ONE THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE: COGNITIVE CONSISTENCY, POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE, AND THE 1980 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

Despite high expectations, students of the 1960 and 1976 presidentialdebates were unable to find much evidence that these eventssignificantly affected voters' candidate preferences. As a result,scholars have turned increasingly to cognitive consistency theoriesto explain viewers' reactions (Or nonreactions) to debates.This article argues that one key mediating variable determiningwhether or not voters are influenced by debates is their levelof political knowledge. Looking at the largely ignored 1980Carter-Reagan debate, we find that voters with generally lowlevels of knowledge are particularly affected by the debate,and significant shifts in candidate preferences do occur amongthis group. The evidence suggests that the debate was an importantfactor in Ronald Reagan's bid to unseat his Democratic opponent.     

PRIME MINISTERS, PARTIES, AND THE PUBLIC: THE DYNAMICS OF GOVERNMENT POPULARITY IN GREAT BRITAIN

This article proposes and tests a model of British party supportbetween 1953 and 1987, including prime minister's popularity,economic fluctuations, and short-term noneconomic factors. Weargue that public evaluations of the prime minister (PM) havehad an increasingly important effect on relative party popularity("government lead"). We demonstrate that this enhanced linkbetween PM popularity and government lead began in the 1960s,well before the Thatcher era. We also attempt to demonstratethat noneconomic factors (wars, scandals, etc.) exert indirecteffects on government lead through voters' evaluations of theprime minister. The results of this test, however, are inconclusive.We discuss the implications of these findings for our understandingof British politics.