Sociologist Jennifer Lena was kind enough to provide Election 101 with another fascinating installment to what will ultimately be a three part series of posts on music in presidential campaigns. Check out her new book, Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music and her post on the uses and abuses of music by politicians after the jump:

The economy seems to be weakening, and Republicans are eager to blame Obama. This is by-the-books political messaging: the party opposing the incumbent president should talk about the economy when its weak. But the success of the attack, as Steve Kornacki notes, may depend on whether Obama really gets the blame for the weak economy.

To this point, more Americans have blamed George W. Bush, during whose tenure the recession and financial crisis began, than Barack Obama. This was true in a series of Gallup polls between July 2009 and September 2011. For example, in September 2011 69% said Bush deserved “a great deal” or “a moderate amount” of blame. Just over half (53%) said that of Obama. In a more recent poll, conducted by the Washington Post in January 2011, respondents were given the option of choosing whether Obama or Bush was “most responsible for the country’s economic problems.” Many more chose Bush (54%) than Obama (29%).

As voters went to the polls for the French presidential elections, Richard Kuisel, author of The French Way: How France Embraced and Rejected American Values and Power shared his thoughts with Election 101 on the distinct differences between election season in the US and the one in France. Read on for an interesting study in contrasts between two political cultures including treatments of key issues like the market and capitalism, immigration, as well as a marked difference in the amount of interest in candidates’ private lives and religious faith.

Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson kindly agreed to answer a few questions about their forthcoming book The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It. If you have any of your own follow up questions, please leave a note below and maybe we’ll have a chance to get them answered soon.

PUP: Why did you write this book?

Amy Gutmann & Dennis Thompson: A central theme of our earlier writing—and a major challenge for any large democracy—is how people who deeply disagree can come together to make laws. Compromise has to be part of that process. It was only through difficult and often painful acts of compromise that the Constitution was written and ratified and the United States charted a course over the past 223 years. That is an unmatched achievement in a country that is so large, diverse, and oftentimes divided. But in recent years, it struck us that an essential lesson of this success has been forgotten. The difficulty of compromise is built into the democratic process itself, but so is the need for compromise. A better understanding and appreciation of compromise might be especially useful in this time of political polarization.

PUP: Is refusing to compromise a recent phenomenon in American politics or have politicians always had this problem?

AG & DT: Compromise has always been difficult. The successful bipartisan tax reform compromise of 1986, which the book offers as a model, was certainly not easy. But key leaders (President Reagan, House Speaker Tip O’Neil and others) were able to put their minds to governing rather than campaigning. In recent years this has become less common and more difficult. One reason why is that campaigning has come to dominate governing more than ever. The 24/7 news cycle, unlimited flows of money into political campaigning, and polarization all feed what has come to be called the “permanent campaign.” Every day is effectively election day. Political leaders are always finding it necessary to act with the next election cycle foremost in mind. This makes compromise increasingly difficult. Even when politicians may be willing to compromise, they are loath to admit it. As Speaker Boehner has said, “I reject the word.”

PUP: How can you expect Congress to compromise when the public seems to be demanding that their representatives just stick to their principles?

AG & DT: It is true that most Americans say they want politicians to stick to their principles. But they also say they want politicians who are willing to compromise to get things done, and they strongly disapprove when politicians—even those whose principles they support—refuse to compromise to head off a crisis. The attacks of 9/11 and the world financial meltdown of 2008 brought both parties together to make difficult choices, which the vast majority of the American public supported. Most recently, faced with the risk of government default on its debt in the summer of 2011, even a majority of Tea Party supporters (the group typically most opposed to compromise, according to polls) said that they would support a compromise that included tax increases as well as spending cuts. Yet every candidate running in the Republican presidential primary declared they were not willing to accept even one dollar of increased revenue for every ten dollars of tax cuts. So the public is often ahead of the politicians on the question of compromise.

PUP: You compare two historic compromises that many readers will have personally experienced – tax reform under President Reagan and health care reform under President Obama. What do these examples tells us about compromise at large?

Continue reading the Q&A after the jump.

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Who can forget Sarah Palin joining John McCain on the RNC stage to the thrumming guitar chords of Heart’s 1977 hit song “Barracuda?” Equally well remembered was the group’s request that she stop using the song on the campaign trail. When did the trend of using popular music for the sake of political branding start? Recently I asked sociologist Jennifer Lena, author of Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music to offer her thoughts on how music is used in in political campaigns. Read her Election 101 post here:

Back in January, many people wondered whether Mitt Romney’s support in the Republican primary (about 25%) was a floor or a ceiling. The question was whether that quarter of the Republican electorate was made up of solid supporters who would be a foundation from which Romney’s support could grow or whether they were the only Republican primary voters who would vote for Romney. Through our relationship with Model Politics, John Sides (George Washington University) and I have been asking 1,000 people a week to tell us about their political choices. We now have 11 weeks of data about Romney, his challengers, and how voters choose among them.

These data provide a great snapshot of the GOP electorate at any point in time, but more importantly, YouGov, which fields the Model Politics surveys, did a large political profile of all the people who answer their polls in December of 2011, right before the nomination process officially started — and wait for it – everyone who has been interviewed in one of the weeks in 2012 was also interviewed in December of 2011. This means that we have repeated data on each respondent in our weekly surveys, which means we can track changes over time.

Continue reading this article (including some excellent charts and graphs) after the jump.

Editor’s note — this is the second post in a series of guest posts by John Sides and Lynn Vavreck that assess ongoing polls through the Presidential Election. This article is cross-posted at Model Politics.

Earlier posts:

• Campaign Brouhahas Fail to Captivate: http://press.princeton.edu/blog/2012/03/14/campaign-brouhahas-fail-to-captivate-guest-post-from-john-sides/

As part of Election 101, we are posting exclusive content from The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History on subjects related to Election 2012.

First up, campaign consultants. What is a campaign consultant? When did campaigns start hiring experts to guide them through thorny and often divisive primaries and elections?

In this excerpt, Dennis W. Johnson, offers a brief introduction to the history of this relatively new political phenomenon.

But in contests for big- city mayors, governors, members of Congress, and other contests, professional political consultants are used to help guide candidates, political parties, and interest groups through the complexities of today’s elections. These are the expensive, often high- profile contests, where candidates and interested parties will raise hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars to fund their races. It is not unusual for candidates for the U.S. Senate to raise and spend $10 to $15 million. It was once a rarity for candidates for Congress to spend $1 million; now it is commonplace. In some jurisdictions, candidates who are elected to the state supreme court might spend $5 or $8 million, while some school board candidates in big cities have been known to spend well over $100,000. Statewide spending in California presents a special case. In 2005 alone, with no governor, no state legislators, and no other state officials to elect, still over $500 million was spent by participants trying to defend or defeat ballot issues.

Where does the money go? Much of it, of course, goes to television advertising or direct- mail expenses, but a considerable portion goes to a battery of professionals who are hired by the campaigns to help win the public over to their side. Campaign consulting is a thriving business; no serious candidate in an important contest can do without consultants. Yet, campaign consulting is a relatively new business.

Read the complete article here: http://press.princeton.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2Campaigning.Campaign-Consultants.pdf

The preceding is an excerpt from The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, edited by Michael Kazin, Rebecca Edwards, and Adam Rothman. To learn more about this book, please visit http://press.princeton.edu. Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press. No part of this text may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher.

Check out this short video our author Philip Freeman recently did for his new book HOW TO WIN AN ELECTION: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians.

Over at The Monkey Cage, John Sides does a terrific job explaining the unique publishing initiative he and co-author Lynn Vavreck are undertaking, along with their political sciences editor Chuck Myers.

“We are going to try something unusual with this book—at least by academic standards,” writes Sides. How unusual? Well, Sides and his colleagues are tackling unusual from both sides — both in the writing and publishing of the book. The book will be based on articles they are writing for various blogs about YouGov‘s election survey data (you can read some of their posts here at PUP). They are encouraging dialogue with readers via comments so they can refine their text.

Regarding the publishing process, they are also trying something completely new. At an academic press, projects are subject to lengthy peer review processes but Sides and his colleagues have come up with a novel solution. “Blind” readers normally read a complete manuscript to provide feedback, but in order to speed up the publishing schedule for this book, the editorial team “has recruited reviewers who will read and comment on chapters as they are written.”

The publishing strategy for this book is also quite different. We will publish short ebooks — parts of the whole — prior to the print publication. “Princeton will also be publishing the first 2 chapters in electronic form in August 2012. These chapters will deal with the (1) political and economic landscape as the campaign got under way, and (2) the GOP primary. Hopefully they will serve to generate some interest and discussion,” writes Sides.

This process is an experiment in publishing as well as an attempt to meet Princeton University Press’s mission “to disseminate scholarship (through print and digital media) both within academia and to society at large.”

While the team has thought through all the logistics of this process, they are at the mercy of the candidates and the news. As Sides notes, somewhat tongue in cheek, “if the GOP primary doesn’t end soon, we can’t promise anything.”

The debate over the Obama administration’s policy on contraception coverage. Sandra Fluke’s testimony before Congress. Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on her. Obama’s phone call to Fluke. The Republican candidates’ views of all of the above. These things have driven a lot of political commentary.

Amidst the frenzy, it’s always worth stopping to see how many Americans are tuning in. It is easy to overestimate how much Americans care about every little political tempest that roils Washington DC, the campaign trail, cable news, or the editorial pages. A March 3-6 YouGov poll shows that large pluralities, even majorities, of Americans aren’t closely following the contraception contretemps.

This poll first asked about Rick Santorum’s position on birth control: “Which one of the following statements is closest to Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s position on birth control?” Respondents were given these possibilities:

• I’m fine with it within a marriage but not outside of the husband-wife relationship because it encourages premarital sex.
• It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.
• Contraception. It’s working just fine. Just leave it alone.
• Have not heard yet about Santorum’s position on birth control.

The second answer is a direct quote from Santorum, but only 34% of respondents identified this as his position. Ten percent chose the first option. About 13% chose the third, which was actually a statement by Mitt Romney. The largest group, 43%, simply said that they had not heard.

The poll also asked respondents this item about the Fluke-Limbaugh controversy:

“Last week, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh described a female Georgetown University law student who testified to Congress about women’s access to contraception at the Catholic university as ‘a slut’ and a prostitute. In the controversy that followed, which of these people called the student to express his disappointment in the personal attack?”

The figure below shows that just about half identified the caller, correctly, as Obama. The remaining half either misidentified the caller or, most commonly, had not heard.

A similar finding emerges when we move outside the contraception debate to another miniature dust-up: Santorum’s comments about Obama’s views of college education. The YouGov survey asked: “Which of the following people said, ‘President Obama has said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.’” Respondent could choose between Sarah Palin, Stephen Colbert, and Santorum.

A large fraction, 42%, identified Santorum as the speaker. Four percent chose Palin and 7 percent chose Colbert. But the largest group, 47%, once again had not heard.

To point out that many Americans do not know the answers to such questions is in no way to impugn their intelligence or citizenship. People are busy and have many interests. They do not always have the time, inclination, or need to follow politics very closely. These survey results actually do more to question the assumptions of commentators, who are often anxious to inflate every argument during the campaign to a “game changer”—even if many Americans aren’t really watching the game.

editor’s note — this is the first of what will hopefully be a series of guest posts by John Sides and Lynn Vavreck that assess ongoing polls through the Presidential Election. This article is cross-posted at Model Politics.

Personalized political communication lead by volunteers, part-timers–the unsung folks ‘on the ground’ who canvass the neighborhoods–influences electoral outcomes in a big way. Recently Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, author of Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns took some time to discuss how behind the scenes changes in the way campaigns are run has a huge impact on voter turnout, and explain how the 2012 election will be a critical test of how much campaigns can do to increase turnout among their own supporters. Read his thoughts after the jump:

Translator of our little but powerful new book Philip Freeman discussed the election as well as Quintus Cicero and HOW TO WIN AN ELECTION on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan last Friday. It is a very entertaining segment so take a look.

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