506.49 $233,815.90 $ 481,322.39 268,740 2.69% 1.48% Eureka $219,722.40 $99,018.50 $318,740.90 90,196 0.90% 0.98% Fresno-Visalia $1,227,869.82 $1,274,186.00 $2,502,055.82 752,383 7.54% 7.71% Medford-Klamath Falls, OR $1,564.00 $ - $1,564.00 25,919 0.26% 0.00% Monterey-Salinas $544,253.45 $ 312,642.70 $856,896.15 334,074 3.35% 2.64% Palm Springs $501,562.40 $ 305,878.75 $807,441.15 857,839 8.60% 2.49% Reno, NV $ 1,705.10 $ - $1,705.10 21,310 0.21% 0.01% Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto $ 4,697,495.51 $2,350,589.80 $7,048,085.31 1,826,203 18.31% 21.73% San Diego $ 3,785,632.00 $2,062,471.57 $5,848,103.57 1,442,161 14.46% 18.03% San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose $ 7,900,305.40 $4,959,255.50 $12,859,560.90 3,634,643 36.44% 39.65% Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-SLO $ 548,332.70 $321,090.20 $869,422.90 354,961 3.56% 2.68% Yuma-El Centro, AZ $ - $2,191.80 $ 2,191.80 54,957 0.55% 0.01%
Total $ 20,109,896.37 $12,322,139.77 $ 32,432,036.14 9,974,971 100.00% 100.00%
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2006 Registered % of % of Media Market Arnold $ Angelides $ Total $ Voters Population Spending Bakersfield $116,770.00 $35,984.75 $ 152,754.75 311,585 3.12% 2.25% Chico-Redding $84,902.00 $34,425.00 $ 119,327.00 268,740 2.69% 1.76% Eureka $53,578.00 $15,737.75 $ 69,315.75 90,196 0.90% 1.02% Fresno-Visalia $275,168.00 $105,408.50 $ 380,576.50 752,383 7.54% 5.61% Medford-Klamath Falls, OR $ - $ - $ - 25,919 0.26% 0.00% Monterey-Salinas $ 135,130.00 $51,012.75 $ 186,142.75 334,074 3.35% 2.75% Palm Springs $179,420.00 $ - $ 179,420.00 857,839 8.60% 2.65% Reno, NV $ - $ - $ - 21,310 0.21% 0.00% Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto $ 774,720.00 $ 428,801.75 $ 1,203,521.75 1,826,203 18.31% 17.75% San Diego $ 778,967.00 $ 378,033.25 $ 1,157,000.25 1,442,161 14.46% 17.06% San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose $2,270,420.00 $ 861,513.25 $ 3,131,933.25 3,634,643 36.44% 46.19% Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-SLO $153,387.00 $ 46,639.50 $ 200,026.50 354,961 3.56% 2.95% Yuma-El Centro, AZ $ - $ - $ - 54,957 0.55% 0.00% Total $ 4,822,462.00 $ 1,957,556.50 $ 6,780,018.50 9,974,971 100.00% 100.00%
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Appendix E – Procedure for Campaign Finance Data Analysis
This procedure was repeated for each candidate in each cycle. 1. Using Cal-Access, download the three filings, each known as Form 460, that account for campaign spending from July 1st through December 31st. Note that the final report extends almost two months past Election Day, but given that I am only interested in advertisement spending, which wouldn’t occur after the election, this is not a problem. The final report was posted at the beginning of February. 2. Copy all of the spending data listed as Schedule E or Schedule G into Microsoft Excel, arranged in columns of Payee, Address (City, State, Zip), Zip code, and Expenditure Amount. 3. Sort by Zip code, and separate all spending outside of California. Note that statewide campaigns have a great deal of operational expenses that are paid to firms outside of their states (thanks to modern technology, a campaign ad or piece of direct mail can be produced anywhere). There is no national analog for this type of spending (presidential candidates wouldn’t outsource their consulting to Canada). Further, money spent outside of the state has no effect on turnout, and is ostensibly not meant to reach voters directly. So I am comfortable eliminating it from this model. 4. Sort by Payee name, separate all spending not to a TV or Radio station. 5. Using the addresses, add an accompanying county to each of the expenditures, in a new column. 6. Sort by county, sum all media spending within each county. 7. Add the appropriate media market name to each county total, and sum the data to the market level (fourteen total markets). 8. Create a new table, arranging the data into the following columns: Media Market, Total Media $ Spent, Registered Voters, $ per Voter ($ Spent/Registered Voters), Number of Independents, % Independents, Number of Democrats, Number of Republicans, % of Each, Partisan Differential (% Dem - % GOP), Numbers of Whites, African-Americans, Asians, and Latinos, the % of each, and Per Capita Income, with the demographic and voter registration data gathered from the Census and the Secretary of State’s website. 9. Calculate correlations between $ Spent and the demographic and voter information. 10. Calculate correlations between $ Spent by each candidate.
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