The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election
Scholars Kate Kenski, Bruce Hardy, and Kathleen Jamieson analyze the 2008 presidential campaign and the images the candidates evoked either through deliberate engineering or public and media reaction: the inexperienced neophyte who might be a Muslim; the aged and erratic candidate whose choice of a vice-presidential partner showed poor judgment. In part 1, the authors offer statistical analysis of polling data showing the declining popularity of President Bush and the prospects of the presidential candidates as the economy worsened, tempered with revealing commentary from focus groups. Part 2 analyzes the momentum of the campaigns through the debates and the days leading up to the election. Finally, the authors offer an analysis of the successful Obama campaign, how a young, untested senator with a very different biography than most presidential candidates managed to win and how early voting campaigns, microtargeting, and the strategy of rejecting federal election financing impacted the election. Despite the very heavy emphasis on statistics, the excerpts and detailed analysis from interview transcripts are very revealing and offer nuanced perspective on the election and implications for future elections. --Vanessa Bush--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.