[2][3] Like his earlier book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson employed a number of unique literary styles in On the Campaign Trail, including the use of vulgarity and the humorous exaggeration of events.

Adopting an affect of brutal honesty, Thompson narrates the smallest decisions on what speech to give where (from school gymnasiums for young voters, to public halls in heavily Polish districts of Milwaukee, to the attempt to create buzz for Muskie through an old-fashioned and disastrous whistle-stop train tour through Florida dubbed the Sunshine Special) to McGovern's ill-fated selection of Thomas Eagleton as the Vice-Presidential candidate.

Gary Hart of Colorado, who served as McGovern's campaign manager and would later win a seat in the U.S. Senate, and Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, who would himself capture the 1976 Democratic nomination and Presidency, are two examples.

By the end of the 1972 campaign and its disastrous defeat for McGovern (who won only Massachusetts and Washington D.C., losing even his home state of South Dakota), Thompson was clearly thoroughly exhausted and burned out on the process of politics.

Thompson began his coverage of the campaign in December 1971, just as the race toward the primaries was beginning, from a rented apartment in Washington, D.C. (a situation he compared to "living in an armed camp, a condition of constant fear").

Dubbing it "the mojo wire", Thompson used the nascent technology to capitalize on the freewheeling nature of the campaign and extend the writing process precariously close to printing deadlines, often haphazardly sending in notes mere hours before the magazine went to press.