ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we offer this simple hypothesis about presidential campaigns in a media age: campaigns focus increasingly on narrower, more limited appeals to specific voters and eschew broader policy debates about the direction of government. The implication is that today’s campaigns contribute to fragmentation in American government and fail to add coherence at the one moment in time when such a debate is possible. To demonstrate support for our point of view, we first describe significant transformations in presidential campaigns that are rooted in a combination of electoral reforms and technological innovation. We then identify how campaign strategies are developed in this environment, and we explain the implications this has for future presidential elections. From there we proceed to demonstrate how campaigns influence voters and provide some evidence that campaigns reach and mobilize a particular group that we call “peripheral partisans.” The chapter concludes by addressing the question of how trends in information technology are leading us “back to the future,” with campaigns focusing on ever narrower groups of voters rather than on more nationalized elections in which all voters are engaged.
