Voting and Elections

The complete guide to executing successful local political campaigns, packed with expert insights and updates on current trends

The most important element in every election is getting voters to the polls--these get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts make the difference between winning and losing office. With the first two editions of Get Out the Vote, Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber broke ground by introducing a new scientific approach to the challenge of voter mobilization that profoundly influenced how campaigns operate. Get Out the Vote has become the reference text for those who manage campaigns and study voter mobilization.

Take your students on a journey into the world of campaign managers. Powered by scores of interviews and surveys of political professionals, the book considers the purpose, potency, and poetry of modern political campaigns in the US.

Following one of the most contentious and surprising elections in US history, the new edition of this classic text demonstrates unequivocally: Campaigns matter. With new and revised chapters throughout, Campaigns and Elections American Style provides a real education in contemporary campaign politics. In the fifth edition, academics and campaign professionals explain how Trump won the presidency, comparing his sometimes novel tactics with tried and true strategies including how campaign themes and strategies are developed and communicated, the changes in campaign tactics as a result of changing technology, new techniques to target and mobilize voters, the evolving landscape of campaign finance and election laws, and the increasing diversity of the role of media in elections.

Now in its third edition, Political Campaign Communication: Inside and Out examines the intricacies of political campaigning through the eyes of both an academic and a political consultant. Unlike others in its field, this text takes a broad view of political campaigning, discussing both theories and principles, along with topics such as political socialization, the role of money, ethics, and critical events. This new edition delves into ongoing changes in the American political environment, with fuller examinations of women and gender, the involvement of social media in political campaigning, political money, and ethics. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students of political communication can make use of updated chapter-by-chapter discussion questions and online practice quizzes.

The growing ideological gulf between Democrats and Republicans is one of the biggest issues in American politics today. Our legislatures, composed of members from two sharply disagreeing parties, are struggling to function as the founders intended them to.  If we want to reduce the ideological gulf in our legislatures, we must first understand what has caused it to widen so much over the past forty years.     Andrew B. Hall argues that we have missed one of the most important reasons for this ideological gulf: the increasing reluctance of moderate citizens to run for office.  While political scientists, journalists, and pundits have largely focused on voters, worried that they may be too partisan, too uninformed to vote for moderate candidates, or simply too extreme in their own political views, Hall argues that our political system discourages moderate candidates from seeking office in the first place. Running for office has rarely been harder than it is in America today, and the costs dissuade moderates more than extremists. Candidates have to wage ceaseless campaigns, dialing for dollars for most of their waking hours while enduring relentless news and social media coverage. When moderate candidates are unwilling to run, voters do not even have the opportunity to send them to office. To understand what is wrong with our legislatures, then, we need to ask ourselves the question: who wants to run?  If we want more moderate legislators, we need to make them a better job offer.