Voting Patterns

Analyzing an election and the various factors that come into play is like trying to find a few hundred needles within the world’s biggest haystack. The best course of action is to find a few big needles and call it quits. Some factors are predictable and semi-controllable such as voter turnout and which way certain states will vote. At the same time, some circumstances are utterly out of the campaign’s control, such as sudden disasters and other sudden changes. Therefore, campaigns have to control as many variables as possible while minimizing the effects of the unexpected ones. It is a very delicate balancing act of image and votes and media all worked to gain an advantage over an opponent.

Over the years this act and the strategies used to win have greatly shifted with the times. Gone is the era of fully private conversations and the printed pamphlet. Now candidates have mass media to both help and hinder them. They also now have the benefit of technology and sophisticated algorithms to

After the 1964 election in which republicans only got a handful of southern states, Nixon actively worked to appeal to southern states basically by appealing to racial prejudices. This caused an electoral re-alignment of a majority of white voters in the south to favoring the Republican Party. This strategy of capturing the south allowed Nixon to easily capture the presidency and the southern base of the republican would continue to grow from there. This strategy will have effects on later on elections as well because as they gained the vote of the white southerner they lost the African American vote which they are now trying to re-capture. As time goes on elections will rely more and more on gaining enough votes from the minority groups. Certain factors can be used a helpful tactics in one election only to be the downfall of elections down the