And finally, another contributor to the demise of McCain s campaign is the lack of time available to campaign in primaries that occurred after New Hampshire. McCain campaigned for 71 days and held 114 town meetings to boost his image at a time when he was shadowed by Governor Bush and was struggling for national media attention. But this changed in South Carolina, where he only had 18 days to convert the momentum gained from the New Hampshire conquest into another victory in South Carolina. Studies have shown that small, separate primaries maximize the ability of candidates to make their own statement to voters and since, at the point in time, McCain s main message was still his character, especially his courage to bring to the forefront of the Republican primary the issue of campaign reform, did not reach as many voters as he would have liked. He depended on mass media such as television and radio ads but that too, did not have its full effect due to the barrage of negative ad campaigns placed by Bush. After the South Carolina primary, primaries were being held in more than one state on the same day. This meant that:
the larger the number of primaries on any given day, the greater the number of voters, and the larger the geographical spread, the less impression management candidate are able to do and the more the media take over. In this respect, Super Tuesday and any other front loading of the process increases the media s influence.
By the time, Super Tuesday had rolled around, questions arose from the media of McCain s straight talk express and the national media focused on the bitter hostilities that the GOP candidates had for each other. Due to the large number of states voting on Super Tuesday, McCain lacked the time to adequately campaign in these states and the images portrayed by television news reports were not similar to the ones illustrating him as the war veteran with a no nonsense approach in dealing with the issues during the New Hampshire campaign. Thus, McCain, yet again failed to capture the Republican vote as lacked the time to reach out to voters in a more personal manner.
Though there have been many mistakes committed by the McCain camp this is not to say that they didn t do certain things right. They brought an enthusiasm amongst young and first time voters, the like of which hasn t been seen since John F. Kennedy s bid for the White House. And, McCain r4eached out to democrats and independents, an accomplishment that cannot be claimed by the GOP presidential candidates of the past two general elections and is an essential requirement to win the general election in November. His campaign brought a message more tailored to the middle rather than the far right ground captured by Bush, thus, ensuring a broader general voter base. But, nevertheless, the errors committed by the campaign such as not reaching out earlier to the republican voter by focusing on issues that are not central to the core Republican party s values, denouncing the Christian Right (especially in the Southern states) and the questions raised about his character all served to swing the votes towards Governor George Bush and hence, led to the demise of his campaign.
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