Watergate and the 1974 Congressional Elections

Strong, if delayed, public reactions to the Watergate scandalsare documented through examination of Gallup and Harris pollresults. Analysis of panel data (N = 181) collected before,during and after the major Watergate revelations, however, suggestthat beliefs about Nixon's involvement in the scandal had littlerelationship to 1974 political behaviors. Some evidence is providedthat whom or what the voters blamed for the scandal beyond Nixondid influence the 1974 elections to some extent     

Mass Communication and Voter Volatility

This study attempts to explicate empirically the concept ofvoter volatility and to test the assertion that the use of televisionfor political news contributes to this electoral instability.Voter volatility is defined as the level of unpredictabilityof election outcomes from traditional demographic and politicalparty variables. The effects of television and newspaper exposureon each of seven volatility dimensions were examined beforeand after the introduction of two control variables: educationand political interest. Neither the media exposure measuresnor the control variables predicted to all volatility dimensionsin a uniform way. Contrary to expectations, the dominant directionof television exposure's relationships was toward lower levelsof volatility. While newspaper use effects were largely in theexpected direction of lower volatility, reversals were shownhere as well. Education and political interest, traditionallythought to be stabilizing electoral forces, also revealed positiveas well as negative relationships to various volatility factors.