Presidential Election Project
Click Here for the Budget/Travel
Spreadsheet
Given the electoral college system you need to design a specific strategy to get your candidate elected, this strategy must include:
a basic platform on three key issues of your choice - choose three key issues and develop your candidate's specific positions on each issue
You need to produce two 30 second TV ads - and one 30 second radio spot - these must be exactly 30 seconds and cleanly edited
You need a two minute “highlight” of your stump speech - this is where you lay out the key ideas in your platform
Your Candidate (Who’s running?)
Age, gender, ethnic background, education, professional background, home state, family makeup, etc.
Conduct polls, use your own experience, research past candidates, research current issues
Campaigning and Advertising
$100 million to spend
national TV time costs $50K (actually closer to $500k for a really popular show) for 30 seconds - you can run ads nationally or locally (which is much cheaper)
a one month (October 1 to November 1) travel schedule that reflects the realities of the electoral college and your platform - travel to the states that are key to your electoral college strategy. You need to visit the battlegrouond states you have a chance of winning, and pay just enough attention to the states that are in your corner to keep them happy.
You should look at election
results from the last three elections. Here are the links
to the Wikipedia sites on these elections (I doubled check them
against the Federal sites to make sure they're accurate: 2000,
2004,
2008
This is an important
strategic piece. It may be helpful to use google maps to plot
your route.
Your Presentation
PPT:
Candidate profile (2-3 slides)
Platform on issues (3 slides)
Research summary
Campaign strategy & Budget (3-4 slides)
You will play your ads at some point during your presentation and one of your group members will deliver your speech as if they are the candidate.
You will turn in: