The 2008 presidential election, part I.
Cohen, Jeffrey E.
This issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly presents the first of
a two-part symposium on the 2008 presidential election. Although all
presidential elections are important in their own right, that of 2008
may be of greater moment than most. For the first time in U.S. history,
a black American was elected president. Given the long and often violent
history of racism and racial tension in the United States, the election
of a black president marks another step toward a society of racial
equality. However, the election of Barack Obama was not the only
instance of demographic upheaval in presidential politics. For the first
time, women were considered viable candidates for the presidency and for
the tickets of both parties. Somewhat remarkably, the two leading
contenders for the Democratic Party's nomination were Barack Obama
and Hillary Clinton. Although white men, such as John Edwards, were also
major candidates, never before had the nomination of a major party come
down to nonwhites and women. Not to be left out of this achievement,
John McCain, the Republican Party presidential nominee, named a woman,
Alaska governor Sarah Palin, to be his vice presidential running mate.
Several features of the papers in this special issue are notable.
First, the papers cover a wide variety of topics, from influences on the
vote, to campaign dynamics, to election rhetoric, to the role of race.
Second, these papers make use of a variety of data, including old
workhorse sources, such as the American National Election Studies and
election data, but also data from the National Annenberg Election Study
and the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, as well as data
on presidential rhetoric and other presidential preference polls.
Related to the variety of data, these studies also offer a range of
methodologies, including newer experimental designs and content analyses
of presidential rhetoric. Combined, the papers in this special issue
provide us with a well-rounded perspective on the 2008 presidential
election and chart directions for future research on presidential
elections and the presidency more generally.
The Papers, Part I
Following Republican dominance in presidential elections for all
but two contests since 1980, some commentators began speculating on
whether Obama's election heralded a shift to advantage Democrats
and perhaps a partisan realignment as well. In this symposium, James E.
Campbell reviews a large number of factors that led to the Democratic
victory in 2008. According to Campbell, most of the short-term factors
played against the Republicans, including an unpopular president, an
unpopular war in Iraq, and a poorly performing economy. But Campbell
also shows that had these short-term forces not been so strong or
uniformly worked against the Republicans, the contest would have been
tight. In particular, partisan and ideological identifications in the
American public were relatively similar, and both parties had to contend
with vigorous contests for the nomination. The longer-term implications
of these short-term forces will have implications for the future
competitiveness of the two parties in presidential contests, according
to Campbell.
Gary C. Jacobson's contribution focuses on the effects of the
Iraq War. Jacobson argues that the Iraq War cast a long shadow on the
2008 election; the war's first effects were felt long before the
November contest. Jacobson highlights several effects that the war had
on the 2008 presidential election. The unpopularity of the war not only
ate away at President George W. Bush's approval, but also spilled
onto the public image of the Republican Party. On the Democratic side of
the election ledger, antipathy to the war not only provided the
foundation of support for Barack Obama's candidacy, but also may
have been one reason that Obama defeated Hillary Clinton for the
Democratic Party's nomination, recalling Clinton's early and
continued support for the war. In contrast to Campbell, who views the
war as a short-term force on the election, Jacobson's analysis
raises the notion that the Iraq War may have long-lasting effects on the
political landscape, tilting the partisan advantage to the Democrats,
and perhaps also realigning political power within the Democratic Party.
Party identification has been critical in our understanding of
electoral realignment. But party identification will play a larger part
in our understanding of realignment if it is a stable, individual-level
attribute. The degree of stability in individual partisan identification
has been a matter of some controversy, a theme that Kenneth Winneg and
Kathleen Hall Jamieson tackle in their contribution. First, Winneg and
Jamieson use the 2004 and 2008 National Annenberg Election Studies to
compare trends in party identification. They find that the gap in party
identification widened from a modest 4-point Democratic advantage in
2004 to a comfortable 9-point lead in 2008. Moreover, they inform us
that much of the trend toward the Democrats resulted from minority
movement away from independence. Thus, for the most part, Republicans
held onto their traditional support. Winneg and Jamieson use the 2008
study to further explore the dynamic properties of individual-level
partisanship. They find that the vast majority of people held to their
partisan identification throughout the campaign, but a measurable subset
of the population did shift. Again, Republicans stood pat in their
identification with the GOP throughout the campaign. Shifts in partisan
distribution came from Democrats gaining identifiers until the late
summer conventions at the expense of independents, but after the
conventions, Democrats lost some ground to independents. Winneg and
Jamieson's analysis presents a nuanced and complex portrait of
party identification dynamics over both the long and the short term.
Conceptually, they lead us to partisanship as stable for most but
changeable for some. The number of those who change their
identification, the direction of change, and the stability of that
change have implications for the linkage between party identification
and realignment. It may be too early to tell whether 2008 ushered in a
realignment or not.
Perhaps no vice presidential nomination choice in recent memory has
stirred as much controversy as McCain's selection of Alaska
governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Some argue that Palin
energized base Republican voters behind McCain, whose relations with
that wing of the party had been strained for much of his political
career. Without an enthusiastic party base, the argument goes, McCain
would not have been able to run a competitive campaign against Obama.
Others, in contrast, contend that Palin was a polarizing figure--for
every Republican standpatter that she attracted, she repelled Democrats
and, more importantly, independents who might have voted for McCain.
Bernard Grofman and Reuben Kline investigate the vote consequences of
vice presidents on all tickets from 1968 to 2008 using American National
Election Studies data. Overall, they find a negligible impact of vice
presidential running mates, including Palin's 2008 candidacy.
However, they are clear to note that their analysis focuses only on the
final vote choice. Palin's selection may have had an effect earlier
in the campaign, may have affected views of McCain, and may have
influenced campaign contributions, suggesting a rich future research
agenda on the effects of vice presidential selection.
A simmering debate among political scientists is the dimensionality
of American politics. The Poole-Rosenthal NOMINATE methodology offers
among the strongest statements suggesting a unidimensionality to
American politics. In contrast, some argue that there are two (or three)
issue-based dimensions: the classic economic policy dimension, a
cultural politics dimension, and perhaps a foreign policy one. Melvin J.
Hinich, Daron R. Shaw, and Taofang Huang enter this debate, arguing that
issues tend to be arrayed along one dimension, but that a second
reform--establishment dimension also exists. The reform--establishment
dimension is pertinent to presidential elections because, so often,
candidates for the office align themselves with reformists who critique
the Washington establishment. In 2008, both Obama and McCain made such
claims for their candidacies. Using a variety of data, Hinich, Shaw, and
Huang test how effectively Obama and McCain associated themselves with
reformist impulses and rallied reform-minded voters to their side. They
conclude that neither candidate did this effectively. Obama's
inability to capture reform voters, despite claiming the mantle of
reform, may have implications for his presidency, the policies that he
pursues, and his ability to rally public opinion to his side.
As mentioned earlier, perhaps the most significant aspect of the
2008 contest was the first-time election of a black American to the
presidency. The 2008 election raises a host of questions regarding the
evolving role of race in American politics. Pearl K. Ford, Angie
Maxwell, and Todd Shields, using specially designed surveys conducted in
Arkansas and Georgia, test some relevant hypotheses. They build on
symbolic racism theory, which argues that few people are now overtly
racist, yet certain policies and political symbols may activate racial
attitudes, in particular a denial or minimization of the current
existence of racism, and that racial attitudes are often intermixed with
conservative orientations to politics. Creating improved symbolic racism
survey instruments, Ford, Maxwell, and Shields find evidence of symbolic
racism in the attitudes and voting behavior of some whites in Arkansas
and Georgia. Thus, while Obama's election may mark another step in
racial progress in the United States, the evidence presented by Ford,
Maxwell, and Shields suggests that we have not yet entered a postracial
era either.
Jeffrey E. Cohen is a professor and chair of the Department of
Political Science at Fordham University. His most recent book is Going
Local: Presidential Leadership in the Post-Broadcast Age.