Grassroots Movement and Voter Turnout

Michael McDonald first discusses how in the 19th century political machines would encourage people to vote. The machines were obviously very corrupt and provided people with incentives like money for their vote. However, his example shows that the grassroots movement is effective in getting people to come out and vote. With years politicians turned to a mass media approach of campaigning. However, the parties rediscovered the grassroots movement. In 2008 the Democrats centralized their campaign to encourage a higher voter turnout. Candidate Obama took the campaign into his hand and organized things internally. It worked out really well for Obama, showing that “grassroots” movement still works really well. McCain didn’t really do an internal movement to encourage voter turnout. Earlier in the video, he discussed how the voter turnout in some red states has declined, so this could be used to explain that trend. People obviously respond well to the grassroots type of campaigning.