The Change Election: Money, Mobilization, and Persuasion in the 2008 Federal Elections (review)

The Change Election: Money, Mobilization, and Persuasion in the 2008 Federal Elections neatly references, in its title, a 2008 presidential election campaign theme of then-candidate Barack Obama, while also introducing the book’s findings. Magleby and his team studied the 2008 federal general election financing and conduct by focusing on how candidates raised and spent money in seventeen contests in five battleground states: North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Colorado, and New Mexico. Each of these locations featured a highly competitive presidential contest and competitive races for seats in the U.S. Senate and/ or U.S. House. Each state had also been studied in past elections, raising the possibility for comparative results. Magleby sets the tone for his findings by admitting, “When my proposal to study 2008 was funded, I did not know that the election would be such a dramatic departure from past elections” (xiii).

The book’s opening chapter provides historical context for approaching the study, and the space for change is writ large. The year 2008 was the first time in fourteen elections that neither a sitting nor a former president or vice president was running. The range of serious contenders who sought the nomination included, as Magleby notes, a woman, an African American, a Mormon, and a septuagenarian, a significant departure from the slate of upper-middle-aged white men more commonly vying. Since 1976, candidates in the nomination phase had generally opted to accept public financing in the form of matching funds, but Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney all chose to forgo public financing and its attendant spending limits.

Several chapters focus on 2008 changes in how elections were financed, voter mobilization trends, and spending by candidates, political parties, and interest groups. The sections featuring funds raised and spent could have easily overwhelmed the average reader had the authors not done such a good job of providing clear narrative complemented by well-placed figures and tables. The remaining chapters each focus on races within the respective states under study, followed by a closing chapter that reiterates the changes observed, while also noting some important continuities with previous elections.

The study collected data on campaign contributions and expenditures from reports to the Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service, data on media ads from the Campaign Media Analysis Group and directly from radio and television stations, and data on on-the-ground campaign communications from a network of “politically, socially, and economically diverse individuals” (17). In addition, during the election Magleby conducted 200+ on-the-record interviews with participants and informed observers at the national level. Experienced academics conducted interviews at the state and congressional district levels.

Neither the editor nor the volume’s variety of authors lay out their methodology with regard to how they approached the interview process. Appendix B provides a compact list of interviews, noting narrator name, position, and organizational affiliation, as well as interviewer name and interview date. The text makes frequent use of interview quotes, using endnotes to cite information similar to that in Appendix B with the addition of “telephone interview” or “email communication” as appropriate. The interviews do not appear to have been placed in a repository facilitating public access.

While interview content features regularly as one-liners to anecdotally buoy points, the text’s authors seem to have largely missed the rich opportunity to examine the formidable body of interviews and make observations across the collected oral evidence. In at least one exception to this oversight, an author, speaking of the New Hampshire races, says, “What was most striking about the Republican operatives interviewed for this study was the air of resignation they shared about the final results” (167).

The Change Election offers a carefully researched and well-documented look at a U.S. election that turned many conventions upside down and reengaged the electorate in surprising...