author = “Alvarez, R. Michael” title = “The Dynamics of Issue Emphasis: Campaign Strategy and Media Coverage in Statewide Races” keywords = “Campaigns, Elections, California Politics, 1994 Elections, Senate Campaigns, Gubernatorial Campaigns” Electoral campaigns provide for recurrent points of contact between constituents and representatives and thereby play an important role in democratic theory and practice. However, most of the research on electoral campaigns in America has reached pessimistic conclusions about the possibility for these campaigns to inform the electorate, and to lead to informed voting. This paper represents a component of a larger agenda to re-examine the role that electoral campaigns play in American democracy. Here I argue that while presidential election campaigns are more informative than this literature has lead us to believe, the place to look for campaign effects is in state-wide elections. Secondly, I argue that existing research has not taken the dynamic elements of campaigns into consideration, and neither has it looked closely at the effects of political institutions on campaign dynamics and strategies.
In the remainder of the paper I present some preliminary evidence from a new data collection from the 1994 Senate and gubernatorial elections in California. The data used here are from a content analysis of newspaper articles from a set of state and local newspapers in California from two weeks before the primary (June 7, 1994) until the general election (November 8).
The Term Paper on The Election Process Electoral College
The Evolution of the Election Process The election process in the United States is a valuable process to the election of the proper officials to satisfy the people. The people run the country which is why we live in freedom because we control what happens with major decisions by choosing whom we want to decide these decisions. The whole country goes to vote on a certain day and by the end of that ...
I find: the candidates for the governor’s seat did not generally obtain a disproportionate share of the newspaper coverage; the incumbents in both races did not enjoy more coverage than did their challengers; substantive coverage of the candidates was substantial, and was not swamped by coverage of the horse race and of campaign events; issue coverage does seem tied to the political institution, but this connection seems partly predicated on the messages sent by the candidates; and last, coverage across the newspapers appears to be similar over time.
