"Four hundred and thirty-two days prior to the election and 158 days before the Iowa caucus, millions of Americans will tune in for the second round of Democratic debates."If this seems like a long time to contemplate the candidates, it is.
"By comparison, Canadian election campaigns average just 50 days. In France, candidates have just two weeks to campaign, while Japanese law restricts campaigns to a meager 12 days.
"Those countries all give more power than the U.S. does to the legislative branch, which might explain the limited attention to the selection of the chief executive.
"But Mexico – which, like the U.S., has a presidential system – only allows 90 days for its presidential campaigns, with a 60-day “pre-season,” the equivalent of our nomination campaign.
So by all accounts, the U.S. has exceptionally long elections – and they just keep getting longer. As a political scientist living in Iowa, I’m acutely aware of how long the modern American presidential campaign has become.
"It wasn’t always this way.
"The seemingly interminable presidential campaign is a modern phenomenon. It originated out of widespread frustration with the control that national parties used to wield over the selection of candidates. But changes to election procedures, along with media coverage that started to depict the election as a horse race, have also contributed to the trend." . . .
Rachel Caufield is Associate Professor of Political Science at Drake University.
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