Readers: Are you tired of never-ending election cycles?

Former President Donald Trump announced his bid for the White House yesterday, officially kicking off the next presidential election cycle. His campaign announcement comes a full 721 days before Election Day 2024 and right on the heels of the last week’s midterm elections. 

This begs the question: Has the American election season become too long?

Regardless of your political affiliation, it seems the political landscape has become a race from one election to another, with campaigns starting earlier and earlier. In the interim, voters are faced with an onslaught of political messaging from increasingly dramatic television ads, incessant phone calls, emails, and texts from candidate offices, and constant fundraising.

The ultimate effect is an exhausted voter base suffering from information overload. In the 2016 election, most Americans, or 59%, told Pew Research Center they felt worn out by election coverage four months before they had to hit the polls.

This isn’t the case abroad, where there are laws and political norms keeping politicians at bay. In Canada, a recent 11-week election cycle had voters complaining about out-of-control campaigning and in France, the race for president only lasts about two weeks. 

These years-long election cycles weren’t always the case in the United States, either. Up until the 1970s, most campaigns didn’t kick off until months before voting started, according to the Wall Street Journal. Now, it seems candidates are too late to the game if they announce their bid in the same calendar year as the election they’re running in.

For the last eight years, it has felt as though the public conversation is always on one political campaign or another. As we move on from the midterms and look toward the 2024 presidential race, we want to know how you feel about the length of political campaigns.

Have they gone too far? Should there be laws in place to limit the amount of time politicians spend campaigning? Or are you happy with the current state of affairs?

Let us know how you feel about the political campaigning in the United States by filling out the survey below or e-mailing us at [email protected] and we may feature your response in a future article. 

Zipporah Osei

Audience Engagement Editor

Zipporah Osei is an audience engagement editor for Boston.com, where she connects with readers on site and across social media.

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