Campaigns That Matter

The Importance of Campaign Visits in Presidential Nominating Contests

By (author) Jay Wendland

Publication date:

30 June 2017

Length of book:

194 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498532099

Every four years Americans are inundated with campaign activities from candidates attempting to become the next president of the United States. An under-researched area of these campaign activities are campaign visits—rallies, town hall meetings, and candidate meet-and-greets for example. Almost all candidates conduct visits, yet we do not have a good understanding of how they affect voters. Wendland tackles four big questions throughout Campaigns That Matter: 1) Do campaigns matter? 2) Are campaign visits strategic? 3) Do visits help mobilize voters? 4) Do visits impact candidate preference? Using a unique set of data that includes all visits conducted throughout the 2008, 2012, and 2016 presidential nominating contests, Wendland explores how these visits affected voters compared to traditional measures of advertisements, campaign spending, and momentum. In doing so, Wendland has provided us with a more comprehensive picture of how voters make decisions in the voting booth.

Chapter 1: The Importance of Campaign Visits in Presidential Nominating Contests
Chapter 2: The Importance of Analyzing Nominating Contests
Chapter 3: The Strategic Candidate and Why Visits Should Matter
Chapter 4: The Strategy of Campaign Visits: Where Are Candidates Campaigning?
Chapter 5: Campaign Visits as Mobilizer? How Race, Gender, Age, and Evangelicals Mattered
Chapter 6: Visits, Ads, Momentum, and Personal Traits: Unpacking the Effects of Campaign Activities on Vote Choice
Chapter 7: Visits, Ads, and Momentum: Campaign Dynamics in Presidential Nominating Contests
Appendix A: Raw Data for Figures 4.1–4.10 and Table 4.1 in Chapter 4
Appendix B: Specification of Hierarchical Linear Model for Chapter 6 and Discussion of ANOVA Results
Appendix C: Survey Question Wording from ANES 2008, 2012, and 2016

In 1964, Nelson Rockefeller won the Oregon Republican Presidential Primary after advertising ‘(h)e Cared Enough to Come to Corvallis.’ For the next half-century though, most political scientists questioned whether candidate visits actually translated into votes. Jay Wendland’s new book finally settles this question through a thorough analysis of the 2008, 2012, and 2016 presidential primaries. This work is a must-read for all scholars and journalists who are interested in how and why presidential campaign events matter.