This study breaks new ground in investigating candidate behavior in American electoral campaigns. It centers on a question of equal importance to citizens and scholars: how can we produce better political campaigns? First, Simon develops the idea of dialogue as a standard for evaluating political campaigns. Second, he reveals that candidates' self-interest in winning leads to avoiding dialogue or substantive campaign discourse. Third, the text demonstrates the beneficial effects produced by the little dialogue that actually occurs and finally, pinpoints the forces responsible for these rare...

This study breaks new ground in investigating candidate behavior in American electoral campaigns. It centers on a question of equal importance to citizens and scholars: how can we produce better political campaigns? First, Simon develops the idea of dialogue as a standard for evaluating political campaigns. Second, he reveals that candidates' self-interest in winning leads to avoiding dialogue or substantive campaign discourse. Third, the text demonstrates the beneficial effects produced by the little dialogue that actually occurs and finally, pinpoints the forces responsible for these rare...

Public opinion polling permeates today's politics, yet many seem suspicious of polls and skeptical in their prominence, fearing that overreliance on public opinion amounts to pandering or that pollsters can manipulate a feeble public. In this book Adam Simon argues that democracy requires that government listen to the public and that sample surveys are the finest democratic technology yet devised. He lays out the fundamentals of public opinion research and illustrates his discussion of the science of polling with recent political hot button issues as case studies_the decision to invade Iraq,...