Campaigns and Elections: Players and Processes

Stephen K. Medvic's Campaigns and Elections is a comprehensive yet compact core text that addresses two distinct but related aspects of American electoral democracy: the processes that constitute campaigns and elections, and the players who are involved. In addition to balanced coverage of process and actors, it gives equal billing to both campaigns and elections, and covers contests for legislative and executive positions at the national and state and local levels, including issue-oriented campaigns of note.

The book opens by providing students with the conceptual distinctions between what happens in an election and the campaigning that precedes it. Significant attention is devoted to setting up the context for these campaigns and elections by covering the rules of the game in the American electoral system as well as aspects of election administration and the funding of elections. Then the book systematically covers the actors at every level--candidates and their organizations, parties, interest groups, the media, and voters--and the macro level aspects of campaigns such as campaign strategy and determinants of election outcomes. The book concludes with a big picture assessment of campaign ethics and implications of the "permanent campaign."

New to the Fourth edition:

- Fully updated through the 2020 elections, looking ahead to the 2022 midterms.

- Covers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2020 election as well as the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

- Adds new sections in Chapter 3 on election integrity and the assessment of election administration.

- Reviews recent Supreme Court cases on gerrymandering and faithless electors.

- Expands coverage of social media as a source of news, of the increasingly partisan nature of the media, and of the role of media fact-checking in campaigns and elections.

- Reorganizes the chapters on the various actors so that the chapter on candidates leads directly to the chapter on campaigns.

- Fully updates the resources listed at the end of each chapter.