The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election has been honored with the 2010 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in the area of government & politics. Each year the PROSE Awards recognize the best professional and scholarly books, journals, and electronic publications for outstanding contributions to their fields. The Obama Victory was among 45 prize recipients announced February 3, 2011 during the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers’ annual conference in Washington, D.C.
Obama Victory authors Kate Kenski, Bruce Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson used data from the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey – the largest survey conducted during the presidential election by the academy – to construct their in-depth analysis of the historic 2008 presidential election. Among the book’s praise is a review by Thomas Edsall: “This book could transform the way we understand presidential campaigns,” Edsall wrote. “Kate Kenski, Bruce W. Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson give us a fascinating window into accelerating technological advances driving—and driven by—consultants and operatives over the past decade. Every assertion is backed up with an extraordinary array of statistics, facts, and figures. The authors bring forward both a huge database complete with precise information on the cost and timing of all paid media, and a meticulous study of the content of news coverage, particularly the debates. The data are presented with a political acuity that should stand as a model for all future studies.”
