ABSTRACT
The 2008 presidential campaign was one of the most remarkable in this nation’s history due to a confluence of several intriguing precedents that occurred during the battle for the White House. First, the 2008 campaign offered the electorate the most diverse slate of candidates ever fielded in U.S. history, an impressive array of new voices. These new voices included an African-American candidate who obtained the Democratic Party’s nomination and eventually the presidency; a former First Lady; the oldest individual ever to vie for the presidency; and a female governor who became the Republican vice presidential candidate. These new voices embraced enthusiastically the new technologies that have gained traction in the inter connected nation the U.S. has become. From e-mail and Web sites to blogs and computerized message response systems, 2008 campaigns welcomed the plethora of new technologies that broadened the means of communicating and interacting with voters and helped candidates raise staggering amounts of money to fund their race for the ultimate prize. These new voices, armed with new technologies, attracted and persuaded a precedent-setting number of new voters to participate in the electoral process. The chapters in this volume explore the impact of these new voices, new technologies, and new voters in 2008.
