Modern Political Campaigns brings together academic, practical, and interviews to help understand how professionalism, technology, and speed have revolutionized elections, creating more voter-centric races for public office. Dr. Michael D. Cohen, a 20+ year veteran of working on, teaching, and writing about political campaigns take readers through how campaigns are organized, state-of-the-art tools of the trade, and how some of the most interesting people in politics got their big breaks. The book takes readers through clear-eyed chapters on parties and elections, campaign planning and management, fundraising, independent groups, vulnerability and opposition research, data and analytics, focus groups and polling, earned, paid and social media, and field operations. Finally, the book revisits the Permanent Campaign in terms of modern approaches to winning elections raising questions about today’s uniform preference for turnout over persuasion and what that means for our American democracy. Modern Political Campaigns will appeal to students and political activists interested in working in political campaigns. It is also a great read for anyone who wants to better understand the nuts and bolts of campaigns in practical terms from professionals, and the opportunities they provide all of us to be more engaged citizens and hold our leaders more accountable each Election Day.

A unique empirical and theoretical analysis of political consultants and how they achieve electoral success for their candidates

Examining political campaigns and political advertising through the analytical lens of media literacy, this well-illustrated and timely handbook guides readers through the maze of blandishments and spin that is the hallmark of the modern political campaign. It dissects the persuasive strategies embedded in the political messages we encounter every day in the media and demonstrates the importance of critical thinking in evaluating media stories. Key concepts of media literacy are applied to political advertising in traditional media (newspapers, television, radio) and on the Internet, the new frontier of the political advertising wars. Dealing with blogs, social networking, user-generated Web sites, and other electronic formats familiar to young voters, this lively introduction to the new world of political messaging appeals to readers' affinity for visual learning as well as their ability to discern messages in text. Unique in applying media literacy concepts to the political context while directly addressing students and general readers, this book not only explains but graphically demonstrates both established techniques of political framing and the new avenues of persuasion being pioneered in digital media. It will also interest viewers who like their political news in traditional media but unconventional formats.

"Providing practical insights and vote-winning tips, this book is an invaluable resource for candidates - newcomer, challenger and experienced incumbent alike - pursuing a political career at any level." "As campaigns have become more expensive, sophisticated, and competitive, today's candidates need a clear understanding of the challenges they will face - as well as the tools and techniques available to them." "Put together in one place for the first time, Running for Office covers the essentials of assembling a winning campaign, from big-picture items to the smallest details."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Political campaigns today are won or lost in the so-called ground war--the strategic deployment of teams of staffers, volunteers, and paid part-timers who work the phones and canvass block by block, house by house, voter by voter. Ground Wars provides an in-depth ethnographic portrait of two such campaigns, New Jersey Democrat Linda Stender's and that of Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, who both ran for Congress in 2008. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen examines how American political operatives use "personalized political communication" to engage with the electorate, and weighs the implications of ground war tactics for how we understand political campaigns and what it means to participate in them. He shows how ground wars are waged using resources well beyond those of a given candidate and their staff. These include allied interest groups and civic associations, party-provided technical infrastructures that utilize large databases with detailed individual-level information for targeting voters, and armies of dedicated volunteers and paid part-timers. Nielsen challenges the notion that political communication in America must be tightly scripted, controlled, and conducted by a select coterie of professionals. Yet he also quashes the romantic idea that canvassing is a purer form of grassroots politics. In today's political ground wars, Nielsen demonstrates, even the most ordinary-seeming volunteer knocking at your door is backed up by high-tech targeting technologies and party expertise. Ground Wars reveals how personalized political communication is profoundly influencing electoral outcomes and transforming American democracy.

Inside Campaigns: Elections Through the Eyes of Political Professionals offers readers a detailed, thoroughly researched examination of U.S. political campaigns. Through the eyes of more than 100 campaign managers and political professionals, it takes a behind-the-scenes look at the ways campaigns are managed, the strategies that are employed, the roles played by both staff and the candidates, and all the ways campaigns affect election outcomes. The expert author team of William J. Feltus, Kenneth M. Goldstein, and Matthew Dallek provide guidance drawn from actual campaign case studies, contribute their own data-backed assessment of the current state of modern political campaign management, and offer a trove of observations and war stories. Interviewees include high-profile professionals such as David Axelrod, Ken Mehlman, James Carville, and Kevin Sheekey, as well as lesser-known political journeymen and women who manage America’s state and local campaigns. Democrats and Republicans are evenly represented, giving students a balanced, unique and valuable insight into how campaigns operate.

Today, politics is big business. Most of the 6 billion spent during the 2012 campaign went to highly paid political consultants. In Building a Business of Politics, a lively history of political consulting, Adam Sheingate examines the origins of the industry and its consequences for American democracy.

UPDATED FOR THE 2016 ELECTION The book Politico calls “Moneyball for politics” shows how cutting-edge social science and analytics are reshaping the modern political campaign. Renegade thinkers are crashing the gates of a venerable American institution, shoving aside its so-called wise men and replacing them with a radical new data-driven order. We’ve seen it in sports, and now in The Victory Lab, journalist Sasha Issenberg tells the hidden story of the analytical revolution upending the way political campaigns are run in the 21st century. The Victory Lab follows the academics and maverick operatives rocking the war room and re-engineering a high-stakes industry previously run on little more than gut instinct and outdated assumptions. Armed with research from behavioural psychology and randomized experiments that treat voters as unwitting guinea pigs, the smartest campaigns now believe they know who you will vote for even before you do. Issenberg tracks these fascinating techniques—which include cutting edge persuasion experiments, innovative ways to mobilize voters, heavily researched electioneering methods—and shows how our most important figures, such as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, are putting them to use with surprising skill and alacrity. Provocative, clear-eyed and energetically reported, The Victory Lab offers iconoclastic insights into political marketing, human decision-making, and the increasing power of analytics.

This book critiques the use of algorithms to pre-empt personal choices in its profound effect on markets, democracy and the rule of law.

With a focus on both national and local levels, Uncivil Wars takes an energetic and critical look at the mechanics of political campaigning through the lens of communication theory.