Many political scientists over the years have engaged in the question of whether campaigns “matter” in terms of persuasion, but also in voter mobilization. Shaw, Alhaus, and Panagopoulos take up this question in a big way, analyzing presidential campaigns from 1952 to 2020, focusing on candidate electoral college strategy. Their answer is that campaigns matter a little bit. Yet, in my opinion, the point of this book is not necessarily the final answer or even unified theory, but the process of finding the answer. Years of data collection from presidential campaigns providing detailed examination of the presidential candidates' strategies for handling the challenges of the electoral college provide intriguing insights. These data also create normative questions scholars have long had about democracy and voter decision-making, especially when they point out that “[i]ssues are a means to an end” (25).

The authors conceive of presidential campaigns in three time periods: “Wholesale Campaigning” (1952–1972), Zero-Sum Campaigning (1976–2000), and Micro-Targeted Campaigning (2004–2020). The authors offered detailed discussions of the presidential campaigns during each time period, including which states were battlegrounds for each candidate and which states were classified leaning either Democratic or Republica