ABSTRACT

This chapter explores some of the ways in which advances in campaign strategy and technology seem to have influenced the Mountain West realignment. It focuses on the role of incumbency, finance, and variables idiosyncratic to particular races in the congressional campaigns of 1984. The chapter discusses changes in the nature of campaigns and speculates about ways in which these changes might be affecting realignment in the Mountain states. It provides an overview of the campaign environment in the region and discuss at some length how incumbency, finance, and other factors appear to be determining the outcomes in individual races. Campaigns typically have three objectives: to reinforce committed voters, to win the support of the uncommitted, and to register and turn out new voters supportive of a particular candidate or party. Gary Jacobson has argued that two factors are particularly salient in congressional campaigns: campaign expenditures and the quality of challengers to incumbents.