What Do Voters Want?

In Campaign Craft: The Strategies, Tactics, and Art of Political Campaign Management, 4th edition, edited by Shea and Burton, what the voters want, what the candidate has to offer, and what the opponent brings to the table are all discussed as important elements to a political campaign (loc. 1567). Trump seems to run his campaign in…

Opposition Research: An Easy Target

Craft claims that there are four types of information involved in opposition research: political, campaign finance, career, and personal (Shea and Burton loc. 781). Hillary Clinton has not had much of a career prior to politics, so there is not a great deal of attacks targeting that section of information, but there are a wealth…

Trump’s Organized Chaos

Donald Trump’s campaign might seem like nothing more than chaos. It would seem silly to try and apply any of the eight elements of a campaign plan outlined in Shea and Burton’s Campaign Craft: The Strategies, Tactics, and Art of Political Campaign Management. But, though it seems chaotic, Donald Trump’s campaign can be applied to…

What is a Political Consultant?

What a political consultant is, what one does, and whether they help in the grand scheme of politics is a question that is continuously debated and researched. Although the results can be slightly unclear, it is a general conclusion that consultants aid in managing campaigns, contribute both financially and in terms of votes to a…

Do Campaigns Matter?

Over the next few weeks I’ll post some of the essays I have written for my Political Science class. They were done in a hurry, but still relatively sound.   The question of whether or not campaigns effect elections is an interesting one. The argument does not seem to be whether campaigns have any effect…