The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics: Presidential Elections of the 1980s

Wattenberg starts by reviewing theories of how people vote. Do people vote because of where they live? Do people vote because their families have always voted for this or that party? Do people vote for one party because they are dissatisfied with economic conditions? With changing social values? Or do people choose someone because the candidate seems to be the right person for the job? The book then presents presidential election returns and polling data ranging between 1952 and 1988 and the trend is unmistakable. People are voting less and less along party lines, less and less according to policy trends (which had stabilized) and more according to performance. The data indicates that voters in the 1980 election didn't so much elect Ronald Reagan as they rejected Jimmy Carter. Likewise in 1988, they didn't so much elect Bush senior as they re-elected Reagan to a third term. Interestingly, being elected doesn't seem to confer a policy mandate of any sort on a candidate, or at least not as strong a mandate as first impressions would lead us to think. What matters most is not which policy platform the candidate will adopt, what matters most is who the candidates are and how people expect them to perform. Conservatives should not dismiss the liberal author's conclusions since they seem to have been corroborated by election results since 1992. Wattenberg uncovered trends that all politicians need to consider. Vincent Poirier, Tokyo