Presidential Election Process Essay

Selecting the candidate for the presidential election has changed since the 1960’s in the US. Since the reforms occurred in the candidates were either ideologically extreme or not experienced, the party leaders had less power over who ran from their party and the media had more power, campaigns were longer and way more expensive, giving Iowa and New Hampshire disproportionate power, and campaigning over governing. (8)

We use two types of presidential elections, the primary and the general presidential elections. They form a 2 step process that together determine the winner. The first is the primary election, this election is a party nomination for the political office. There are 4 types of primary election types: open primaries where anyone

from any political party votes, closed primaries where you have to be registered with a particular party to vote for nominee in that party, semi-open primaries where any political party associated person can vote in a primary but only one primary, and runoff primaries where you hold a second primary election between the two candidates with the most votes. The two most common types of primaries are semi-open primaries and closed primaries. The winner of the primaries is the one that represents the party in the presidential election, and at the national convention that is held in the summer of the election year they are officially nominated. The general election is the one that follows and this is the main election, this is the one that is between the winners from the primary elections and includes any other candidate that doesn’t have any official party ties. The general election occurs every 4 years and the winner of this election will be the president of the United States.
Primary elections being started earlier is one of the effects that has occurred because of the reform in the 1960’s, this is termed front-loading. Front loading is when primaries are held early on in the campaign process, they occur as early as February or March. The party nominee is then known early and that way they can start campaigning early.

New Hampshire and Iowa are among the states that hold the earliest primary elections and therefore have a big influence on the nominee that will be selected. Nominees have more time now to campaign and reach people and get their message across to try and get the voters on their side before the general election will take place. There has also been a decline in the choosing power of party leadership, which is referring to the party leaders having a say on who is going to be running for president. These elections are less party based and more candidate based, you don’t have to be the favorite man of the party to be their primary nominee, it is now the choice of the party members to see who has the better chance of getting the overall vote and voting for that person to run for president. Because of less power from the party leaders to choose the nominee, the media has major Coverage of the early selection of the nominees. Specifically it’s called “horse-race” coverage, due to the fact that the media doesn’t look at the substance of what they are covering, they are more interested in who’s in front, who’s behind, who is gaining the trust of the people, and who is losing

credibility with the people. They influence the nominees campaign by either helping it get more attention or making the campaign lose its credibility which will affect how people will vote in the general election. There has been an increase in the cost of campaigns in the run for president. The total value of an election is calculated by the campaign spending and outside spending, these are the own campaigns expenditures and the expenditures of third parties that they are unaware of. (9) the rise of campaigning has risen 555% over the past 30 years (9) which is due to the change in campaigning rules and the growth of the economy. Because of the rise in campaign spending and front loading, early fund-raising is important to help nominees create momentum for themselves. Nominees need a good amount of money to fill states with their campaign ads. In the last presidential election, campaign fundraising plus money from PACs and other fundraising committees helped raise 1.4 billion for Hillary Clinton by Dec. 31 and Trump raised 957.6 million by that date (10), just to give you an idea of what type of money is needed now a days to run for president. Since the party leaders are not representing the candidates anymore, they need to get their message across to the voters and what better way than to hire a consultant to help you do so. Consultants are in charge doing polling, raise money, buy media time, and produce television ads. Candidates are now in charge of their campaign and the message that they want to send out, their party does not fund them nor has a say in if they should run or not. Consultants are selling the candidate to the people to try and win the primary election and then go on to try and win the general election.