Presidential Election Project

Presidential Election Project
Due 10/27/11

Given the realities of party politics and 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 – keep track of your key findings, you will need to present them in your PPT and turn in evidence of your research

Campaigning and Advertising

You have $200m to spend (President Obama spent more than $700m in 2008)

Click Here for the Budget/Travel Spreadsheet

Click Here to go to 270 to win, a fun Electoral College site

Advertising Costs to run one ad one time are as follows:

For Television

$10,000 for any five state region not including CA, IL, NY or TX (a region is any five states with contiguous borders)
$20,000 for any five state region including CA, IL, NY or TX
$50,000 for half of the nation (split at the Mississippi River)
$100,000 for the entire nation

For Radio

$1,000 for any five state region not including CA, IL, NY or TX (a region is any five states with contiguous borders)
$2,000 for any five state region including CA, IL, NY or TX
$5,000 for half of the nation (split at the Mississippi River)
$10,000 for the entire nation

· a two month (September 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 battleground states you have a chance of winning, and pay just enough attention to the states that are in your corner to keep them happy.

· Every night in a hotel will cost your campaign $2500

· Every Flight will cost your campaign $3500

· Every mile in the campaign bus will cost $10. It may be helpful to use Google maps to plot your route.

· 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

Your Presentation

PPT:

· Candidate profile (2-3 slides)

· Platform on issues (3 slides)

· Research summary (your findings, not a list of sources, 2-3 slides)

· Campaign strategy, remember - it all comes down to how you're getting to 305 electoral votes (2-3 slides)

You will play your ads at some point during your presentation and one of your group members will deliver the two minute excerpt of your stump speech, as if they are the candidate.

You will turn in:

All evidence of your research

Detailed Candidate profile
Detailed description of your platform
your PPT
typed ad scripts
typed speech
typed travel schedule and advertising budget (Excel)

A Few Final Thoughts:

This is not a travel planning exercise, it’s all about Where you are, When you’re there, What you’re talking about
Check over your materials for uniformity of purpose - does it all make sense when you put it together?
Keep track of all your contributions to the group, there will be a final accounting after the projects are turned in.

It’s all about:

Your Candidate + Your Platform + Your Travel & Campaign Strategy = 305 votes (I know you actually only need 270, but I want you to plan for a cushion)