The 2000 Presidential Election and the Foundations of Party
Politics. By Richard Johnston, Michael G. Hagen, and Kathleen Hall
Jamieson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 216p. $55.00 cloth,
$19.99 paper.
The 2000 presidential election in the United States provides Richard
Johnston, Michael Hagen, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson with a “natural
experiment” to investigate the dynamics of support for George W.
Bush and for Al Gore over the course of the campaign. As we all know, the
2000 election gave somewhat contradictory results: a popular majority for
one candidate and an Electoral College majority for the other. Further,
the campaign had two distinct elements that these researchers capitalize
on for their work—the nationwide news coverage provided by the mass
media and the campaign ads running on television chiefly, if not
exclusively, in the battleground states. Given the difference between the
forecasts provided by previously reliable models of presidential campaigns
and the actual outcome of the 2000 contest, Johnston et al. ask whether
campaign dynamics may account for the disparity.