By Katherine Connor Martin
Back in January we published a short glossary of the jargon of the presidential primaries. Now that the campaign has begun in earnest, here is our brief guide to some of the most perplexing vocabulary of this year’s general election.
Nominating conventions
It may seem like the 2012 US presidential election has stretched on for eons, but it only officially begins with the major parties’ quadrennial nominating conventions, on August 27–30 (Republicans) and September 3–6 (Democrats). How can they be called nominating conventions if we already know who the nominees are? Before the 1970s these conventions were important events at which party leaders actually determined their nominees. In the aftermath of the tumultuous 1968 Democratic convention, however, the parties changed their nominating process so that presidential candidates are now effectively settled far in advance of the convention through a system of primaries andcaucuses, leaving the conventions themselves as largely ceremonial occasions.
Purple states, swing states, and battleground states
These three terms all refer to more or less the same thing: a state which is seen as a potential win for either of the two major parties; in the UK, the same idea is expressed by the use of marginal to describe constituencies at risk. The termbattleground state is oldest, and most transparent in origin: it is a state that the two sides are expected to actively fight over. Swing state refers to the idea that the state could swing in favor of either of the parties on election day; undecided voters are often called swing voters. Purple state is a colorful metaphorical extension of the terms red state and blue state, which are used to refer to a safe state for the Republicans or Democrats, respectively (given that purple is a mixture of red and blue). Since red is the traditional color of socialist and leftist parties, the association with the conservative Republicans may seem somewhat surprising. In fact, it is a very recent development, growing out of the arbitrary color scheme on network maps during the fiercely contested 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Electoral vote
What really matters on election day isn’t the popular vote, but the electoral vote. The US Constitution stipulates that the president be chosen by a body, theelectoral college, consisting of electors representing each state (who are bound by the results of their state election). The total number of electors is 538, with each state having as many electors as it does senators and representatives in Congress (plus 3 for the District of Columbia). California has the largest allotment, 55. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, all of the states give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state on a winner-takes-all basis, and whichever candidate wins the majority of electoral votes (270) wins the election. This means it is technically possible to win the popular vote but lose the election; in fact, this has happened three times, most recently in the 2000 election when Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush was elected president.
Veepstakes
The choice of a party’s candidate for vice president is completely in the hands of the presidential nominee, making it one of the big surprises of each campaign cycle and a topic of endless media speculation. The perceived jockeying for position among likely VP picks has come to be known colloquially as theveepstakes. The 2012 veepstakes are, of course, already over, with Joe Biden and Paul Ryan the victors.
Super PAC
If there is a single word that most characterizes the 2012 presidential election, it is probably this one. A super PAC is a type of independent political action committee (PAC for short), which is allowed to raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, and individuals but is not permitted to coordinate directly with candidates. Such political action committees rose to prominence in the wake of the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and related lower-court decisions, which lifted restrictions on independent political spending by corporations and unions. Advertising funded by these super PACs is a new feature of this year’s campaign.
501(c)(4)
It isn’t often that an obscure provision of the tax code enters the general lexicon, but discussions of Super PACS often involve references to 501(c)(4)s. These organizations, named by the section of the tax code defining them, are nonprofit advocacy groups which are permitted to participate in political campaigns. 501(c)(4) organizations are not required to disclose their donors. This, combined with the new Super PACs, opens the door to the possibility of political contributions which are not only unlimited but also undisclosed: if a Super PAC receives donations through a 501(c)(4), then the original donor of the funds may remain anonymous.
The horse race
As we’ve discussed above, what really matters in a US presidential election is the outcome of the electoral vote on November 6. But that doesn’t stop commentators and journalists from obsessing about the day-to-day fluctuations in national polls; this is known colloquially as focusing on the horse race.
The online magazine Slate has embraced the metaphor and actually produced an animated chart of poll results in which the candidates are represented as racehorses.
This article originally appeared on the OxfordWords blog.
Katherine Connor Martin is a lexicographer in OUP’s New York office.
Oxford Dictionaries Online is a free site offering a comprehensive current English dictionary, grammar guidance, puzzles and games, and a language blog; as well as up-to-date bilingual dictionaries in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The premium site, Oxford Dictionaries Pro, features smart-linked dictionaries and thesauruses, audio pronunciations, example sentences, advanced search functionality, and specialist language resources for writers and editors.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only language, lexicography, word, etymology, and dictionary articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
I absolutely love making children's illustrations but once in a while it's nice to draw something more adult oriented. This week's
Philadelphia Weekly features my cartoon take on the crazy candidates. Since I love drawing crazy people in general, this one was right up my alley.
Whether you're liberal, conservative or somewhere in between we all have to admit that most politicians are bonkers.
By the way, the Presidential seal is really hard to draw.
It’s just about time for you to cast your vote in the 2012 YALSA election. The association’s 2012 Nominating Committee wants to make it as seamless as possible for you to make your selections and cast your ballot. Over the past few week’s we’ve worked to do that by providing information on candidates, the process, and the positions up for a vote. Now, we’ve put together a handy 2012 election guide for you to use as you continue to prepare. In the guide you will find all of the posts from the past few months on the election. You’ll also find a sample ballot which includes an example of the actual ballot along with the biographical and professional information for each of the candidates running for a YALSA position. You can read through before going online to cast your ballot. That way you’ll be all ready for voting day.
In just under two weeks you’ll receive an email from ALA with your voting information, it should arrive in your email as part of a 48 hour email blast between March 19 and March 21. The polls are open from March 19 through April 27.
Remember, by voting in the election you have the opportunity to help guarantee that YALSA is the association you want it to be. By the way, there is more information on candidates still to come. Over the next few days audio interviews with each of the candidates running for governance positions will be posted on the YALSABlog, stay tuned.
By Elvin Lim
Mitt Romney must be the happiest Republican in the world. His political rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Herman Cain and Rick Perry, seem to be trying to out-do the other in terms of whose campaign can implode faster.
Let’s start with Rick Perry’s campaign. Now we know why his campaign advisors were telling him to skip upcoming debates. Perry’s “oops” moment in Wednesday’s debate will enter into the political hall of infamy because that was the moment when his sponsors will realize that he is just a bad investment. If Perry cannot think just one sentence faster than he can talk, he will be demolished by a law professor when they debate next year.
Perry’s gaffe’s was probably a godsend to Herman Cain, but it would be little relief in the worst week of his campaign yet. It doesn’t matter if the accusations of sexual harassment are true because they are now distractions to Cain’s message, which he was already struggling to explain. And then he had to go call former Speaker Pelosi “Princess Nancy.”
Sarah Palin wasn’t an aberration in a line of competent Republican candidates from Eisenhower to Nixon. She is the new rule. The thing about modern conservatism is that it has become so anti-establishment that it now happily accepts any political outsider as a potential candidate for the highest office in the land. Political outsiders aren’t tainted by politics, by Washington, so we are told. But, by the same token, they can therefore also make terrible candidates.
The irony, of course, is that the slew of debates being held this year was meant to give voters greater choice and knowledge of the candidates’ positions. But all this is doing is reinforcing the front-runner status of the establishment candidate. There is a reason why Mitt Romney and his perfect haircut has coasted through the debate without any oops moments. He’s a professional politician! Tea Partiers are going to have to come to the uncomfortable realization that it takes one professional politician to beat another.
One relatively unmentioned reason why Mitt Romney is still hovering at 25 per cent is because in 2010 the Republican party changed the nomination rules away from winner-takes-all so that states (except the first four) would allocate their delegates proportionately to the candidates at the national convention. This has the effect of giving less-known candidates more of a chance of lasting longer in the race than they normally would, but the unintended consequence is that Republican voters will have to watch their candidates battle it out, and even suffer the potentially demoralizing conclusion that in choosing their candidate, they must follow their mind, not their hearts.
It is far from clear, then, that 2012 will be a Republican year. Conservatives have yet to explain away a fundamental puzzle: if government is so unnecessary, so inefficient, and so corrupt, why seek an office in it? This is possibly why the very brightest and savviest would-be candidates are in Wall Street, and can’t be bothered with an address change to Pennsylvania Avenue. Except Rick Perry and Herman Cain, of course.
Elvin Lim is Associate Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual
By Elvin Lim
Something of a myth of American democracy is that decisions are made in the ballot box by voters on election day. Actually, these outcomes are structured by fundraising efforts by would-be candidates years in advance.
Aspirants to the GOP presidential nomination, now entering the crucial second quarter before election year and on the eve of their formal declarations of candidacies, are now racing for credibility by racing for cash. And those without name recognition, in particular, have to rake in as much as they can before June 30 and the slower summer months begin, so that their second quarter federal disclosure reports do not look so pitiful that their campaigns would end before they even began.
President Barack Obama, for his part, appears on top of his own game. Having quickly declared his candidacy, his campaign manager Jim Messina has already mapped out a plan of getting 400 major donors to raise $350,000 each by the end of the year. By forcing the campaign finance issue so early and so soon on GOP hopefuls, he is already shaping the GOP primary outcome. Even more so than in the typical cycle, Republican primary voters will face pressure to forego a candidate of purer conservative principle with less fund-raising potential such as Rick Santorum in favor of a candidate with more fund-raising potential (or the name-recognition to achieve to same) such as Mitt Romney. Obama’s early campaign kick-off, then, has heightened the GOP’s dilemma between boring but credible candidates, and exciting but unknown candidates — a reason why the party has not already settled on a clear frontrunner the way it had done for every campaign since 1952.
In the House and Senate, both parties understand that elections have to be bought as much as they must be fought. Democrats in both chambers appear to have begun to narrow the “enthusiasm gap” of 2010, and raised a little more money than Republicans in the first quarter of this year in spite of the expectation that donors are typically unenthusiastic in the fundraising cycle which follows their party’s defeat at the polls. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised $11.69 million, just slightly more than the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee’s figure of $11.2 million. A positive sign for Democrats is that the senators holding important swing seats the GOP hopes to re-capture, such as those of Bill Nelson (FL), Debbie Stabenow (MI), Claire McCaskill (MO), and Sherrod Brown (OH), did well by raising over a $1 million each in the first quarter. But this could merely mean that these senators are gearing up for a tough, and perhaps uphill battle ahead.
Democrats fared better in the House as well, but the numbers again are very close. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $19.6 million, compared to the National Republican Campaign Committee, which raised $18 million. The DCCC is taking comfort in the fact that the average freshman Republican congressman raised less in the first quarter of 2011 than the average freshman Democratic congressman did in the first quarters of 2007 and 2009 – the years after the Democrats had just enjoyed their victories. There were, however, clear winners on the Republican side, and topping that list was Michelle Bachmann, who raised over $2 million in the first quarter. The critical question for the year ahead is whether the Tea-Party’s enthusiasm for Bachmann is portable enough to help other Republican members achieve their fund-raising goals. If the Tea Party proves capable of inspiring cheques as well as it has inspired hearts, the Republican party will have no problem keeping the House and gaining in the Senate next year.
For American politics, look not to the polls; for where the money goes, so goes t
.jpeg?picon=2593)
