UPDATED FOR THE 2016 ELECTION The book Politico calls “Moneyball for politics” shows how cutting-edge social science and analytics are reshaping the modern political campaign. Renegade thinkers are crashing the gates of a venerable American institution, shoving aside its so-called wise men and replacing them with a radical new data-driven order. We’ve seen it in sports, and now in The Victory Lab, journalist Sasha Issenberg tells the hidden story of the analytical revolution upending the way political campaigns are run in the 21st century. The Victory Lab follows the academics and maverick operatives rocking the war room and re-engineering a high-stakes industry previously run on little more than gut instinct and outdated assumptions. Armed with research from behavioural psychology and randomized experiments that treat voters as unwitting guinea pigs, the smartest campaigns now believe they know who you will vote for even before you do. Issenberg tracks these fascinating techniques—which include cutting edge persuasion experiments, innovative ways to mobilize voters, heavily researched electioneering methods—and shows how our most important figures, such as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, are putting them to use with surprising skill and alacrity. Provocative, clear-eyed and energetically reported, The Victory Lab offers iconoclastic insights into political marketing, human decision-making, and the increasing power of analytics.

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The first book to uncover the hidden and powerful role campaign professionals play in shaping American democracy by delving into the exclusive world of politicos through off-the-record interviews We may think we know our politicians, but we know very little about the people who create them. Producing Politics will change the way we think about our country’s political candidates, the campaigns that bolster them, and the people who craft them. Political campaigns are designed to influence voter behavior and determine elections. They are supposed to serve as a conduit between candidates and voters: politicos get to know communities, communicate their concerns to candidates, and encourage individuals to vote. However, sociologist Daniel Laurison reveals a much different reality: campaigns are riddled with outdated strategies, unquestioned conventional wisdom, and preconceived notions about voters that are more reflective of campaign professionals’ implicit bias than the real lives and motivations of Americans. Through over 70 off-the-record interviews with key campaign staff and consultants, Laurison uncovers how the industry creates a political environment that is confusing, polarizing, and alienating to voters. Campaigns are often an echo chamber of staffers with replicate backgrounds and ideologies; most political operatives are white men from middle- to upper-class backgrounds who are driven more by their desire to climb the political ladder than the desire to create an open conversation between voter and candidate. Producing Politics highlights the impact of national campaign professionals in the US through a sociological lens. It explores the role political operatives play in shaping the way that voters understand political candidates, participate in elections, and perceive our democratic process—and is an essential guide to understanding the current American political system.

Dramatic changes in political institutions and behavior over the past three decades have underscored the dynamic nature of American politics, confronting political scientists with a new and pressing intellectual agenda. The pioneering work of early postwar scholars, while laying a firm empirical foundation for contemporary scholarship, failed to consider how American politics might change or recognize the forces that would make fundamental change inevitable. In reassessing the static interpretations fostered by these classic studies, political scientists are now examining the underlying dynamics that generate transformational change. Transforming American Politics is a series that brings together texts addressing four closely related aspects of change. A first concern is documenting and explaining recent changes in American politics—in institutions, processes, behavior, and policymaking. A second is reinterpreting classic studies and theories to provide a more accurate perspective on postwar politics. The series looks at historical change to identify recurring patterns of political transformation within and across the distinctive eras of American politics. Last and perhaps most important, the series presents new theories and interpretations that explain the dynamic processes at work and thus clarify the direction of contemporary politics. All of the books focus on the central theme of transformation—transformation in both the conduct of American politics and in the way we study and understand its many aspects.

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Though they work largely out of the public eye, political consultants-"image merchants" and "kingmakers" to candidates-play a crucial role in shaping campaigns. They persuaded Barry Goldwater to run for president, groomed former actor Ronald Reagan for the California governorship, helped derail Bill Clinton's health care initiative, and carried out the swiftboating of John Kerry. As Dennis Johnson argues in this sweeping history of political consulting in the United States, they are essential to modern campaigning, often making positive contributions to democratic discourse, and yet they have also polarized the electorate with their biting messages. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, political campaigns were run by local political parties, volunteers, and friends of candidates; but as party loyalties among voters began to weaken, and political parties declined as sources of manpower and strategy, professional consultants swept in to fill the void. Political consulting emerged as a profession in the 1930s with publicists Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker, the husband and wife team who built their business, in part, with a successful campaign to destroy Upton Sinclair's 1934 bid for governor of California. With roots in advertising and public relations, political consulting has since developed into a highly professionalized business generating hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, some of the top campaign consulting firms have merged with others to form multinational public relations conglomerates, serving not just candidates but also shaping public advocacy campaigns for businesses and nonprofits. Johnson, an academic who has also worked on campaigns alongside the likes of James Carville and pollster Paul Begala, suffuses his history with the stories of the colorful characters who have come to define the profession of consulting, from its beginning to the present. More than just the story of the making of a political business, Democracy for Hire's wide-ranging history helps us to better understand the very contours of modern American politics.

Drawing on an innovative dataset of the professional careers of 628 presidential campaign staffers working in technology from 2004-2012 and interviews with more than 60 staffers, Prototype Politics details how and explains why the Democrats have taken up technology more than Republicans over the past decade.

Public Opinion is a comprehensive and multidisciplinary examination of public opinion in the United States. Drawing on scholarship in political science, psychology, sociology, and communications, the authors explore the nature of political and social attitudes in the United States and how these attitudes are shaped by various institutions, with an emphasis on mass media. The book also serves as a provocative starting point for the discussion of citizen moods, political participation, and voting behavior. Feature boxes and illustrations throughout help students understand all aspects of the elusive phenomenon we call public opinion. The third edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to reflect how public opinion is studied today, and to incorporate current data and debates. The book now contains two revised and reframed theory chapters 'Group Membership and Public Opinion' and 'Public Opinion and Social Process', as well as new coverage of the influence of online and social media on public opinion, especially in issue opinions and campaigns.

Political leaders are the public face of a party during an election campaign. But what type of work is conducted behind the scenes by lesser-known party members attempting to propel their leaders to victory at the federal level in Canada? Inside the Campaign is a behind-the-scenes look at the people involved in an election campaign and the work they do. Each chapter reveals how campaign staffers, as well as by those covering and organizing election-related events, perform their duties and overcome obstacles during the heat of a campaign to get their respective leaders elected. Practitioners and political scientists collaborate to present real-world insights that demystify over a dozen occupations, including campaign chairs, fundraisers, advertisers, platform designers, communication personnel, election administrators, political staff, journalists, and pollsters. Inside the Campaign provides an inside look at, and unparalleled understanding of, the nuts and bolts of running a federal campaign in Canada.