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The Timeline of Presidential Elections: How Campaigns Do (and Do Not) Matter (Chicago Studies in American Politics) Paperback – Illustrated, October 1, 2012

3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 8 ratings

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In presidential elections, do voters cast their ballots for the candidates whose platform and positions best match their own? Or is the race for president of the United States come down largely to who runs the most effective campaign? It’s a question those who study elections have been considering for years with no clear resolution. In
The Timeline of Presidential Elections, Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien reveal for the first time how both factors come into play.

 

Erikson and Wlezien have amassed data from close to two thousand national polls covering every presidential election from 1952 to 2008, allowing them to see how outcomes take shape over the course of an election year. Polls from the beginning of the year, they show, have virtually no predictive power. By mid-April, when the candidates have been identified and matched in pollsters’ trial heats, preferences have come into focus—and predicted the winner in eleven of the fifteen elections. But a similar process of forming favorites takes place in the last six months, during which voters’ intentions change only gradually, with particular events—including presidential debates—rarely resulting in dramatic change.

 

Ultimately, Erikson and Wlezien show that it is through campaigns that voters are made aware of—or not made aware of—fundamental factors like candidates’ policy positions that determine which ticket will get their votes. In other words, fundamentals matter, but only because of campaigns. Timely and compelling, this book will force us to rethink our assumptions about presidential elections.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Every political pundit should be required to read this book before covering the 2016 campaign."
-- Ryan Lizza ―
New Yorker, Ten Best Political Books of 2012 Published On: 2012-12-12

“This is an important, original book by accomplished political scientists at the top of their game. Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien have addressed a central question in the study of presidential elections—to what extent do the actual campaigns matter?—and provided an account of election dynamics that anyone with a passing knowledge of presidential elections can understand, but whose technical sophistication will be appreciated by political scientists.
The Timeline of Presidential Election Campaigns will be regarded as a landmark by the presidential research community.” -- Gary C. Jacobson, University of California, San Diego

Americans have long been fascinated with presidential election campaigns and the polls that accompany them. Each time a new poll is released, we interpret it as indicating something real about the rising or falling fortunes of candidates—and assume these changes have implications for what happens on election day. With ambitious and insightful scholarship, Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien offer a striking critique of these assumptions, issuing a startling wake-up call that suggests much of the tremendous effort—and money—spent during campaigns may in fact be a waste. Any candidate interested in winning an election should read this book, as should anyone interested in truly understanding voters. -- Jon Krosnick, Stanford University

“What do voters make of presidential campaigns? Do they update their beliefs about the best candidate as campaigns progress? Or are their minds made up before the campaigns have even started? . . . Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien have done an excellent service in writing about how voters react to campaigns, and future research on the way in which presidential campaigns shape election outcomes would be well advised to ground their work in what Erikson and Wlezien have accomplished.” ―
Political Science Quarterly Published On: 2013-09-17

“A comprehensive and most convincing exercise. Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien lay bare the macro-dynamics of modern American presidential elections. They show how the outcomes of these elections can be predicted, and why. In their explanation of the “why,” the critical role of the campaign reveals itself. . . . Anyone seriously interested in presidential election campaigns and forecasting cannot do without it.” ―
Congress and the Presidency Published On: 2013-10-07

“Erikson and Wlezien bring the tools of time series analysis to bear on the fundamental tension that haunts every scholar, reporter, or consultant trying to understand the effects of campaigns: how much of the final outcome is determined by what the candidates do (or what happens to them) in the weeks leading up to the election and how much is driven by the things out of their control. . . . If you study presidential politics or time series analyses, there is a lot to like in
Timeline. The connection between the method and the substance is close and tight, which makes this book a great example of how the right method can help illustrate important nuances in the substance of a problem. . . . But by far, the most important contribution the book makes is to illustrate that presidential campaigns matter in predictable ways.” ― Perspectives on Politics Published On: 2014-08-19

“[A] masterful volume." ―
Washington Post, Monkey Cage Published On: 2015-07-16

“The Timeline of Presidential Elections offers a sober, rigorous, and highly readable probe of what trial-heat polls have to say about election campaigns.” ― Public Opinion Quarterly Published On: 2016-01-14

About the Author


Robert S. Erikson is professor of political science at Columbia University and the author or coauthor of several books, including The Macro Polity.



Christopher Wlezien is the Hogg Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is coauthor of Degrees of Democracy.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; Illustrated edition (October 1, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 216 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0226922154
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226922157
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 8 ratings

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3.9 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2020
    Great service - quick shipment
  • Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2012
    ****edit*****
    Worth mentioning that the authors of this book correctly predicted the 2012 election outcome based upon their prediction model. So I want to reemphasize that, in terms of content quality and value, this book is really a must-read!
    ****end******

    First, this book is heavy.
    By that, I mean that stylistically it reads somewhat like a journal article and some chapters are dense with statistical analysis. But the information is invaluable for those who really want to understand what effects campaigns really have, whether debate performances have ever mattered (a particularly timely topic now), when polls are predictive and when they are not, and what really matters during election season.
    If the book takes an overly academic approach, it's because the authors felt that their sometimes counter-intuitive arguments required the weight of evidence behind them. And all of the findings in this book are based off of an enormous amount of research conducted over decades.
    Ultimately, it's a five star book that lost about half a star (shame you can't do half-stars here) just because the writing wasn't always as clear as it could have been. As I said before, it reads at times somewhat like an academic journal article - it communicates the research findings but doesn't always present them in as structured or clear a way as one might like.

    So that may disrupt the reading experience for some, getting in the way of the content - which is FANTASTIC. It's fascinating and extremely well-supported and researched. The authors are both brilliant political scientists who have been researching the subject matter for decades. And this book would be invaluable for the lay-reader who wants to separate the hype from the facts in regards to what actually matters during debate season. Let me add that it would also be a fantastic supplement for any upper-level undergraduate or graduate course on elections, voter behavior, or American politics.

    All in all, it's really valuable content and I suggest that anyone from the lay-person to the campaign strategist would be doing themselves a huge favor by reading this book.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2012
    Not sure what the previous reviewer was talking about, but it must have been another book. This is a seminal work that is not only timely, but also explains what many of us have wondered about the seemingly never-ending campaign season: Does it matter and, if so, why and how? Perhaps we laypeople wonder about it in less than academic terms, but thankfully Erikson and Wlezien have managed to spell things out -- about the voting public, about preferences, about how the election season moves and morphs, and ultimately how campaigns do and don't predict the outcome -- in language and ideas that virtually everyone can understand.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2012
    This book has gotten a bit of press lately, as its thesis is a counter intuitive one: American voters decide their presidential vote sometime between April and August, with conventions being a big factor in the decision and debates a non-factor. I was intrigued and ordered the book to be convinced. The back cover has a great narrative summarizing the thesis and asking key questions about the implications.

    Unfortunately, the snazzy cover and provocative thesis are dressing up what is really an academic paper, with lots of regressions, formulas, asides about methodology, and complaints about data limitation. There's no narrative and few examples, and many of the charts are unreadable to anyone without a doctorate in statistics.

    I'm disappointed since I imagine the authors found something interesting. They're just incapable of explaining it to a lay person.
    13 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2020
    I had to read this for a graduate class. I usually steamroll through this. Unfortunately, it seemed like for every 20 pages of reading, there was a point you could compress within two paragraphs, and 18-19 pages of math that is just incomprehensible to anyone that isn't in a math program at the grad level.

    The point the authors make is a fine one, but really could have been just as well stated in 1/4 of the time.

    This was a slog. I read a lot, but this was just like one massive white paper.