Electoral College Strategies of U.S. Presidential Campaigns from 1952 to 2016

• In Event: Campaigns 1

Abstract

There is widespread agreement that the Electoral College shapes the nature of presidential campaigns in the U.S., but relatively little empirical research explores what Electoral College strategies are like, how they have changed over time, or how they affect the allocation of candidate resources. Drawing on archival and news media data from presidential campaigns between 1952 and 2016, we re-construct how the major party presidential candidates classified states for campaign purposes and how they allocated candidate visits and campaign advertising across states. We find that campaigns have consistently developed detailed Electoral College strategies throughout this time and have allocated resources in rough accordance with these plans. Furthermore, some common conceptions about presidential campaign strategies are challenged: competitiveness is only imperfectly correlated with battleground status; populous states are no longer more likely to be targeted; and the number of battleground states has changed only marginally over time. Additionally, neither an in-party governor nor a candidate from a particular state appears to influence "battleground" status; rather, these variables generally serve to make states safer.

Authors

• Daron R. Shaw, University of Texas, Austin

• Scott L. Althaus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Lindsay Dun, University of Texas at Austin