WebQuest: Candidate Nomination in US

Presidential Elections
Introduction
The road to the White House is long and unpredictable. The campaign to become the next US
president starts long before the general election. Candidates have to endure an extended period
spent crisscrossing the country in preparation for the primary elections and caucus meetings in each
of the States. The outcome of this stage of the process will be the election of the delegates who will
attend the national party conventions. Each party convention will confirm the nomination of the
party's candidacy for the presidency.

The period from the beginning of the primaries to the conventions is about eight months, with a
further two months of campaigning before election day in early November. That is not the whole
picture, however. Before the primary season has begun, there is a long period during which
potential candidates seek to gain sufficient support to start a campaign and try to find financial
backing to sustain it. This period is the so-called 'invisible primary' and there is no precise definition
about when this phase actually starts. Some commentators believe that the invisible primary begins
very soon after the presidential election result. According to this view, the invisible primary for the
2012 presidential election began soon after Barack Obama was elected president in November 2004.

What is the relative importance of these various stages and phases in the run-up to the nomination
of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates? This WebQuest will help you to address
this question.

Task
You are a journalist for a British newspaper and your editor has asked you to write a feature of up to
2,000 words on how a presidential candidate is nominated in the US. You have agreed that the
feature should cover a number of key issues:

 to outline the timescale and stages of the nomination process

 to set out briefly how this process has evolved since the 1960s
 to examine the nomination process of the 2008 presidential election
 to conclude as to which stages of the nomination process are the most important for
selecting a party's presidential candidate

In order to achieve this task effectively, you will be required to work as a group of three. Each of you
will focus on a slightly different issue before collaborating at the end of the task.

One member of the group needs to investigate the definitions of the key terms and provide a
timescale for the nomination process for the 2008 presidential election. This person will produce

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two parts to the feature: a box entitled 'Key terms' and a box entitled 'The 2008 nomination process
at a glance'.

The second member of the group will examine the significance of the invisible primary and the
primary stages of the 2008 US presidential election. This member will provide the main body of the
feature, called 'How to nominate the president of the United States'.

The third member of the group will examine the role of the national party conventions since 1968.
This person will produce a part of the feature called 'How important are the national party
conventions?'

A selection of online resources is listed on the Sources page. These should provide you with a
starting point for the online element of your research. You can supplement this with other online
resources and traditional media.

Process
Step 1: Roles

Decide which of the research activities you are going to complete as part of this group investigation.

Find out the meaning of the key terms that will be needed for the glossary section. These will
include: invisible primary, primary and caucus elections, open and closed primaries, Super Tuesday,
balanced ticket, candidate and issue-centred campaigns, momentum, soft and hard money, negative
campaigning, insider and outsider candidates, swing states and the national party conventions.
Construct the timescale for the run-up to the national party conventions, held to nominate
candidates for the 2008 US presidential election.

It is important to find out as much as possible about what happened during the invisible primary and
the primary/caucus stages of the 2008 presidential election. What were the main events? Who
were the main personalities? How well or badly did their campaigns perform as time progressed?
Can any reasons be put forward for why some candidates did better than others?

As the primary/caucus season progressed what were the expectations for the 2008 national party
conventions? Were the expectations of the Democrats different from those of the Republicans? Did
these conventions eventually play a pivotal role in the nomination of the candidates? Have there
been any national party conventions since the 1960s that have been significant in the eventual
choice of presidential candidate?

Step 2: Research

Initially, you will need to work separately on the different aspects of the topic. You will find a list of
resources that might be useful for your research in the resources section below.

Step 3: Collaboration

Reconvening as a group you will each present your contributions. Each member of the group should
read the work of the other members and suggest changes or additions. You should then decide

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amongst yourselves which stage (if any) of the nomination process is the most significant. Comment
should also be made about the relative merits of the various stages of the nomination process.

Step 4: Presentation and discussion

Your work should be presented either as a printed feature or a webpage, of up to 2,000 words. The
rest of the class will act as the editorial board to discuss your feature. Each member of the group
should have a printed copy of the feature page/webpage. In addition, each of the three group
members should provide a summary of the findings of their part of the research.

Sources
Presidency 2012: The Invisible Primary Begins

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/ljs2009040701/

Article about how, as early as 2009, some commentators were willing to start speculating about the
possible contenders for the election in 2012.

The Federal Election Commission Website

http://www.fec.gov/

Website of the body that regulates US elections. Searching for 'primary election campaigns' will
provide information about public funding.

CNN Website, Election Center 2008

http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/

This site gives a detailed review of the primaries and caucuses of the 2008 presidential election.

BBC Website, Q&A: US primaries and caucuses

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7049207.stm

This webpage provides some information and video links on the primary and caucus system in US
elections.

eJournal USA, The Long Campaign: US Elections 2008

http://www.america.gov/media/pdf/ejs/1007.pdf#popup

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America.gov website, which includes an article 'How the Internet Is Changing the Playing Field' by
Andy Carvin (July 2007).

BBC Website, Q&A: US Political Conventions 2008

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7573652.stm

This site provides some useful questions and answers about US national party conventions.

2008 Democratic National Convention

http://www.youtube.com/user/DemConvention

The official Youtube section for the 2008 Democrat Convention.

http://www.youtube.com/user/DemConvention

America.gov, Memories of 1968 Democratic Convention Resonate in 2008

http://www.america.gov/st/elections08-
english/2008/August/20080804185251esnamfuak0.1775171.html

This site offers an insight into the similarities and differences between two Democratic Party national
conventions, forty years apart.

Times Online

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3883034.ece

Article 'Super-delegates refuse to end Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama' (May 2008), which examines
the prospect of the role for super-delegates in 2008.

Conclusion
Having completed this WebQuest you have no doubt concluded that the nomination process for the
US president is one which is quite distinct from the process in Britain. It is lengthy, costly and can be
unpredictable. The seeds of the 2008 campaign were sown in the weeks after the campaign of 2004,
and the 2012 campaign was being talked about as early as 2008.

The length of the process means that there is no guarantee that the person who was frontrunner for
nomination early on in the invisible primary will finally win the candidacy of their party. The process

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costs huge amounts of money, and the campaigns twist and turn in such a way that few predict the
outcomes with any great accuracy.

Some questions for you to consider:

 How vital is success in the invisible primary?

 How significant is finance in the primary election phase?
 To what extent does money guarantee success?
 How important is it for a candidate to do well in the early primaries?
 Which part of the candidate selection do you consider to be the most crucial?