Campaigns, Finance, and Media

Modern campaigns are expensive, professionalized, and media-saturated. Understanding how they work reveals how democracy actually functions.

Modern Campaign Strategy

The Ground Game

Person-to-person contact remains the most effective campaign technique.

Voter contact: Canvassing, phone banking, text messaging. Identifying supporters, persuading undecideds, mobilizing your base.

Micro-targeting: Using data to identify and reach specific voters. Consumer data, voter files, and social media allow campaigns to tailor messages to individuals.

Field organization: Staff and volunteers in key areas. Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns set the standard. Trump’s 2016 campaign showed you could win without it (barely).

Early voting: Campaigns now work to “bank” votes before Election Day. Reduces vulnerability to late surprises.

The Air War

Television advertising: Still the biggest campaign expense. Broadcast and cable ads reach mass audiences. Increasingly negative because negative ads work.

Digital advertising: Targeted online ads. Facebook, Google, YouTube. Cheaper and more targeted than TV.

Earned media: Free coverage from news organizations. Trump’s 2016 campaign mastered this: constant controversy generated constant coverage.

Debates: Can matter, especially for lesser-known candidates. Major gaffes can sink campaigns. But most voters watch through partisan lenses.

Campaign Finance

The Legal Framework

Federal Election Campaign Act (1971, amended 1974): Established contribution limits, disclosure requirements, and public financing for presidential campaigns.

Buckley v. Valeo (1976): The Supreme Court upheld contribution limits (to prevent corruption) but struck down spending limits (spending is speech). This created the framework: you can limit what people give to candidates but not what they spend independently.

Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (2002): McCain-Feingold. Banned “soft money” (unlimited donations to parties). Restricted “electioneering communications” close to elections.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010): The Supreme Court struck down restrictions on independent expenditures by corporations and unions. Government can’t limit their political speech. This enabled Super PACs.

McCutcheon v. FEC (2014): Struck down aggregate limits on individual contributions. You can now give to as many candidates as you want (still subject to per-candidate limits).

Current Rules

Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts but cannot coordinate with campaigns.

Dark Money

501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations can engage in political activity and don’t have to disclose donors. Money flows through them to Super PACs, obscuring its origin.

Total dark money spending has increased dramatically. We often don’t know who’s funding political messages.

Small-Dollar Fundraising

The internet enabled raising money from many small donors. Howard Dean pioneered it in 2004. Obama mastered it. Sanders and Trump showed its power on different sides.

Effects:

• Reduces dependence on big donors (somewhat)
• Favors candidates who can generate enthusiasm
• Creates new incentives: fundraising appeals need emotion, often outrage
• Email and text solicitations are constant

Does Money Buy Elections?

Complicated. Money is necessary but not sufficient. The better-funded candidate usually wins, but causation runs both ways: winners attract money.

Money matters most in primaries and lower-profile races where voters have less information. In high-profile general elections, both sides have enough to get their message out.

The Media

Traditional Media

Network television: ABC, CBS, NBC. Once dominated. Still important but declining.

Cable news: CNN (1980), Fox News (1996), MSNBC (later). Cable fragmented the audience and enabled partisan programming.

Newspapers: Declining circulation and revenue. Still important for original reporting that other outlets amplify.

New Media

Social media: Facebook, Twitter/X, TikTok, YouTube. Direct connection between politicians and public. Bypass traditional media gatekeepers.

Podcasts: Long-form conversations. Reaching engaged audiences.

Online news: Digital-native outlets. Some partisan, some not. Fragmented attention.

Media Effects

Agenda-setting: Media doesn’t tell people what to think but does tell them what to think about. What gets covered matters.

Framing: How issues are presented shapes how people think about them. “Estate tax” vs. “death tax.” “Pro-life” vs. “anti-abortion.”

Priming: Emphasizing certain issues makes them more important in voter evaluations. Covering the economy primes economic voting.

Confirmation bias: People seek information that confirms their existing views. Media fragmentation enables this.

Horse Race Coverage

Media covers campaigns as competitions: who’s ahead, who’s behind, what’s the strategy. This “horse race” framing crowds out substantive policy coverage.

Effects:

• Voters learn about polls more than policies
• Campaigns optimize for coverage, not substance
• Momentum and perception become self-fulfilling

Fact-Checking

The rise of fact-checking (PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, newspaper fact-checkers) attempted to combat misinformation.

Limits: Fact-checks reach people who already value facts. Those who don’t trust media don’t trust fact-checkers. And by the time a false claim is checked, it’s already spread.

Misinformation and Disinformation

Misinformation: False information spread without intent to deceive.

Disinformation: False information spread deliberately to deceive.

Social media accelerates both. Algorithms favor engagement, and false content often generates more engagement than true content.

Foreign interference: Russia’s 2016 social media campaign demonstrated vulnerability. Platforms have improved detection but the problem persists.

Media Trust

Trust in media has collapsed. Democrats trust mainstream outlets; Republicans trust conservative outlets. This makes it hard to establish shared facts.

The Permanent Campaign

Modern governance has become continuous campaigning.

Presidents campaign constantly: Approval ratings matter for legislative leverage. Fundraising for the next election starts immediately.

Members of Congress spend enormous time raising money: Some estimates suggest 30+ hours per week soliciting donations.

No off-season: The next election is always approaching.

Effects:

• Governing becomes subordinate to campaigning
• Compromise is risky because it can be attacked in ads
• Officials optimize for their base, not the median voter

The Takeaway

Campaigns are how candidates communicate with voters. Media is the channel. Money is the fuel.

Understanding this ecosystem means understanding:

• How modern campaigns operate
• The legal framework for campaign finance (and its holes)
• How Citizens United changed the landscape
• The role of traditional and social media
• Why horse race coverage dominates
• The challenge of misinformation

American political participation operates through these institutions. Their strengths and weaknesses shape who participates, who wins, and what kind of democracy we have.