The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004

The Race to 270: The Electoral College and the Campaign Strategies of 2000 and 2004. By Daron Shaw. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. xii, 232 pp.

Daron Shaw's aptly titled work, The Race to 270, focuses on two realities facing any presidential campaign. First, the U.S. Constitution mandates that the president be selected by the Electoral College with a majority vote. The second reality is that presidential campaigns regularly face limited funding, as there are always more uses for campaign dollars than available monies. Taken together, this means that presidential campaign strategies must be developed so that available dollars are spent in a way that best ensures an Electoral College majority. Shaw elaborates on how these two realities functioned in 2000 and 2004.

Shaw begins by asking whether campaigning matters. Public opinion, sociological and economic factors, party registration patterns, and past voting trends may all predict a state's electoral vote outcome before the first candidates declare their candidacy. Yet extensive time and money are invested in the campaign. Does it make a difference?

Tackling this question poses difficulties because it is approached differently by campaign strategists and political scientists. Whereas political scientists focus on vote choice theories such as retrospective evaluations, issue salience, and issue ownership, campaign strategists...