Unprecedented


Book Description

Tells the story of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in photos and essays by CNN contributors.




An Unprecedented Election


Book Description

Written by leading scholars of political communication, this book provides a comprehensive accounting of the campaign communication that characterized the unprecedented 2016 presidential campaign. The political events leading up to election day on November 8, 2016, involved unprecedented events in U.S. history: Hillary Clinton was the first woman to be nominated by a major party, and she was favored to win the highest seat in the nation. Donald Trump, arguably one of the most unconventional and most-unlikely-to-succeed candidates in U.S. history, became the leading candidate against Clinton. Then, an even more surprising thing happened: Trump won, an outcome unexpected by all experts and statistical models. An Unprecedented Election: Media, Communication, and the Electorate in the 2016 Campaign presents proprietary research conducted by a national election team and leading scholars in political communication and documents the most significant-and in some cases, the most shocking-features of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The information presented in this book is derived from national surveys, experiments, and textual analysis and helps readers grasp the truly unique characteristics of this campaign that make it unlike any other in U.S. history. The chapters explain the underlying dynamics of this astonishing election by assessing the important role of both traditional and social media, the evolving (and potentially diminishing) influence of televised campaign advertisements, the various implications of three historic presidential debates, and the contextual significance of convention addresses. Readers will come away with an appreciation of the content and effects of the campaign communication and media coverage as well as the unique attributes of the electorate that ultimately selected Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States.




The Unprecedented 2016 Presidential Election


Book Description

This book explains the 2016 presidential election through a strategic focus. In the primaries both parties faced challenges from insurgent outsiders riding waves of populist fervor in the electorate, but only the Democrats were able to steer the nomination into the hands of their establishment favorite. Why weren’t Republican elites able to stop Donald Trump from hijacking their party’s nomination? Why did Hillary Clinton come up short on Election Day despite the fact that nearly everyone expected her to win after her opponent ran a haphazard campaign plagued by scandal after scandal? The research presented here argues that the Clinton campaign conducted the nearly perfect execution of the wrong electoral strategy, costing her the Electoral College and her chance to become America’s first female president.




Picking the President


Book Description

The 2016 presidential election has sparked an unprecedented interest in the Electoral College. In response to Donald Trump winning the presidency despite losing the popular vote, numerous individuals have weighed in with letters-to-the-editor, op-eds, blog posts, videos, and the like, and thanks to the revolution in digital communications, these items have reached an exceptionally wide audience. In short, never before have so many people had so much to say about the Electoral College. To facilitate and expand the conversation, Picking the President: Understanding the Electoral College offers brief essays that examine the Electoral College from different disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, mathematics, political science, history, and pedagogy. Along the way, the essays address a variety of questions about the Electoral College: Why was it created? How has it changed over time? Who benefits from it? Is it just? How will future demographic patterns affect it? Should we alter or abolish the Electoral College, and if so, what should replace it? In exploring these matters, Picking the President enhances our understanding of one of America's most high-profile, momentous issues.




Our Broken Elections


Book Description

Behind the deeply contentious 2020 election stands a real story of a broken election process. Election fraud that alters election outcomes and dilutes legitimate votes occurs all too often, as is the bungling of election bureaucrats. Our election process is full of vulnerabilities that can be — and are — taken advantage of, raising questions about, and damaging public confidence in, the legitimacy of the outcome of elections. This book explores the reality of the fraud and bureaucratic errors and mistakes that should concern all Americans and offers recommendations and solutions to fix those problems.




Words That Matter


Book Description

How the 2016 news media environment allowed Trump to win the presidency The 2016 presidential election campaign might have seemed to be all about one man. He certainly did everything possible to reinforce that impression. But to an unprecedented degree the campaign also was about the news media and its relationships with the man who won and the woman he defeated. Words that Matter assesses how the news media covered the extraordinary 2016 election and, more important, what information—true, false, or somewhere in between—actually helped voters make up their minds. Using journalists' real-time tweets and published news coverage of campaign events, along with Gallup polling data measuring how voters perceived that reporting, the book traces the flow of information from candidates and their campaigns to journalists and to the public. The evidence uncovered shows how Donald Trump's victory, and Hillary Clinton's loss, resulted in large part from how the news media responded to these two unique candidates. Both candidates were unusual in their own ways, and thus presented a long list of possible issues for the media to focus on. Which of these many topics got communicated to voters made a big difference outcome. What people heard about these two candidates during the campaign was quite different. Coverage of Trump was scattered among many different issues, and while many of those issues were negative, no single negative narrative came to dominate the coverage of the man who would be elected the 45th president of the United States. Clinton, by contrast, faced an almost unrelenting news media focus on one negative issue—her alleged misuse of e-mails—that captured public attention in a way that the more numerous questions about Trump did not. Some news media coverage of the campaign was insightful and helpful to voters who really wanted serious information to help them make the most important decision a democracy offers. But this book also demonstrates how the modern media environment can exacerbate the kind of pack journalism that leads some issues to dominate the news while others of equal or greater importance get almost no attention, making it hard for voters to make informed choices.




The Party Decides


Book Description

Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This concern threw into relief the prevailing notion that—such unusually competitive cases notwithstanding—people, rather than parties, should and do control presidential nominations. But for the past several decades, The Party Decides shows, unelected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box. Tracing the evolution of presidential nominations since the 1790s, this volume demonstrates how party insiders have sought since America’s founding to control nominations as a means of getting what they want from government. Contrary to the common view that the party reforms of the 1970s gave voters more power, the authors contend that the most consequential contests remain the candidates’ fights for prominent endorsements and the support of various interest groups and state party leaders. These invisible primaries produce frontrunners long before most voters start paying attention, profoundly influencing final election outcomes and investing parties with far more nominating power than is generally recognized.




The Age of Acrimony


Book Description

A penetrating, character-filled history “in the manner of David McCullough” (WSJ), revealing the deep roots of our tormented present-day politics. Democracy was broken. Or that was what many Americans believed in the decades after the Civil War. Shaken by economic and technological disruption, they sought safety in aggressive, tribal partisanship. The results were the loudest, closest, most violent elections in U.S. history, driven by vibrant campaigns that drew our highest-ever voter turnouts. At the century's end, reformers finally restrained this wild system, trading away participation for civility in the process. They built a calmer, cleaner democracy, but also a more distant one. Americans' voting rates crashed and never fully recovered. This is the origin story of the “normal” politics of the 20th century. Only by exploring where that civility and restraint came from can we understand what is happening to our democracy today. The Age of Acrimony charts the rise and fall of 19th-century America's unruly politics through the lives of a remarkable father-daughter dynasty. The radical congressman William “Pig Iron” Kelley and his fiery, Progressive daughter Florence Kelley led lives packed with drama, intimately tied to their nation's politics. Through their friendships and feuds, campaigns and crusades, Will and Florie trace the narrative of a democracy in crisis. In telling the tale of what it cost to cool our republic, historian Jon Grinspan reveals our divisive political system's enduring capacity to reinvent itself.




The Steal


Book Description

“A gripping ground-level narrative…a marvel of reporting: tightly wound… but also panoramic.”—Washington Post “A lean, fast-paced and important account of the chaotic final weeks.”—New York Times In The Steal, veteran journalists Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague offer a week-by-week, state-by-state account of the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In the sixty-four days between November 3 and January 6, President Donald Trump and his allies fought to reverse the outcome of the vote. Focusing on six states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—Trump’s supporters claimed widespread voter fraud. Caught up in this effort were scores of activists, lawyers, judges, and state and local officials. Working with a team of researchers and reporters, Bowden and Teague uncover never-before-told accounts from the election officials fighting to do their jobs amid outlandish claims and threats to themselves, their colleagues, and their families. The Steal is an engaging, in-depth report on what happened during those crucial nine weeks and a portrait of the dedicated individuals who did their duty and stood firm against the unprecedented, sustained attack on our election system and ensured that every legal vote was counted and that the will of the people prevailed.




An Unprecedented Election


Book Description

Written by leading scholars of political communication, this book provides a comprehensive accounting of the campaign communication that characterized the unprecedented 2016 presidential campaign. The political events leading up to election day on November 8, 2016, involved unprecedented events in U.S. history: Hillary Clinton was the first woman to be nominated by a major party, and she was favored to win the highest seat in the nation. Donald Trump, arguably one of the most unconventional and most-unlikely-to-succeed candidates in U.S. history, became the leading candidate against Clinton. Then, an even more surprising thing happened: Trump won, an outcome unexpected by all experts and statistical models. An Unprecedented Election: Media, Communication, and the Electorate in the 2016 Campaign presents proprietary research conducted by a national election team and leading scholars in political communication and documents the most significant-and in some cases, the most shocking-features of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The information presented in this book is derived from national surveys, experiments, and textual analysis and helps readers grasp the truly unique characteristics of this campaign that make it unlike any other in U.S. history. The chapters explain the underlying dynamics of this astonishing election by assessing the important role of both traditional and social media, the evolving (and potentially diminishing) influence of televised campaign advertisements, the various implications of three historic presidential debates, and the contextual significance of convention addresses. Readers will come away with an appreciation of the content and effects of the campaign communication and media coverage as well as the unique attributes of the electorate that ultimately selected Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States.