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A review of the evidence leaves no doubt election campaigns do matter in a variety of important ways. The serious questions concern when, where, why, how, for what, and for whom they matter. This essay reviews a selection of high-quality studies that address these questions, focusing on several distinct lines of research that have been particularly productive in recent years: on the effects of events and advertising in presidential elections; on the effects of campaign spending in elections for down-ballot offices; on the effects of mobilization campaigns on voting turnout; on campaign influences on the vote choice (with special attention to the effects of negative campaigns); and on the nature of persuadable voters. It also offers some suggestions of areas where additional research should be productive. Adapted from the source document.

Previous work has demonstrated presidents have a powerful influence on their party's popularity, reputation for competence, perceived ideological leanings, and attractiveness as an object of personal identification. This article extends the analysis by examining (1) how presidents shape popular opinions of congressional parties and leaders, (2) how evaluations of the president's handling of specific policy areas affect his party's reputation for effectiveness in handing these domains, (3) how presidents affect perceptions of their party's sympathy for ordinary people, (4) how presidents influence generic preferences for House candidates and party control of Congress as measured in surveys between elections, and (5) how presidents affect the partisan leanings of the generation that comes of political age during their administrations. The evidence confirms that popular reactions to presidents have both immediate and longer‐term consequences for how his party and, to a lesser extent, the rival party are regarded by the American people.

Polarization and gridlock are defining characteristics of present‐day American national politics, reflecting the interaction of the Madisonian system's checks and balances with the widening partisan and ideological divisions in the House and Senate. These divisions have coevolved with complimentary changes in electoral politics over the same period in a mutually reinforcing spiral. The partisan, ideological, and policy opinions of American voters have grown more internally consistent, more distinctive between parties, and more predictive of voting in national elections. Party loyalty has increased, ticket splitting has decreased, and winning congressional seats against the local partisan grain has become much more difficult. The congressional parties thus represent increasingly divergent electoral constituencies. Republicans enjoy a structural advantage in the distribution of their regular voters across House districts, so these changes have solidified their control of the House even as their national party grows less competitive nationally. Divided government and polarized politics thus rest on a firm electoral base, and partisan warfare in Washington is unlikely to diminish until voters begin to punish the warriors.

Data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study are examined to determine the extent to which partisan polarization is a popular as well as an elite phenomenon. The evidence indicates that ordinary Americans as well as political elites divide consistently along party lines over a broad range of issues and legislative preferences. Partisan ideological divisions are not confined to the political class; they extend downward into the citizenry to the degree that people are actively involved in politics. The coincidence of partisan differences across issues results in a bimodal distribution of aggregate preferences among voters, showing that partisan sorting can by itself polarize the electorate even if sorted partisans do not adopt extreme positions on individual issues. The distribution of partisan preferences is even more sharply bimodal and polarized when the electoral constituencies of the congressional parties are compared, so the electoral process sustains elite polarization. Primary electoral constituencies tend to be even more extreme, particularly on the Republican side, deterring departures from party orthodoxy and thus movement toward the median voter.