About

VoteMatch USA 2008 is a product of the Dutch Institute for Political Particpation, made for and in cooperation with current affairs programme OneToday.

VoteMatch USA 2008 comprises eight candidates who will take part in the preliminary US presidential elections, three Democrats and five Republicans. These eight candidates are deemed most likely to win by authoritative research institutes such as Pew Research and Brookings Institution; they have reached over ten percent in the polls throughout the US.

The US presidential elections are an elimination race. From 3 January to 3 June 2008 preliminary elections or caucuses (internal party meetings) will take place in all fifty states to determine who will enter the political arena on behalf of the Democrats and Republicans. The official candidature is established at the large party meetings end of August and the beginning of September. In reality, the presidential candidates submit their candidatures months before, based on their results in the primaries. If a candidate withdraws from the race, his or her name will be removed from the VoteMatch.

Halfway through February, it became clear that John McCain would almost certainly get the Republican nomination. Among the Democrats, there is talk of an exciting race between the two remaining candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In order to assist people in making a decision between those two candidates, we have put a special version of Vote Match USA online.
At the beginning of June Barack Obama had won the race. Right before the official appointments of the candidates at the Democratic and Republican Conventions, by the end of August, we’ve put a last and final version of VoteMatch USA online, containing the statements of John McCain and Barack Obama on the eighteen issues they most disagree.

The US elections focus primarily on image – how does a candidate come across? Concrete statements and proposals are avoided in the election campaign so as not to provide other candidates with ammunition and to prevent certain groups of voters from being alienated.

True to its principles, VoteMatch USA 2008 mainly covers those subjects that candidates have different opinions about. These are not necessarily the subjects which dominate the election campaign reports.

By answering the 25 controversial statements in VoteMatch USA 2008, users can determine which candidate they agree with most. The candidates’ statements are formulated based on their official campaign sites, from quotes taken from interviews and debates to analyses made by authoritative commentators.

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