Campaign Strategies

The Bush campaign strategy emphasized both a positive and a negative message. The positive message involved two central themes. First, Bush was a strong, decisive, and trustworthy leader. Second, Bush was successfully leading the difficult fight against terrorism and could be trusted to keep the nation secure. In developing the second theme, the campaign continually linked Iraq to the more general war on terrorism. Thus, criticism of the effort in Iraq could be portrayed as opposition to the fight against terrorism. There were other positive themes as well, including citing the accomplishments of the first Bush administration, but the above themes dominated the Bush campaign messages.

The negative side of the Bush campaign strategy focused on labeling Kerry as a "flip-flopper," someone who said whatever was politically expedient and who lacked consistency in his positions. The fact that Kerry had served for two decades in Congress gave the Bush campaign hundreds of votes to sift through in order to find inconsistencies. Kerry's own statements sometimes provided the Bush campaign with material, such as Kerry's statement that he voted for an appropriation for military funds for the War in Iraq before he voted against it. The Bush campaign also attempted to paint Kerry as a Massachusetts liberal who was out of step with more dominant conservative values. For example, the Bush administration, using Kerry's congressional voting record, claimed that he voted for increasing taxes nearly 100 times.

Overall, the Bush campaign messages were more negative than positive. The attempt to paint Kerry in unflattering colors began before the conventions and continued throughout the campaign. An analysis of the televised campaign ads of the Bush campaign found that they were substantially more negative than the Kerry campaign ads (Wisconsin Advertising Project 2005).

The Kerry campaign also had a positive and a negative theme. The dominant positive theme of the Kerry campaign was that the Democratic candidate was a capable leader, one who could be counted on to successfully lead the country in its struggle against terrorism. The emphasis on Kerry's military record before and during the Democratic convention was an important component of this strategy. Since Kerry was less well known to voters, there was a strong effort early in the campaign to introduce him in a positive way to the public.

The negative message was that the Bush administration had bungled the effort in Iraq and had mismanaged the economy at home. Kerry claimed that the war in Iraq was not an integral part of the war against terror, as Bush claimed, but an effort that distracted us for the real fight. He argued that we should have completely destroyed the Al Qaeda organization in Afghanistan and captured Osama bin Laden. Kerry also argued that the war in Iraq should have been handled much differently, especially in terms of securing a broad international coalition of support for our actions. Regarding the economy, Kerry accused the Bush administration of having an anemic record of job creation. Kerry also accused Bush of pursuing an economic policy that was primarily beneficial to big business and to wealthy individuals. For example, Kerry repeatedly charged that the Bush tax cuts were heavily slanted toward the wealthiest segments of society.

Of course, both campaigns attempted to counter the negative attacks from the other side. Kerry attempted to show the consistency in his positions on Iraq, for example. Similarly, Bush argued that the economy was recovering from the 2001 recession quite well and that his tax cuts were an important reason for that recovery.

Further information about the campaign themes and messages can be obtained by examining the televised ads of the two campaigns and by reading the campaign speeches of the candidates.

Since the goal of both campaigns was to obtain a majority of the electoral college vote, the campaigns focused their efforts heavily on key swing states (so-called "battleground" states). The candidates and their surrogates visited the battleground states far more frequently than the states that were safely for one candidate or the other. Televised ads also were run much more in the battleground states.

Both sides engaged in extensive organizational campaign efforts to register new voters and to get voters to the polls on election day (Balz and Edsall 2004; Fessenden 2004). These efforts were particularly strong in the battleground states. Partly as a result of this activity, turnout was significantly higher in 2004 than it was in 2000. Although both Democrats and Republicans were stimulated to vote by the organized efforts of the parties and other groups, most observers credited Republicans with doing a slightly better job.