There may be any number of reasons for this scarcity but the one with the most explanatory power has to do with the invisibility of our assumptions about the content of political campaign photographs.  After all, the generic mandate of political campaign photography hangs on the candidate doesn’t it?  Political campaigns are about candidates therefore political campaign photography literally aims at the individual running for office.  For this reason, photographing political campaigns is a species of portraiture requiring no special skills beyond those than any portrait photographer would have to master.[6]

Political campaign photography will always tend to feature the candidate – even if the candidate is offstage.  A shot of the crowd at the candidate’s rally is perfectly legitimate because it is the candidate’s crowd.  The crowd is gathered for the purpose of seeing (if not hearing) the candidate.  We will know this (photographically) because someone is holding a placard with the candidate’s name, or sporting a campaign button, or some other identifying symbol, all of which will become the campaign memorabilia for future collectors.

There are other points worth making here.  Because the candidate is so central to political campaign photography, the vast body of those images place the candidate in the picture.  The bulk of those portraits will, in turn, offer some angle[7] on the candidate’s face, the single most important element of personal identity.[8]  If the shot is taken in such a way as to obscure or hide the candidate’s face there is almost certainly some other element present that is readily associated with that candidate:  a familiar outline of the individual’s form, a characteristic piece of clothing, a signal gesture.  If not, the caption will have to serve this function, but that is the least desirable choice.