To:     Research team

From: Research supervisor

Date:   ######

Re:     ELECTION 2004

Well its not too soon to get started. There are only ## months left until the New Hampshire primary 2004 and the field’s wide open. Its time for us to get a jump on the competition and begin to prepare for the coming Presidential election cycle.

I want you to:

Organize yourselves into research teams by seminar and choose a likely contender for the Presidential election in 2004. Any party or an independent. For ideas check http://www.niu.edu/newsplace/whitehouse.html

Some of the contenders have already set up home pages.

Research the voting electorate and prepare a likely campaign platform and strategy that will propel this candidate into the White House.

I want this to be well researched in regards to voter groups and the issues and positions that will gain their support. You might focus on demographic factors regarding voter groups such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, income or geography. Or you may wish to focus on the analysis of voter group profiles developed in The New Political Landscape.

Your campaign proposal should include:

• Specific target voter groups and the relative size of their voting bloc.
• Their voting patterns in the Presidential elections of 2000, 1996, 1992 and 1988.
• Key issues and positions that your candidate will utilize to gain their support in 2004
• Suggested campaign ideas to highlight the candidate.

A PowerPoint computer presentation to the class which highlights your findings and proposals. (Don’t worry, I will be providing instruction and supervised class time to help you with this part.)

For your reference I suggest you utilize:

Take the Political Poll at: Where Do You Fit?

Portrait of the Voters

Profile of Republican voters

Profile of Democratic voters

Your goal for this seminar is to work effectively as a team to gather information, sort out the relevant facts, develop findings, draw conclusions, and make recommendations.

Time table

September 24^th : Large group lecture on news media and politics

September 25 - 30: Preliminary draft of your findings and proposal in seminar. Start PowerPoint instruction.

Wednesday October 1^st: Test on American Political Behavior

October 2^nd - 7^th: I will meet individually to review course work to date and will meet with seminar groups to assist in the production of a PowerPoint presentation of your campaign plan. Details to follow.

October 8^th: Group presentations of PowerPoint campaigns plans.