Strategic Decision-Making in Presidential Nominations : When and Why Party Elites Decide to Support a Candidate.

Intro -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1: Introduction: Party Elite Survival in Presidential Nominations -- The Setting: Superdelegates, 2008 -- Elite Endorsements: An Event History -- The Relevance of Political Context -- The Candidates: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- Superdelegate Endorsements -- Conceptual Framework -- Methodology -- Data Source and Collection -- Key Terms -- Plan of the Book -- Chapter 2: Historical Context of Superdelegates -- Nominations by Congressional Caucuses -- Nominations by Convention -- Nominations by Presidential Primaries -- Reforming the Democratic Presidential Nomination Process -- 1968 and the McGovern-Fraser Commission -- Reforming the Nomination Process: Mikulski and Winograd Commissions -- Concluding Comments -- Chapter 3: Superdelegates in the Presidential Nomination Process -- Back to the Future: The Hunt Commission and the Superdelegates -- Party Reassertion: 2008 and the Superdelegates -- Superdelegates and Peer Review -- Endorsements of Superdelegates -- Concluding Comments -- Chapter 4: The Invisible Primary -- The Invisible Primary -- The Setting -- The Candidates -- The Politics of Early Endorsements -- Assessing the Timing of Superdelegate Endorsements: Arguments, Hypotheses, and Measurements -- Demographic Influences -- Member Characteristics -- Campaign Factors -- Surviving the Invisible Primary -- The Correlates of Survival -- Concluding Comments -- Chapter 5: The Primary Season -- The Setting -- Methods of Selection and Scheduling -- The Primary Season and Superdelegate Endorsements -- A Model of Superdelegate Endorsement in the Primary Season -- Surviving the Primary -- Concluding Comments -- Chapter 6: The Politics of Attrition -- Timing and Attrition of Party Elite Endorsements -- Hypotheses -- Surviving the Entire Nomination Process.

Determinants of Commitment Status -- Concluding Comments -- Chapter 7: Conclusions and Implications -- Contributions: Conceptual Framework and Findings -- Party Elites and Democracy -- The Future of Party Elites in Presidential Nominations -- Appendix A: Summary Statistics for Variables, the Invisible Primary 2007 -- Appendix B: Summary Statistics for Variables, the Primary 2008 -- Appendix C: Summary Statistics for Variables, Entire Period -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Seeks to understand and explain the behavior of party elites during the 2008 Democratic Party presidential race.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.