Electoral Capture

Electoral capture

What is electoral capture?

The concept of electoral capture, which was initially espoused by Paul Frymer, dealt only with the situation facing African-Americans in relation to their position in the Democratic Party. According to the idea of “capture”, parties will attempt to marginalize the positions of certain social groups, which constitute their parties base, while still being able to maintain that particular social groups support in the general elections. Frymer's understanding of “capture” is limited, however, It also have been able to show electoral “capture” extends to the Republican Party's platform as it relates to their relationship with the Christian Right.

Why does Frymer believe that only African-Americans are properly “capture”?

According to the frymer the African American electorate was self-motivated, highly active and quite disciplined to select a hopeful candidate for historical and racial reasons, and then turned out in unprecedented numbers so as to provide for the balance of power and thereby the margin of victory for Senator Obama in the primaries of the Southern states of the Old Confederacy and in the Northern and Midwestern industrial states. Then in the Southwestern states the African American electorate joined in with the Latino voters and made Senator Obama competitive if not victorious in sweeping more delegates into his column (Frymer 1999, 12-201).

African American Electorate

Both of the political party nominees arrived at their national conventions with substantial problems amongst their traditional electoral bases. Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who secured his party's nomination soon after Super Tuesday in February, never really captured the conservative wing of the party. Although he had moved after the end of the primaries to court the party faithfuls, the so-called Reagan Republicans, and the religious Christian conservatives, they did not get on Senator McCain's "Straight Talk Express." While their conservative political stance and social values were also to the right of mainstream America, they did not see Senator McCain as their political leader and never really warmed up to him. Although President Bush promised to help McCain, these groups of conservatives had worked in the primaries to help former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, to win. By the time of the Republican National Convention in August 2008, when the disparate elements had not joined the "Straight Talk Express", Republican nominee McCain sought to connect with other elements of his base, as well as reach out to the disenchanted supporters of Senator Clinton, by choosing Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. As a consequence of Senator Clinton's successes in the latter stages of the Democratic primary, it became clear that older, blue collar, industrial and union workers, and lower income whites, the so-called traditional base of the Democratic Party--many of whom had lost their jobs because their employers had shipped them overseas--clung to candidate Clinton and the good times that they had enjoyed under President Clinton. In addition to these demographic and economic groups, many of the women voters in this election that wanted to see a female president in their lifetime supported the Clinton candidacy, ...