The Electoral College and Campaign Strategies

Abstract

Under the current presidential election system, a set of 51 concurrent elections—in all the 50 states and in D.C—constitute a presidential election. Campaigning throughout the country requires every candidate to spend financial resources as effectively as possible. Each candidate has limited time to demonstrate to the voters that he is the best fit to be President, and the amount of time remaining before Election Day decreases with every passing day. This Chapter 5 focuses on how the Electoral College affects the campaign strategies of presidential candidates, and how this election mechanism helps evaluate the strategic and tactical abilities of the candidates. This chapter provides (a) verbal formulations of problems to be solved by the teams of presidential candidates in planning election campaigns, and (b) the illustration of the analogy of these problems to pattern problems solved in transportation systems. This analogy allows one to use well-developed software for solving both mathematical programming and discrete optimization problems in planning and analyzing election campaigns. The chapter briefly discusses two extreme election strategies aimed at throwing the election into Congress in an attempt to win the Presidency there by bypassing the Electoral College, along with campaign strategies aimed at misleading opponents.