Reporting data and predicting trends through the 2008 campaign, this classroom-tested volume offers again James E. Campbell’s “theory of the predictable campaign,” incorporating the fundamental conditions that systematically affect the presidential vote: political competition, presidential incumbency, and election-year economic conditions.

Campbell’s cogent thinking and clear style present students with a readable survey of presidential elections and political scientists’ ways of studying them. The American Campaign also shows how and why journalists have mistakenly assigned a pattern of unpredictability and critical significance to the vagaries of individual campaigns.

This excellent election-year text provides:

a summary and assessment of each of the serious predictive models of presidential election outcomes;

a historical summary of many of America’s important presidential elections;

a significant new contribution to the understanding of presidential campaigns and how they matter.