Elections

in today's political environment it takes a different kind of campaign than traditional campaigning. multiple types of funds are given to campaigners such as soft and hard money, soft being indirectly given through advertising or sponsoring supplies in unlimited quantities, and hard money being funds directly given to the campaign as a means of support which is limited in $5000 for big businesses and $2000 in personal contributions. Political Action Committees or PAC's are organizations established by corporations to fund and support campaigns by channeling contributions of their members into campaigns. these are important to them because without the support of large influential companies a campaign will have trouble campaigning against their opponents who do have the support of PAC's. Jeff Smith had a very hard time with this problem due to his opponent Carnahan having the political influence of his fathers former spot as Governor. Media bias plays a major role in an election. if an electoral candidate has an unprecedented blunder in a speech or personal issue from the past, the media may skew this for the sake of ratings. demographics can push certain biased opinions to be seen more often than others to improve ratings in that area. voter turnout is a prime aspect of elections. a modern day concern is low voter turnout. voter turnout is the amount or percent of registered voters that actually go out and vote on election day. low voter turnout to me is both a good and a bad thing. the positive within this is that if everyone was forced to make a vote without any prior knowledge of a candidates policies or plans for their presidency could make a horrible decision and essentially cause the end of the world in an extreme case. the negative of low voter turnout is that many Americans today sit and complain about how they disagree with government policies yet they didn't attempt to do anything about it. political parties also play a part at the core of an election. this also has to do with demographics in that a certain area of people may be conservative thus making it difficult for a liberal candidate to win. if all of the above factors play correctly throughout a campaign, a candidate should have a high chance of winning an election. if a candidate has attempted to gain some ground on their opponent and has not done so, the candidate may choose the immoral route and play dirty. personal mistakes and lies appear to be present in almost every campaign today (or at least in Illinois). political attacks through television advertising and biased news stories about a candidate are usually sponsored by opposing candidates to make themselves look like the better choice.