Do Candidates Run as Women and Men or Democrats and Republicans? The Impact of Party and Sex on Issue Campaigns

Previous work on the campaigns of women and men has tried to identify whether these candidates campaign for office by focusing on or downplaying gender-stereotyped issues and personality traits. We continue that investigation with a unique data set that uses all campaign advertisements created by almost 400 candidates for Congress in 2010. In examining whether candidate sex or political party identification are the primary influences on the issues candidates present to voters, we determine that all candidates, women and men, campaign as strategic politicians, crafting campaigns around the issues of the day and adopting partisan perspectives on those issues. We find no evidence that women or men attempt to “play to” gender stereotypes in their advertisements.     

DECEPTION AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: THEORY AND LABORATORY EVIDENCE

We model two‐candidate elections in which (1) voters are uncertain about candidates' attributes; and (2) candidates can inform voters of their attributes by sending advertisements. We compare between political campaigns with truthful advertising and campaigns in which there is a small chance of deceptive advertising. Our model predicts that voters should vote in‐line with an advertisement's information. We test our model's predictions using laboratory elections. We find, in the presence of even a small probability that an advertisement is deceptive, voters become substantially more likely to elect a “low‐quality” candidate. We discuss implications of this for existing models of voting decisions. (JEL C92, D72, D82)     

Media use and political participation reconsidered: the actual and perceived influence of political campaign messages

This study examines the actual and perceived effects of political advertising on the voting intention of less-experienced eligible voters. Elaborating on the demobilization, stimulation, and influence of presumed influence hypotheses, this study examines the effects of political disaffection, presumed influence, and political efficacy on political mobilization. The study analyzes the effects of political advertisements on 311 college voters. The results of the structural equation modeling (SEM) suggest that instead of demobilizing turnout, self-reported exposure to political advertisements boosts young voters' sense of political efficacy and stimulates their political participation by raising the degree to which they perceive that campaign advertisements affect other voters.     

Presidential Priming: Incumbent and Challenger Advertising

This study focuses on the influence of television advertising to prime voters to evaluate candidates based on policy issues or personal image attributes. Results come from a content analysis of presidential political advertisements, newspaper stories, network news stories, and a national survey during the 1996 campaigns. The study found support for advertising priming in the aggregate. Mixed support was found for the influence of individual campaign advertising and the news media to influence voters' evaluation of the candidates. The analysis did show a strong role for the traditional party challenger to prime voters about himself and his major opponent.     

The “Un-Candidates”

Abstract

Much has been written on whether female candidates “run as women” in their campaigns. This study explores the role of gender in political advertising through a systematic analysis of campaign commercials from U.S. House, Senate, and Governor races from 1964 to 1998. I hypothesize that candidates will use “femininity” in the commercials as a marker of “outsider” status. This theory considers image differentiation and branding as they relate to gender in political advertising. Advertisers typically use branding for two reasons: (1) to manufacture illusory differences to differentiate nearly identical products (such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi); and (2) to emphasize and expand real differences (7-UP, for instance, tries to differentiate itself from both Coca-Cola and Pepsi by branding itself the “Un-Cola”). Female candidates who correlate feminine character traits and women's issues with an outsider presentation in their campaigns are trying to be the “Un-Candidates.” The data in this study reveal the importance of contextual factors in determining whether a female candidate will undertake an “un-candidate” strategy     

Media use and political learning: Comparing Trump supporters to celebrity candidate voters

This study examines whether political media use behaviors of voters who supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election align with those of “celebrity candidate voters” portrayed in the literature. The study used a national online survey (N = 1,608) conducted during the 2016 primary, and findings reveal that Trump supporters, more than other voters, are driven by entertainment motivations and follow campaign news using entertainment media: specifically, the video-sharing site YouTube. Although Trump voters are interested in the campaign, their level of political knowledge is lower than other voters, and no one media outlet made a significant contribution to their learning. A comparison group of other voters showed significant knowledge gains from news websites and Twitter. Results for Trump voters are consistent with scholars’ characterization of the celebrity candidate audience, particularly in studies suggesting that celebrity politicians may increase citizens’ engagement through entertainment gratifications rather than by a desire to become informed.     

Image Myths in the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Election Campaign

This paper discusses the phenomenon of inculcating myths into the electorate’s consciousness and analyzes the 2004 presidential campaign in Ukraine in order to conclude whether the classification of electoral myths proposed by American political scientists D. Nimmo and J. Combs, and broadened by K. S. Jonson-Cartee and G. A. Copeland, can be applied for studying political mythology in post-Soviet countries. The analysis of television political advertisements on the main state Ukrainian channel, which were broadcast during free TV time provided by the Central Election Commission, makes it possible to conclude that some of the myths described by American scientists were used in Ukraine in their original version, others were adapted to Ukrainian realities, and only elements of some were found in candidates’ ads. Close study of TV political commercials shows that some of the candidates (mainly representatives of financial-industrial and business circles) based their campaigns on a single myth, while the majority preferred to influence voters using a “myth mosaic.”     

Finding the Truth in Politics: An Empirical Validation of the Epistemic Political Efficacy Concept

Self-efficacy theory suggests that one’s perceived ability to successfully find facts may motivate political information seeking. A telephone survey of voters in a presidential campaign attempted to further validate the concept of epistemic political efficacy (EPE), or belief one can discover the “truth” in politics, and applied it to modern information-seeking behaviors. This study of North Carolina registered voters (N = 605) demonstrates that EPE adds predictive power beyond commonly used measures such as individual political efficacy for contemporary media use variables like online information seeking and partisan cable viewing. EPE was a stronger positive predictor of online information seeking than individual political efficacy. In addition, viewing partisan cable shows had a stronger relationship with EPE than mainstream TV news viewing, and EPE significantly predicted MSNBC viewing, even after controlling for partisanship. In a word, voters who are high in the belief that political facts or “truths” exist take steps to find and understand them.     

Credibility or Credulity? Examining Political Organization-Public Relationships in an Election of Interloping Candidates

ABSTRACT

This national online survey (N = 493) examined the political organization-public relationship (POPR) that voters perceived with their own political party and their opposing political party, as well as voters’ assessment of the credibility of candidates running for president during the primary season of the 2016 election. Results indicated that although credibility assessment of one’s own party’s candidate was much as expected, POPR with the Democratic Party was generally stronger than that with the Republican Party. Data showed no evidence that a poor POPR with one’s own party would drive voters to support interloper candidates. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of POPR with the opposing party and what weak relationships may mean for parties in the long term.     

Elder Participation and Senior Power in Australian Electoral Politics

This article seeks to assess the “goodness of fit” between the social science literature on the impact of older voters on electoral outcomes and the Australian experience of the politics of aging. While the literature suggests that the notion of senior power is a flawed one, Australia's 2004 federal election campaign indicated that this is not quite so. This article offers a possible explanation for the difference between the literature and the Australian experience in terms of the calculus that underpinned the election campaign, namely, capturing the votes of swing voters in marginal seats including “silver” swing voters in seats with a disproportionate number of older voters. The preliminary findings of a small exploratory study of campaign strategists suggest that there may be a real basis to this explanation. Thus, there does appear to be some basis for asserting that “gray power” does play a role in Australian national electoral politics.     

To click or not to click? A study of the innovation resistance of political emails

As a novel technology in the age of information, the Internet has become a fancy vehicle through which campaign messages can be delivered to prospective voters via multiple paths such as websites and emails. However, despite the effort put into making campaign messages as appealing as possible, studies show that the click-through rate of campaign emails remains relatively low. In the past, many studies concerning technology adaptation have focused on the aspect of “innovation diffusion” rather than “innovation resistance”. The aim of this study is to integrate ideas derived from the Technology Acceptance Model, the concepts of innovation resistance and the theory of ad avoidance to find the factors that influence voters' resistance of reading political emails. An online survey was conducted, in which a sample of 1012 voters in the 2009 local election in Taiwan was studied. The results showed that negative impression and perceived interruption were the factors behind people's resistance of politically-related emails. In addition, both of the above factors affected people's attitudes toward opening future political emails.     

Impression Management,Super PACs and the 2012 Republican Primary

Super Political Action Committees (PACs) are new organizations within American politics allowing for unlimited donations to candidate campaigns. Super PACs helped make the 2012 Republican primary the most well‐funded primary in American history. Both candidates and Super PACs spend much of their money on televised campaign ads. My study of the 2012 Republican primary expands existing literature concerning political impression management by examining advertising imagery in the era of Super PACs. I developed a typology of performance types from a qualitative content analysis of television advertisements for both candidates and Super PACs. The significance of Super PACs as they interact and overlap with the images of candidate ads calls for analysis of the changing front stage in the political realm.     

The Branded Self:

This investigation makes the argument that to a considerable degree, our sense of our selves is connected to the way advertising helps us shape our identities and focuses our attention on brands as a way of signifying who we are to others. My point of departure is Norbert Wiley’s The Semiotic Self (1995:37). I will use Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism to deal with Wiley’s notion that the self involves an internal conversation in which the present self (the “I”) talks about the past self (the “me”) to the future self (the “you”). The branded self discusses some important concepts in semiotic analysis and relates them to the notion of the “self” and then to other matters, such as branding.     

CAMPAIGN ADVERTISEMENTS VERSUS TELEVISION NEWS AS SOURCES OF POLITICAL ISSUE INFORMATION

Relative contributions of television news and campaign advertisingto U.S. voters' knowledge about candidate issue differencesare compared. Empirical comparisons are based on interview datafrom six campaign surveys of voters, in various election settingsfrom 1984 to 1992. In hierarchical regression analyses, aftercontrols for demographic and political interest variables, measuresof attention to television news consistently account for a significantincrement of slightly more than 2 percent of variance in issueknowledge. Parallel measures representing attention to candidates'televised advertisements produce a much more variable patternin terms of variance explained in knowledge. Usually the effectsof advertisements are less than those of news, and sometimesthey are nonsignificant; but in one hotly contested ideologicalrace the informative effect attributable to advertisements exceedsthat of TV news. These patterns hold up after further controlsfor other media use variables, including newspaper reading.     

The Undeserving Rich: “Moral Values” and the White Working Class1

White working‐class citizens who vote for the Republican Party have been fodder for much political discussion and speculation recently, and a debate has arisen about the role that “moral values” played in the political decision making of this segment of voters. In this article, we defend a version of the moral values claim. We show that although the Republicans’ policies are unpopular, they are bundled with an overarching moral framework that is extremely resonant to this set of voters, and we use in‐depth interviews to uncover this framework. A key feature of this framework, on which in the 2004 presidential election George W. Bush scored high and John Kerry scored low, is the appropriate attitude to wealth, which serves as an indicator for a candidate’s general moral philosophy and as a heuristic about whether the candidate will govern with working‐class voters’ interests in mind. National Election Studies data support the argument that this was a key influence on the voting decision in 2004, even controlling for voters’ partisan identification.     

“Who Better to Do It Than Me!:” Race,Gender & the Deciding to Run Accounts of Political Women in Texas

Women remain underrepresented in electoral politics at every level. Much has been written about how dominant gender values shape political women’s decisions to run for office, how the media portrays women on the campaign trail, and how voters respond to women candidates. Yet, research on women in politics has too often assumed a monolithic standard of femininity, overlooking the ways in which gender values are varied and deeply racialized. Drawing from data gathered through 46 interviews I conducted with women leaders and political activists in Texas, I explore the narratives politically active women cultivate to account for their decisions whether or not to run for public office. I illuminate how these “deciding to run” narratives reflect racialized standards of femininity and how these discourses are mediated by the political context and by political and activist organizations.     

“Get to Know the Unknown”: Understanding Religion and Advertising

The relationship between religion and advertising has mostly been theorized in terms of “religion in advertising” or “advertising as religion.” This article pursues two goals: First, it offers a substantial critique of previous studies of advertising and religion in order to take stock and discern future directions of research. Second, it presents the results of an empirical qualitative study of print advertisements which responds to some of the open questions of previous research. It shows that advertising partially fulfills religious functions, focusing on those to do with self-actualization and meaning making within an immanent horizon, and less so on community-related functions. Based on these results, I argue that in the study of religion and advertising, “religion” cannot be limited to specific religious traditions, but has to be understood more broadly. Also, the conventional distinction between “religion in advertising” and “advertising as religion” has to be overcome in order to understand the phenomenon.     

Boy Talk/Girl Talk

Abstract

Using data from a comprehensive database of political advertisements broadcast during the 1998 congressional election cycle, this study assesses whether male and female candidates follow different campaign communications strategies. The results of the analysis demonstrate that there are systematic differences between the ways that male and female candidates communicate with voters, but that these differences are typically not sizeable. In other words, gender seems to matter in campaign communications strategies but not always for very much. Where we do observe differences, however, the findings show that they tend to reinforce gender-based stereotypes more so than work to counteract them. Thus, these differences may be partly accountable for the electoral results we observe.     

HOW DOES ADVERTISING AFFECT MARKET PERFORMANCE? A NOTE ON GENERIC ADVERTISING

We propose a novel approach to estimating the effect of advertising on market performance that relies on the preferences of firms participating in generic advertising programs. Generic advertising campaigns provide a unique window to observe advertising effects on market performance, because rotations in market demand systematically redistribute advertising rents among firms according to observable characteristics on producer size. We examine producer attitudes towards generic advertising in the “Beef. It's What's for Dinner!” campaign of the U.S. Beef Checkoff program, the subject of the recent and controversial Supreme Court ruling on generic advertising as a form of government speech. We find the likelihood producers favor an expansion of the advertising program increases in their operating scale. This finding is consistent with an advertising campaign that has led to a counterclockwise rotation of market demand and a commensurate increase in market performance in the U.S. beef market. (JEL L1, M37, Q13)     

Wirkungen des TV-Duells im Vorfeld der Bundestagswahl 2005 auf die Wahlentscheidung

During the election campaign to the German Federal Election 2005 the incumbent chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his challenger Angela Merkel met one another on the occasion of a televised debate, the so-called “TV-duel”. This debate was viewed by roughly one third of the German electorate. It is analyzed, whether the perception of the TV-duel winner has had an influence on the voting decision. In the empirical analyses special regard is given to the stability of the winner perception until election day and the influence of subjective expectations towards the debate performance of the candidates. The data analyzed were collected by means of a new interviewing technology via the television screen of the respondents. It is shown, that the winner perception was largely stable and only marginally influenced by the media coverage following the debate. Subjective expectations towards the debate performance of the candidates turn out to be of no importance for the voting decision. The effect of the winner perception on voting behaviour was mediated by changing candidate orientations.