By ALAN R. GITELSON

Making sense of the '80 election

Paul T. David and David H. Everson, editors, The Presidential Election and Transition 1980-1981. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. 258 pp. $24.95

OF THE approximately 500,000 elections held in the United States during every four-year election cycle, the presidential contest obviously attracts the greatest attention. Since George Gallup conducted the first presidential public opinion poll in 1936, political scientists and journalists have sought to explore and explain the presidential election process. Early studies by Berelson and Campbell, Miller, Converse, and Stokes dealt with explanations of voter behavior. Theodore White in his quadrennial journalistic accounts of The Making of the President beginning in 1960 sought to describe and explain the process by which candidates ascend to the throne of the presidency. A great deal of academic research including the work of Pomper, Ladd, Nie, Polsby, Wildavsky and many other scholars has extended the boundaries of our knowledge regarding the selecting of the occupant of the White House.

Nevertheless, analyzing elections is not easy. With the introduction of computers, polls, professional consultants, mass communication, federal and state regulations on campaigning and campaign financing, political action committees, the growth in presidential primaries, nomination reforms and the lightning-like response of mass media to every nuance of the presidential race, analysts are hard pressed to account for a large number of variables in the study of the presidential election process and outcome.

The Presidential Election and Transition 1980-1981 represents an ambitious attempt to add to our understanding of one of the more dynamic and in many ways most important presidential elections held since World War II. The editors of this volume, Paul T. David and David H. Everson, invited a number of political scientists to Sangamon State University during the 1980-81 academic year to discuss the various facets of the 1980 presidential election. Each of the authors in this text spoke before a public gathering on topics ranging from the nomination process, the primaries and the conventions to the campaign process, campaign financing and the media. In the tradition of other edited essay collections dealing with the 1980 elections (for example, Ranney's volume, The American Elections of 1980, and the work of Sandoz and Crabb, A Tide of Discontent), the David and Everson volume presents a collection of thoughtful essays.

On the whole, this collaboration of scholars is a successful one. Readers interested, for example, in Illinois politics during the 1980 presidential cycle will not be disappointed. John S. Jackson III, James D. Nowlan, Peter W. Colby and Paul M. Green are the four seasoned observers contributing essays on Illinois. (The editors refer to the state as a "microcosm of the nation's politics.") Professors Jackson and Nowlan walk us through the state's Democratic and Republican primaries respectively. Jackson suggests a division of the Illinois primary season into three temporal phases (the embryonic stage, the strategic decisions stage and the primary campaign proper stage), a typology which serves as a useful way of conceptualizing the political flow of state primaries in general. Nowlan also contributes to our understanding of the Republican primary by tracing and analyzing the role that Illinois played in the 1980 presidential sweepstakes, concluding among other things that the state's blind primary (where the presidential preferences of delegate candidates are not listed on the ballot) is very likely a thing of the past. In turn, readers of the Colby and Green chapter will no doubt come away from this essay with a clearer understanding of campaign strategies for the 1980 election in Illinois and the importance of analyzing the election in the state on a regional basis. The remaining essays pick up on national election themes that have increasingly occupied the interest of scholars, journalists and politicians alike. Everson's essay on the presidential campaign analyzes the campaign themes and issues, taking special note of the presidential debates, the instability of the electorate in the United States and the quality and significance of the campaign. His brief discussion on polling highlights the problems pollsters get into when they analyze national rather than state-by-state data in their efforts to predict election route in a presidential race.

William Crotty does an excellent job of summarizing the impact of past reforms on the nomination process. He concludes his remarks with a discussion of possible future reforms, assuring us that changes in the nominating process are inevitable. Herbert E. Alexander, a well-known expert on campaign financing, elaborates on the all important financial issues surrounding any presidential election. His conclusions include his belief that "factors other than money played key roles in the outcomes" of the nomination process, one of several important themes he discusses in his chapter.

The essays by Robert D. McClure and James W. Ceaser are particularly note-worthy. McClure, in a stimulating essay, argues that while the media serves as the major link between candidates and voters, "mass media elections not only result in a less well-informed, more volatile, and disorganized election, but also lead to a more cynical and alienated electorate." These conclusions challenge some popularly held beliefs that the media is a positive force in the election process.

The concluding chapter by Ceaser serves as an excellent summary statement of the role of parties in the 1980s. The author skillfully argues that discussion on the decline of political parties in the 1980's, a common contemporary theme, maybe premature.

All in all, these essays and those by David ("The National Conventions of 1980" and "The Election of 1980 and Its Consequences"), Lois B. Moreland ("Minorities in the Politics of 1980") and Laurin L. Henry ("The Transition: From Nomination to Inauguration") provide us with considerable food for thought regarding the 1980 presidential election process. They also stimulate thought about what the 1984 race will look like. The audience for this book includes both the seasoned politician and the average citizen, who will no doubt leave the text with some important insights into the complicated and as yet not fully understood dynamics of the presidential race.

Alan R. Gitelson is on the political science faculty of Loyola University of Chicago. He has written numerous articles and papers on elections and political parties as well as regulatory policy in the United States. He is co-author of the book, American Political Parties: Stability and Change, published by Houghton Mifflin.

36/January 1984/Illinois Issues