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  • The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004
  • William Crotty
The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004. By Daron R. Shaw. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006; pp 216. $50.00 cloth; $20.00 paper.

Daron R. Shaw's study of the presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2004 has two purposes. The first purpose is to assess the impact of the Electoral College on candidates' decision making, while arguing the importance of the campaign period in general in moving small but ultimately significant segments of the electorate to one side or the other. Second, it is also meant to combine the expertise and skills of both the political scientist and the practitioner (because Shaw served as an advisor to both Bush-Cheney campaigns) in teasing out the impact of various strategies in shaping an election's outcome.

Shaw makes a strong, and I would say welcome, argument for the relevance of campaigns in affecting voter decision making and ultimately deciding the outcomes of elections. In this context, the study helps question the notion of largely predetermined results based on partisan affiliations. Put in other terms, it serves to make the case that "politics is important." The point is not new. V. O. Key Jr. passionately advanced the cause, but it bears repeating as a response to drier, more formalistic analyses that predominate in the field of political science.

Shaw's approach is parsimonious; the focus is primarily restricted to television advertising and candidate appearances. At the same time, the dynamics of campaigns are much more inclusive, with party and grassroots organizing, message definition, voter contacts, fundraising, and personal styles, media coverage, in-house decision making and strategizing, ideological perspectives, and so on. The study can be seen as a partial if important and [End Page 157] creative effort to isolate the operations and impact of a specialized set of campaign dynamics.

Shaw critiques the relevant academic research and, in particular, the writings directing attention away from the campaign and therefore directly or indirectly arguing its "minimalist" importance in shaping contests. The review of the literature and the availability and quality of data sources used in the study is persuasive.

Not surprisingly, the book may make its greatest contribution in assessing the adaptation of campaign thinking (Karl Rove being the principal arbitrator) to maximize Electoral College advantages (as an example, party versus ideology favoring Bush-Cheney in assessing resource allocations at the state level). Based on such calculations, the states could be rank-ordered in relation to winnability (safe, battlegrounded, lost) for targeting financial allocations and candidate appearances, and for determining the nature of the strategy to be pursued. There were alternative strategies, too: offensive, attack in weak support and battleground states; defensive, campaign in states leaning to Bush and a handful of those favoring the opponent; or "high-risk," a singularly intense focus on the battleground states needed to prevail in the Electoral College. Of particular interest to me were the factors weighed to decide a state's importance and consequently the kind of campaign to be conducted there. These included voting histories, poll numbers, party organizational development and leadership support, strength and competitiveness of lower-level races, issue potential (issue positions were tailored to each state's outlook and values), and native son roots.

Likewise, media markets were identified in relation both to the campaign's master plan and to cost-effectiveness in reaching the undecided and swing voters. In allocating resources to media markets across states, importance was placed on the state profile (core, leaning, or battleground) and competitiveness ("states where the race was clear and where TV advertising was relatively inexpensive tended to get more commercials and more visits"), and the strategic allocations favored in one campaign (2000) were closely correlated with its successor (2004) (73). Not surprisingly, "battleground states were inundated with both TV ads and visits from candidates," and despite intensive programming, "presidential and vice presidential appearances … varied much more with the movements of the opposition than the campaign's own Electoral College plan" (73).

The Electoral College framework provides the boundaries within which each party's campaign...

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