Insiders, Outsiders, and Voters in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

[I]f you believe it's time to challenge the Washington politics ... to restore a sense of mission to our politics and a sense of possibility to America ... I ask you to believe in yourself I ask you to believe again in the dream that we call America. --Barack Obama (1) In New Orleans, McCain said the word "change" or a variation of it more than 30 times in his speech--a sign that he knows what voters are looking for. --Holly Bailey (2) We have all been told that the 2008 presidential election was historic--not merely a consequential election, but a monumental moment in American history. This may, in fact, prove to be true. But in many ways, the 2008 presidential election was both predictable and quite comparable to a handful of past races. Consider that the 2008 election featured an incumbent party seeking a third consecutive presidential victory, but burdened by a costly war, a sagging economy, and an unpopular president. The elections of 1952 and 1968--both of which produced a change in party control of the White House--were surely relevant touchstones. Both Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon pounded the incumbent administrations for their incompetence and malfeasance during their election campaigns, while promising to bring needed change and outside-the-Beltway sensibilities to Washington. Like those candidates, Barack Obama had a huge advantage and a clear path to the goal line in 2008. John McCain, on the other hand, needed to convince voters that a COP victory in 2008 would not constitute a "third term" for President George W. Bush. Because of these circumstances, both presidential campaigns attempted to capture the mantel of "reform." Their core strategic assumption was abundantly clear: a candidate who could tap into voters' frustration with the policies and politics of the last few years could expect a substantial electoral bonanza. The most obvious manifestation of this belief is that much of the rhetoric of the 2008 presidential campaign involved words such as "change," "reform," "outsider," and "maverick." But the truth is that we do not know very much about the electoral implications of being a "change" candidate in the United States. There is almost no empirical research on whether voters consider "outsider" candidates as better than "insider" candidates, or whether this particular distinction is even relevant to their political calculus. More specifically, there has been no systematic study of how the notion of "reform" politics played out in the 2008 presidential election. This study takes aim at this gap. We proceed in a straightforward manner. Initially, we propose using insights and assumptions from spatial theory to consider the nature of competition in U.S. presidential elections. Second, we examine data from the National Election Study (NES) from 1992 to 2004 to determine the number and character of dimensions structuring voters' perceptions of presidential candidates in those years. Third, we apply the same approach with data from the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) to consider the possibility of a reform--establishment dimension in the Obama-McCain contest. Fourth, we use postelection survey data from the University of Texas at Austin's Government Department polls to more precisely estimate (1) the distribution of voters along a reform-establishment dimension, (2) their perceptions of where the candidates and parties fell along this dimension, and (3) the impact of these perceptions on presidential vote choice. Fifth and finally, we speculate about the pervasiveness and components of reform sentiments in future U.S. elections and policy debates. The Dimensions of Political Competition In studying the potential role of reformist sentiment and candidates in 2008, we assume that voters and candidates are rational actors who attempt to maximize their utility when deciding for whom to vote. …