The Methods behind the Madness: Presidential Electoral College Strategies, 1988-1996

The prevailing conventional wisdom in political science is that presidential candidates behave strategically and systematically. This study posits that we have not had adequate empirical information to judge how much strategic planning goes on, how these plans are derived, or how systematically they are realized. The analysis examines actual electoral college strategies from the 1988, 1992, and 1996 presidential elections and judges them against state-by-state allocations of television advertising purchases and candidate appearances. The data show that candidates devised and acted upon electoral college strategies, which were largely symmetrical across elections and party lines. The data also show, however, that strategies were neither perfectly symmetrical nor static, raising the possibility that presidential campaigning is less predictable than previously assumed.