The Real Reason Presidential Candidates Form Exploratory Committees

Earlier this month, Sen. Tim Scott put out a slick campaign-style video and introduced that he was forming an “exploratory committee” for president. However does that imply he’s truly operating?

Exploratory committees are basically a half-measure for the indecisive; they let would-be presidents do most of the issues candidates do (increase cash, rent a workers, conduct polls) with out technically being one. Exploratory committees (also referred to as “testing-the-waters” committees) don’t need to report back to the Federal Election Fee, however they do need to comply with its guidelines. And the minute the non-candidate declares their intention to run or takes motion to qualify for the poll, they legally grow to be a candidate and need to report all their monetary exercise from the exploratory part.

Presidential hopefuls don’t need to type exploratory committees, however lots of them do. And virtually all of those that do finally grow to be official candidates. For the reason that trendy major period started in 1972, at the very least 89 individuals have introduced an exploratory or testing-the-waters committee for president. Solely six ended up not operating, the latest being then-Sen. Evan Bayh within the 2008 election — virtually 20 years in the past. So it will be a reasonably large shock if Scott decides to not make the leap this 12 months.

So if 93 p.c of exploratory committees flip into campaigns, why do politicians hassle taking that partial step? In a phrase: consideration. Making two bulletins — one to your exploratory committee, one to your precise marketing campaign — offers the media two probabilities to cowl you. For instance, in response to closed-captioning knowledge from the Web Archive’s Tv Information Archive, mentions of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020) and doctor Ben Carson (who ran as a Republican in 2016) on the three main cable information networks spiked each after every introduced their exploratory committees and after every declared they had been formally operating for president. (For context, the chart under additionally consists of cable information mentions of Scott after his exploratory-committee announcement this 12 months.)

However Scott didn’t need to announce an exploratory committee to get two spurts of media consideration. He might have adopted the lead of creator Marianne Williamson and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson: announce you’re operating on social media or TV with out a lot pomp or circumstance, then maintain an enormous marketing campaign rally “formally” kicking off your marketing campaign at a later date. Then-Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Bernie Sanders all did this within the 2020 Democratic presidential major, and it gave them two spurts of cable information protection too.

This all raises a query: Which occasion marks the true launch of a presidential marketing campaign? The exploratory-committee announcement? The candidacy announcement? The kickoff rally? It’s an essential query for us as journalists, since we now have to make choices about when to cowl a candidate with out letting them hoodwink us into giving them an excessive amount of protection. Nevertheless it’s additionally an essential query for researchers and historians, who want to have the ability to precisely inform the story of earlier presidential campaigns.

Let’s remove kickoff rallies proper off the bat; assuming the candidate has already declared their intention to run, the rally is little greater than free commercial for his or her candidacy. That leaves us with the exploratory-committee announcement versus the candidacy announcement. On one hand, we’ve seen that the majority exploratory-committee bulletins are merely preludes to the inevitable. On the opposite, they aren’t 100% ensures that somebody will grow to be a full-blown candidate.

In the long run, we at FiveThirtyEight crave that 100% certainty. (We so not often get it!) So our coverage is to not take into account anybody an “official” presidential candidate till they declare their unambiguous intention to run. And it seems we’re in good firm: The New York Instances and Washington Publish aren’t contemplating Scott an official candidate but both. Primarily based on their previous conduct, cable information networks really feel the identical means. For the reason that 2012 cycle, candidates have virtually all the time gotten extra cable information protection after declaring their candidacy than after asserting their exploratory committee.

So, Sen. Scott, in the event you felt like your exploratory committee didn’t get a ton of media protection, there’s a cause for that. If you need us to jot down about you, it’ll simply take two easy phrases: “I’m operating.”