The Nomination and the Election: Clearing Away Underbrush
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Byron E. Shafer
The politics of presidential selection in 2008 reinvigorated an old argument from democratic theory about the relationship between nominating politics and the general election. Now that the latter is over, it is possible to return to these debates and ask how candidate fortunes at the nominating stage were linked to performances in November. For 2008, the strongest of these relationships proved to be perverse, with nominees performing best in states that they would cede to their opponent in the general election. Other relationships, however, as with improving or impairing results in individual states, achieved a more straightforward character, especially when institutional structure and temporal order were taken into account.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Election Issue and Blog Discussion
- Article
- Race and the Moral Character of the Modern American Experience
- Interest Groups in the 2008 Presidential Election: The Barking Dog That Didn't Bite
- The Nomination and the Election: Clearing Away Underbrush
- The Return of the Voter: Voter Turnout in the 2008 Presidential Election
- Foreign Affairs and the 2008 Election
- Presidential Election Forecasts
- An Exceptional Election: Performance, Values, and Crisis in the 2008 Presidential Election
- The Magnitude of the 2008 Democratic Victory: By the Numbers
- LBJ's Revenge: The 2008 Election and the Rise of the Great Society Coalition
- Whither the Roberts Court?
- Review
- Review of America's Three Regimes: A New Political History
- Review of Panorama of a Presidency: How George W. Bush Acquired and Spent His Political Capital
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Election Issue and Blog Discussion
- Article
- Race and the Moral Character of the Modern American Experience
- Interest Groups in the 2008 Presidential Election: The Barking Dog That Didn't Bite
- The Nomination and the Election: Clearing Away Underbrush
- The Return of the Voter: Voter Turnout in the 2008 Presidential Election
- Foreign Affairs and the 2008 Election
- Presidential Election Forecasts
- An Exceptional Election: Performance, Values, and Crisis in the 2008 Presidential Election
- The Magnitude of the 2008 Democratic Victory: By the Numbers
- LBJ's Revenge: The 2008 Election and the Rise of the Great Society Coalition
- Whither the Roberts Court?
- Review
- Review of America's Three Regimes: A New Political History
- Review of Panorama of a Presidency: How George W. Bush Acquired and Spent His Political Capital
