Elections in The Books Store

Busch offers the first comprehensive study of this contest, going beyond journalistic accounts to show why it remains one of the truly landmark elections of the past century. Through a compelling story full of colorful characters, unexpected plot twists, and dramatic finales, he reveals how it both reflected the politics of its time and foreshadowed our nation's political future.

Beginning with Carter's "crisis of confidence" speech on July 15, 1979, Busch introduces the field of candidates, follows their campaigns through the primaries and general election, identifies the key turning points and winning strategies, and assesses the results, including the GOP's first Senate majority in twenty-six years. He shows how the Democrats were weakened by the demise of the New Deal coalition and a decline in public confidence, while Republicans were bolstered by the growth of the conservative movement and by all that had gone wrong during the Carter presidency. He also examines the creation of a Sunbelt coalition, the growing influence of religious conservatives, and the independent candidacy of John Anderson, which held Reagan's majority to 51 percent and foreshadowed Ross Perot's 1992 run.

Reagan's victory marked a major turning point in American presidential history, realigned the demographics of party affiliation throughout the nation (especially in the nation's Sunbelt), and gave conservatives their first real victory in their fight against Big Government. Busch's book recaptures the people and events of that historic campaign and greatly enlarges our understanding of American politics from the 1960s to the present.

The use of wedge issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and immigration has become standard political strategy in contemporary presidential campaigns. Why do candidates use such divisive appeals? Who in the electorate is persuaded by these controversial issues? And what are the consequences for American democracy? In this provocative and engaging analysis of presidential campaigns, Sunshine Hillygus and Todd Shields identify the types of citizens responsive to campaign information, the reasons they are responsive, and the tactics candidates use to sway these pivotal voters. The Persuadable Voter shows how emerging information technologies have changed the way candidates communicate, who they target, and what issues they talk about. As Hillygus and Shields explore the complex relationships between candidates, voters, and technology, they reveal potentially troubling results for political equality and democratic governance.

The Persuadable Voter examines recent and historical campaigns using a wealth of data from national surveys, experimental research, campaign advertising, archival work, and interviews with campaign practitioners. With its rigorous multimethod approach and broad theoretical perspective, the book offers a timely and thorough understanding of voter decision making, candidate strategy, and the dynamics of presidential campaigns.

This election saw the highest voter turnout of any in U.S. history--a whopping 82 percent--and also the narrowest margin of victory, as a single electoral vote decided the outcome. Michael Holt offers a fresh interpretation of this disputed election, not merely to rehash claims of fraud but to explain why it was so close. Examining the post-Civil War political environment, he particularly focuses on its most curious feature: that Republicans were the only party in history to retain the presidency in the middle of a severe depression after decisively losing the preceding off-year congressional elections.

Holt begins with the election of 1872 to demonstrate how competition for Liberal Republicans shaped the campaign strategies of both parties. He stresses the critical but little-noted importance of Colorado statehood in August--which changed the size of the electoral-vote majority needed to win--and provides a new answer to the vexing question of why a Democratic-controlled Congress had admitted Colorado in time to participate in the presidential election, when without its votes Tilden would have won. And he argues that the high voter turnout was attributable both to Republicans exploiting fears of ex-Confederates recapturing control of the government and to long-apathetic southern Democrats reacting to war memories and Reconstruction realities.

By One Vote shows how this election triggered a Republican revival and established the GOP as the Democrats' major competitor. Holt's compelling analysis of the dispute over electoral votes also explains why charges of Republican fraud are questionable--and how Democrats were just as guilty of corruption.

A masterly retelling of this controversial episode, Holt's study captures the mood of the country and testifies to the power that hatreds and fears aroused by the Civil War still exercised over the American people.

In Dirty Politics, campaign analyst Kathleen Hall Jamieson provides an eye-opening look at political ads and speeches, showing us how to read, listen to, and watch political campaigns. Jamieson provides a sophisticated (and often humorous) analysis of advertising technique, describing how television ads use soft focus, slow motion, lyrical or patriotic music (Reagan used "I'm Proud to be an American") to place a candidate in a positive light, or quick cuts, black and white, videotape, and ominous music (for instance, the theme from "Jaws") to portray the opposition. She shows how ads sometimes mimic news spots to add authenticity (Edwin Edwards, in his race against David Duke, actually used former NBC correspondent Peter Hackis, who would begin an ad saying "This is Peter Hackis in Baton Rouge"). And Jamieson points out that consultants create inflammatory ads hoping that the major networks will pick them up and run them as news, giving the ad millions of dollars of free air time. The most striking example would be the Willie Horton ad, which the press aired repeatedly (as an example of negative advertising) long after the ad had ceased running. (In fact, it never ran on the major networks as an ad, only as news.)

With new material from the 2004 campaigns, this edition is fully up to date in both content and analysis. Count on in-depth coverage of everything from ad buys and a review of issue-advocacy advertising to content analyses and media coverage of campaign ads. Also in the fourth edition, find case studies of ad appeals, new material on Senate and House election ads, and examination of the affect of groups such as the Swift Boat Veterans and MoveOn.org on the 2004 presidential campaign.

On the afternoon of Election Day 2004, the world was abuzz with the news: Exit polls indicated that John Kerry would win the election and become the next president of the United States. That proved not to be the case.

According to the official count-that is the number of votes tallied, not necessarily the number of votes cast-George W. Bush beat Kerry by a margin of three million votes. The exit polls however had predicted a margin of victory for Kerry of five million votes. In every "battleground" state across the nation the final tally swung clearly beyond the exit poll's margin of error to favor the president.

How can one explain this eight-million-vote discrepancy between the Election Day exit polls and the official count? Either the exit poll data was wrong or the official count was wrong.

Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? analyzes the exit poll data and looks at documented examples of conventional vote suppression and outright vote fraud. It investigates the possibility that enough election fraud occurred to determine the outcome of the presidential race. And it asks the question why neither the government, nor the Democratic Party, nor any major media organization did their own investigation.

Steve Freeman has a PhD in organization studies from MIT's Sloan School of Management. He is a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Organizational Dynamics, where he teaches research methods and survey design (a domain that includes polling). He has received four national awards for best research paper of the year-on four different topics in three different fields.

Joel Bleifuss, a journalist of 23 years, is the editor of In These Times. In his 18 years there, he has had more articles cited as one of the Top Censored Stories of the Year by Project Censored than any other journalist.