Deciding to run

Although there are few constitutional requirements for the office of the presidency—presidents must be natural-born citizens, at least 35 years of age, and residents of the United States for at least 14 years—there are considerable informal barriers. No woman has yet been elected president, and all presidents but two have been Protestants (John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden are the only Roman Catholics to have occupied the office). In 2008 Barack Obama became the first African American elected president. Successful presidential candidates generally have followed one of two paths to the White House: from prior elected office (some four-fifths of presidents have been members of the U.S. Congress or state governors) or from distinguished service in the military (e.g., Washington, Jackson, and Dwight D. Eisenhower [1953–61]).

The decision to become a candidate for president is often a difficult one, in part because candidates and their families must endure intensive scrutiny of their entire public and private lives by the news media. Before officially entering the race, prospective candidates usually organize an exploratory committee to assess their political viability. They also travel the country extensively to raise money and to generate grassroots support and favorable media exposure. Those who ultimately opt to run have been described by scholars as risk takers who have a great deal of confidence in their ability to inspire the public and to handle the rigors of the office they seek.

The money game

Political campaigns in the United States are expensive—and none more so than those for the presidency. Presidential candidates generally need to raise tens of millions of dollars to compete for their party’s nomination. Even candidates facing no internal party opposition, such as incumbent presidents Bill Clinton in 1996, George W. Bush in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2012, raise enormous sums to dissuade prospective candidates from entering the race and to campaign against their likely opponent in the general election before either party has officially nominated a candidate. Long before the first vote is cast, candidates spend much of their time fund-raising, a fact that has prompted many political analysts to claim that in reality the so-called “money primary” is the first contest in the presidential nomination process. Indeed, much of the early media coverage of a presidential campaign focuses on fund-raising, particularly at the end of each quarter, when the candidates are required to file financial reports with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Candidates who are unable to raise sufficient funds often drop out before the balloting has begun.

In the 1970s, legislation regulating campaign contributions and expenditures was enacted to address increasing concerns that the largely private funding of presidential elections enabled large contributors to gain unfair influence over a president’s policies and legislative agenda. Presidential candidates who agree to limit their expenditures in the primaries and caucuses to a fixed overall amount are eligible for federal matching funds, which are collected through a taxpayer “check-off” system that allows individuals to contribute a portion of their federal income tax to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund. To become eligible for such funds, candidates are required to raise a minimum of $5,000 in at least 20 states (only the first $250 of each contribution counts toward the $5,000); they then receive from the FEC a sum equivalent to the first $250 of each individual contribution (or a fraction thereof if there is a shortfall in the fund). Candidates opting to forgo federal matching funds for the primaries and caucuses, such as George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, John Kerry in 2004, and self-financed candidate Steve Forbes in 1996, are not subject to spending limits. From 1976 through 2000, candidates could collect from individuals a maximum contribution of $1,000, a sum subsequently raised to $2,000 and indexed for inflation by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (the figure was $2,300 for the 2008 presidential election).

In 2010 the contribution limits imposed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act were partly invalidated by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which ruled that contributions made for independent electioneering communications were a form of constitutionally protected free speech that could not be limited by law. This judgment led to the growth of so-called Super PACs, organizations allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money to support or defeat a candidate or an issue, so long as these expenditures are made independently from the official campaigns. Between the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, the amounts spent by such independent groups more than tripled. The deregulation of campaign finance contributed to the continued rise of campaign expenditure, making the 2012 election the most expensive in history at an estimated cost of $6 billion (presidential and congressional elections combined).

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Money continues to exert a considerable influence in the nomination process and in presidential elections. Although prolific fund-raising by itself is not sufficient for winning the Democratic or Republican nominations or for being elected president, it is certainly necessary.

The primary and caucus season

Most delegates to the national conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties are selected through primaries or caucuses and are pledged to support a particular candidate. Each state party determines the date of its primary or caucus. Historically, Iowa held its caucus in mid-February, followed a week later by a primary in New Hampshire; the campaign season then ran through early June, when primaries were held in states such as New Jersey and California. Winning in either Iowa or New Hampshire—or at least doing better than expected there—often boosted a campaign, while faring poorly sometimes led candidates to withdraw. Accordingly, candidates often spent years organizing grassroots support in these states. In 1976 such a strategy in Iowa propelled Jimmy Carter (1977–81), then a relatively unknown governor from Georgia, to the Democratic nomination and the presidency.

Because of criticism that Iowa and New Hampshire were unrepresentative of the country and exerted too much influence in the nomination process, several other states began to schedule their primaries earlier. In 1988, for example, 16 largely Southern states moved their primaries to a day in early March that became known as “Super Tuesday.” Such “front-loading” of primaries and caucuses continued during the 1990s, prompting Iowa and New Hampshire to schedule their contests even earlier, in January, and causing the Democratic Party to adopt rules to protect the privileged status of the two states. By 2008 some 40 states had scheduled their primaries or caucuses for January or February; few primaries or caucuses are now held in May or June. For the 2008 campaign, several states attempted to blunt the influence of Iowa and New Hampshire by moving their primaries and caucuses to January, forcing Iowa to hold its caucus on January 3 and New Hampshire its primary on January 8. Some states, however, scheduled primaries earlier than the calendar sanctioned by the Democratic and Republican National Committees, and, as a result, both parties either reduced or, in the case of the Democrats, stripped states violating party rules of their delegates to the national convention. For example, Michigan and Florida held their primaries on January 15 and January 29, 2008, respectively; both states were stripped of half their Republican and all their Democratic delegates to the national convention. Front-loading has severely truncated the campaign season, requiring candidates to raise more money sooner and making it more difficult for lesser-known candidates to gain momentum by doing well in early primaries and caucuses.

Presidential nominating conventions

One important consequence of the front-loading of primaries is that the nominees of both major parties are now usually determined by March or April. To secure a party’s nomination, a candidate must win the votes of a majority of the delegates attending the convention. (More than 4,000 delegates attend the Democratic convention, while the Republican convention usually comprises some 2,500 delegates.) In most Republican primaries the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote is awarded all the state’s delegates. By contrast, the Democratic Party requires that delegates be allocated proportionally to each candidate who wins at least 15 percent of the popular vote. It thus takes Democratic candidates longer than Republican candidates to amass the required majority. In 1984 the Democratic Party created a category of “superdelegates,” who are unpledged to any candidate. Consisting of federal officeholders, governors, and other high-ranking party officials, they usually constitute 15 to 20 percent of the total number of delegates. Other Democratic delegates are required on the first ballot to vote for the candidate whom they are pledged to support, unless that candidate has withdrawn from consideration. If no candidate receives a first-ballot majority, the convention becomes open to bargaining, and all delegates are free to support any candidate. The last convention to require a second ballot was held in 1952, before the advent of the primary system.

The Democratic and Republican nominating conventions are held during the summer prior to the November general election and are publicly funded through the taxpayer check-off system. (The party that holds the presidency usually holds its convention second.) Shortly before the convention, the presidential candidate selects a vice presidential running mate, often to balance the ticket ideologically or geographically or to shore up one or more of the candidate’s perceived weaknesses.

In the early days of television, the conventions were media spectacles and were covered by the major commercial networks gavel to gavel. As the importance of the conventions declined, however, so too did the media coverage of them. Nevertheless, the conventions are still considered vital. It is at the conventions that the parties draft their platforms, which set out the policies of each party and its presidential candidate. The convention also serves to unify each party after what may have been a bitter primary season. Finally, the conventions mark the formal start of the general election campaign (because the nominees do not receive federal money until they have been formally chosen by the convention delegates), and they provide the candidates with a large national audience and an opportunity to explain their agendas to the American public.