30
qualified at that specific address.
5
The competitiveness of the presidential campaign in a state would also be a good
measure for the impact of the campaign. However, data concerning the margin between
candidates prior to the election are difficult to come by and therefore it is not an ideal
measure. Furthermore, it is likely during hotly contested elections such as 2000 and
2004, the campaigns identify a set of competitive states where they will wage their battle
for the presidency and thus a dummy variable for battleground status works well as a
measure of the competitiveness of the presidential campaign (Hill and McKee 2005; see
also Shaw 1999). Ideally, we would also use the total amount of expenditures in each
state to gauge the total mobilization effort by the campaigns. Unfortunately, these data
are difficult to aggregate. Given that the major presidential campaigns devote the bulk of
their resources to relatively small group of battleground states (Hill and McKee 2005;
Shaw 1999), we chose to use battleground status as a surrogate for the level of
mobilization in each state.
6
Iowa and New Mexico cast their electoral votes for Gore in 2000 and Bush in 2004.
New Hampshire cast its electoral votes for Bush in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.
Convention