Political campaigns today are won or lost in the so-called ground war--the strategic deployment of teams of staffers, volunteers, and paid part-timers who work the phones and canvass block by block, house by house, voter by voter. Ground Wars provides an in-depth ethnographic portrait of two such campaigns, New Jersey Democrat Linda Stender's and that of Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, who both ran for Congress in 2008. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen examines how American political operatives use "personalized political communication" to engage with the electorate, and weighs the implic.
THE PAPER EXAMINED THE DEGREE TO WHICH POLITICAL CANDIDATES HONORED CAMPAIGN PLEDGES IN OFFICE THROUGH AN ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN PLEDGES AND ACTIONS TAKEN BY PRESIDENTS, 1912-72. RESULTS INDICATE THAT PRESIDENTS KEPT APPROXIMATELY 75% OF THE ISSUE POSITIONS TAKEN IN THEIR CAMPAIGNS. IMPLICATIONS ARE DISCUSSED.
The theory of relevance presented by Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson (1995) is a general theory of communication which has been developing over the past decades and apart from the theoretical developments it has been implemented as a tool for various analyses of discourse. The aim of the paper is to present a relevance theoretic account of a special kind of attributive use of campaign material which was employed by candidates in TV advertisements for the US presidential election campaign in 2012. Candidates use this special kind, echoic use, implementing it not only to criticise the opponent but also to justify their negative attitude towards the material mentioned. Echoic use proves to be a powerful tool not only to criticise and maintain credibility, but also allow irony which seems to be, along with discrediting the rival, the most powerful weapon at a politician's disposal.
The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974, although modified by the Supreme Court, set the tone for campaign spending in the 1976 elections. The original limitations of the act caused candidates and their managers to design campaigns within the spending ceiling. Presidential campaigns receive the most attention from the press but actually are atypical. The best campaigns being conducted in the United States today are for senator and governor. Candidates in these contests do not receive the heavy concentration of publicity that presidential candidates get, and thus are much more dependent upon electronic media to get their message to the voters. Defining the candidate's message is one of the most difficult decisions in structur ing a campaign. Paid electronic advertising permits a candi date to communicate his message directly to the voter without filtering it through a news editor. Despite criticisms, the 30-second and 60-second television spots are the best means available to reach the voters. Television production costs vary little from state to state, but the cost of time varies considerably. Radio can have an important impact on the electorate, but frequently its importance in politics is underestimated.
