Up to 60% of Iowa 2008 Republican presidential caucus attendees considered themselves Protestant evangelicals, which likely led to the unexpected victory of born-again Republican candidate Mike Huckabee over front-runner Mitt Romney. The relation between religious and political affiliations, however, is not always so clear-cut, as evidenced by the decisions Democratic evangelicals must make.
Scholars have long been in interested in describing precisely and theorizing what role campaign momentum — the use of a victory to push a lead more decisively against opponents — plays in the electoral process.
Political science scholarship has focused extensively on how voters make choices as the presidential primary campaign formally unfolds. But there has been relatively little study of which factors shape voter preferences in the informal period before the primaries.
In studying the mechanisms that determine how candidates prevail in presidential primaries, political scientists have often focused on momentum and how a candidate can pull away from the field. But they have also studied the “winnowing” process, analyzing the factors that cause candidates to drop out and, by attrition, ultimately leave one candidate as the nominee.
The widespread adoption of Twitter as a platform on which to talk about politics and advocate for candidates has changed the way campaign operatives think about strategy — and the way that many citizens engage in the campaign.
The number of evening network news stories about the presidential nominating contests has generally declined in recent decades, according to a paper by scholars at George Mason University. The 2008 election — which for a variety of reasons generated massive media attention — stands as an exception to this trend. But whether or not 2008 is a sign of renewed interest by the television networks, or just an anomaly, remains to be seen during the 2012 election cycle, the researchers note.
