Chuck Todd: A referendum or a choice

Most elections fit in one of two categories: a referendum on one person, party or idea or a choice among competing people, parties or ideas.

Whether an election ends up being more of a referendum or more of a choice between two equally compelling (or repellent) candidates usually depends on what type of campaign is run, with most campaigns organizing themselves around one of these two theories.

For the most part, candidates and parties out of power usually try to make campaigns referendums on the incumbent candidate or party. That was true in 2004, when John Kerry tried to make the presidential campaign all about George W. Bush’s leadership of the economy and the war. The Bush campaign was determined to fight the Kerry campaign’s construction and wanted to disqualify Kerry, making wavering swing voters think twice about simply using their votes to express displeasure with the incumbent.

A similar phenomenon took place in 2012, with the party roles reversed. Mitt Romney got the most traction whenever the campaign narrative became more of a referendum on Barack Obama’s handling of the economy specifically and Washington generally. But, like Bush’s, the Obama team was determined to make the election a choice between two competing visions. One line from that campaign stands out to me as quite illustrative of this successful shift by Obama: The incumbent played off the old Ronald Reagan question from 1980 — “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” — and asked voters “are you going to be better off four years from now” under Obama policies or Romney policies.

In 2016, we saw one of the great misinterpretations of a campaign in a long time. Both parties were convinced their best path to victory rested solely on