The Roots of the Modern American Presidential Campaign

Campaign tours have become an essential component of U.S. presidential elections. How and when did they begin? We explore the early history of in-person political campaigning in the United States by reconstructing the first presidential campaign tours from historical newspaper clippings. We analyze the decision to campaign, the determinants of where candidates campaigned, and the outcomes of early in-person campaigns. We document an evolving norm of campaigning. This norm evolved well after the expansion of the railroad network. While a national railroad network was a necessary precondition for campaigning to evolve, our findings point to other factors – such as growing urbanization and the decline of federal patronage machines – playing a more important role in the growth of campaigning. We find evidence that being visited on a campaign tour increased voter turnout in a county. However, we do not find a clear effect of campaign visits of a given candidate on his electoral performance.