Who Picks the President?

Who Picks the PresidentWho Picks the President?provides information on where the major party campaigns and allied groups spent money on television ads and where the major party candidates for president and vice-president traveled in the peak season of the 2004 campaign for president. This data is combined into an “Attention Index” that measures a state’s relative attention on a per capita basis. The results show that voters in seven states received the bulk of the attention, receiving nearly four times the attention they would receive if every voter were treated equally. Voters in an additional seven states received more attention than the national average, while voters in 36 states (counting the District of Columbia) received less attention than the national average, including 19 states that had no campaign visits nor a single television ad.