2
Specifically, we inquire about the consequences of waging political warfare on
what appears to be a shrinking number of battleground states. Our focus is on the
relative levels of interest, campaign involvement, and the accuracy of political
perceptions among those groups within the electorate that typically participate the least.
Presidential elections are the political jump start for most new voters (Campbell 1966).
Presidential elections nearly always yield higher voter turnout rates than other political
contests; for inexperienced voters, the high salience of presidential election politics, the
relative amount of campaign spending, and the increasingly sophisticated mobilization
efforts associated with these campaigns, can underwrite many of the participation start-
up costs that are often so burdensome for the resource poor (Gerber and Green 2000;
Gimpel, Dyck and Shaw 2004; Lijphart 1997).
Eligible citizens who sit out in presidential election years almost assuredly sit out
in off-year contests and, over time, this pattern of behavior will likely become habitual
non-voting. If presidential campaign politics continue to narrow the battlefield and
strategically target pivotal swing electorates, does the country run the risk of an
increasingly bifurcated electorate? Peripheral voters in states where campaign resources
flow heartily may be drawn into the democratic process creating larger, more engaged
and more diverse electorates, while those in the “safe” states may stay relegated to the
sidelines of American politics. Not only do resource poor voters in the safe states risk
long-term exclusion from the political process, but the less-diverse, active electorates in
these safe states are likely to be more ideologically extreme than their battleground
counterparts. To the extent that moderating forces remain largely dormant in
Convention