Dynamics of the 2000 Republican Primaries

Abstract

The 2000 presidential primaries were among the liveliest in recent memory. This article is the authors' first account of the changing fortunes of the candidates from the Iowa caucuses through Super Tuesday. It is based upon the nomination phase of the Annenberg 2000 Election Surveys, a collection of nearly 32,000 interviews conducted from November through March, nationwide and in special-purpose state and regional studies, on a broad range of political science and communications questions. The analysis of dynamics is facilitated by the survey's rolling cross-section design, in which the day of interview is itself a product of random selection. This account emphasizes the interplay between substantive and strategic contributions to the votes cast at different points in the campaign, between evaluations of the candidates as people and policymakers, on the one hand, and judgments about the candidates' chances of winning a party's nomination and the general election, on the other. The pervasive influence of information is demonstrated. The knowledge voters managed to acquire through the campaign informed both kinds of considerations. The weight voters gave such considerations depends on the store of information they managed to accumulate about the candidates.