[Strangelet]

Originally Posted by BeautifulBurnout

I think part of the problem is that in the States candidates have something like 5 or 6 months of solid campaigning (if not more) before the elections, whereas here in the UK they campaign for 5 weeks and that's that.

IMO that means that there is less time for resentments to build, badmouthing to be done and mud to be slung at each other through tv ads and the like.

while the advantages of this are clear, a candidate like obama would have have a much tougher time winning, in fact he would have pretty much lost the primary against hillary if the campaign time was compressed. I guess you could argue that a grass roots movement against status quo takes a lot longer to gel than a more incremental approach to policy change.