The 2004 Presidential Election: How Much Do Campaigns Matter?

Transcript

LARRY BARTELS: What I want to do to start is just to say a little bit generally about how political scientists think about campaign events and their effects, which is rather different, I think, that the way most people tend to think about them. I think most people's views about campaigns and how they work is in significant part the product of a kind of self-interested conspiracy between journalists who want you to believe that it's important to get up every morning and read what Rick Berke writes about what happened yesterday because it's somehow fundamental to how the election is going to turn out, and campaign consultants who have an even more obvious professional self-interest in convincing the world that what they do is important and indeed often decisive.

Well, it can be decisive, as we found out in 2000. When the election is close, even things that have small effects can hugely important. That is obviously true, but what I want to talk about a little bit is how we should think about those effects and their likely magnitudes.

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