Issue Frame Ownership: The Partisan Roots of Campaign Rhetoric

Campaigns can shape vote choice decisions by effectively framing issues for voters. I examine how campaigns do this by studying the content of issues appeals in television advertisements from U.S. House and Senate candidates. The use of issue frames is partisan. The two parties develop their own distinct rhetorical strategies on particular issues, showing that each party owns particular issue frames. In addition, campaign messages are sensitive to the partisanship of voters. Campaigns are more likely to use conservative frames in Republican-leaning districts and liberal frames in Democratic-leaning districts. Models of campaign strategy should incorporate not just what issues are discussed, but also the rhetorical choices campaigns make to address these issues.     

Is There a Local Dimension to Modern Election Campaigns? Party Activists’ Perceptions of the Media and Electoral Coverage of Canadian Constituency Politics

Modern election campaign studies focus on national dimensions at the expense of attending to local campaigns in legislative elections. This is also true of analyses of media coverage and impact of election campaigns. This paper examines the local dimension of media and election campaigns across a wide range of diverse constituency contexts in Canada in order to identify the political, socioeconomic, and geographic determinants of constituency party associations ability to attract local media attention during an election campaign. We also examine the role of these features of the constituency settings and explain variations in satisfaction with the medias coverage of the local campaign.     

Do Online Election Campaigns Win Votes? The 2007 Australian “YouTube” Election

Studies of Web use during elections have focused mainly on the content of Web sites and on the major factors driving parties' and candidates' adoption of the technology. Evaluations of the electoral impact of Web campaigns have been more limited. This article examines the nature and extent of Web use by voters and parties in the 2007 Australian federal election, focusing particularly on the consequences of Web 2.0 campaigning for candidate vote share. The findings show differing levels of commitment to older and newer e-campaigning technology across parties and their supporters and significant electoral advantages are associated with minor parties candidates using Web 2.0 campaign tools. The results confirm existing studies' findings about the impact of Web campaigns on contemporary elections, but that these effects are moderated by the type of Web tools used and party using them.     

Priming Issues,Party Visibility,and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching

Voter volatility has become a hallmark of Western democracies in the past three decades. At the same time short-term factors—such as the media’s coverage of issues, parties, and candidates during an election campaign—have become more important for voters’ decisions. While previous research did look at how campaign news in general affects electoral volatility in general, it has omitted to explicitly test the mechanisms underlying these effects. Building on theories of agenda setting, (affective) priming, and issue ownership, the current study aims to explain why certain news aspects lead voters to switch their vote choice. We theorize it is the visibility of a party, the evaluation of a party, and the attention for issues owned by a party that primes voters to switch to a certain party. We use national panel survey data (N = 765) and link this to an extensive content analysis of campaign news on television and in newspapers in the run up to the 2012 Dutch national elections. The results show that issue news leads to vote change in the direction of the party that owns the issue. Even stronger is the effect of party visibility on vote switching. Our results, however, find the strongest support for the effect of party evaluations on vote change: More favorable news about a party increases switching to that party.     

South African election posters: Reflecting the maturing of a democracy?

Abstract

The South African democracy has survived three national and provincial elections and three local elections, since 1994. In comparison to other young democracies in Africa, South Africa has experienced a relatively stable transition to democracy. However, the ruling ANC has not been under pressure from opposition parties. Although this has helped pave the way, a dominant governing party does not necessarily encourage the growth of a mature, democratic political culture. The assumption of this article is that political parties in developing societies have a normative obligation to do more than canvas votes during election campaigns. Political parties should also be instrumental in fostering a democratic political culture by communicating democratic values, encouraging participation in the democracy and enabling voters to make an informed electoral choice. Although political posters contribute mainly to image building, the reinforcement of party support, and the visibility of the party, posters are the agenda setters or headlines of a party's campaign – it is therefore argued that political parties in developing societies also need to design political posters responsively, in order to sustain the democracy. In general it seems that the poster campaigns of parties have matured since 1999, in the sense that there was less emphasis on democratisation issues in the past, and the campaigns conformed more to the norm of Western political campaigning.     

Party “capacity” in new democracies: how executive format affects the recruitment of presidents and prime ministers

Scholars and practitioners express concern that parties in “third wave” democracies are poorly developed, compared to parties in older democracies. We suggest that parties vary in their organizational “capacity”, focusing on parties' ability to select trustworthy executive agents. Capacity is higher where parties can vet potential executive talent by observing future leaders over time in the legislature – an increasingly available option as democracy matures. The key distinction in parties' use of this option lies in the delegation structure between a party and the executive. Parliamentary systems offer a clear line of delegation, which parties control. In presidential systems, parties must recruit executive candidates who can win a popular election, requiring characteristics that may not be well correlated with those that make them good party agents. As parliamentary democracy matures, we find a steady increase in prime ministers' average length of prior legislative service. For presidents, there is significantly weaker growth in prior legislative service. We also theorize about and investigate patterns in semi-presidential democracies. Our findings suggest that the institutional format of the executive is more important for party capacity in new democracies than the era in which a democracy was born.     

Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age,by Alasdair Roberts

This article uses Ross Perot's campaign for president in 1992 as a case study in how two key political institutions—the conventional political press and the party system—mediate the effects of political communication. Reporters allocated positive and negative coverage to Perot according to the same rules that they normally follow, and voters were as responsive to this coverage as they were to media coverage of two earlier “outsider” candidates for president, Jimmy Carter and Gary Hart. Part I of this article, which appeared in the previous issue of Political Communication, dealt with the earliest, relatively unmediated phase of Perot's campaign and the takeoff phase of the mediated campaign. Part II deals with the remainder of the campaign, including the general election.     

Media Matter: How Newspapers and Television News Cover Campaigns and Influence Voters

The conventional wisdom in political communications research is that the media play a dominant role in defining the agenda of elections. In Bernard Cohen's words, the media do not tell us what to think, but they tell us what to think about. The present article challenges this conclusion. We present data on media coverage of the 1992 presidential election from the first nationally representative sample of American newspapers and compare these to the issue interests of the American public. We conclude that past claims that the media control the agenda-setting process have been overstated. Candidates messages are well represented in press coverage of the campaign, and coverage is even independent of a newspaper's editorial endorsement. We argue that agenda setting is a transaction process in which elites, the media, and the public converge to a common set of salient issues that define a campaign.     

Profiling candidate images in televised political spot advertisements for 1984: Roles and realities of presidential jousters at the height of the Reagan Era

Continued growth in the use of televised political spot advertisements in presidential campaigns justifies the increasing attention given to analyzing the role and content of such messages in the larger political system. The 1984 campaign offered a unique opportunity for theorists to investigate the potential for such messages either to reflect accurate images of candidates, or to evoke more dissonant themes between the images of candidates fabricated for the electorate, and the substantive candidates those images are intended to represent. This study analyzed the character attributes presented for ten presidential hopefuls in 201 televised spots, produced for 1984's primary and general election campaigns, and finds that while political spots can offer accurate portrayals of presidential candidates, the role of such messages can be nullified by perceived dissonance in the images they convey about their subjects.     

Through the Looking Glass: The Helsinki Final Act and the 1976 Election for President

The controversy surrounding the 1975 Helsinki Final Act made it an enduring issue in the 1976 campaign, and the political backlash against President Gerald R. Ford damaged his electoral chances. Ford's signature of the agreement, his continuation of détente, and his foreign policy more broadly may not have been decisive issues in his contests with Ronald Reagan and then Jimmy Carter, but they certainly were prominent throughout the election. Examining the influence of the Final Act on Ford's election campaign illuminates the extent to which a number of candidates sought to use popular opposition to the agreement to their advantage. Furthermore, it reveals how the 1976 presidential candidates, and Ford in particular, struggled to address growing questions about détente, human rights, and morality in foreign policy. Ford's failure to defend his signature of the Final Act adequately raised concerns about his foreign policy and personal leadership with the electorate.     

The Contingency of Voter Learning: How Election Debates Influenced Voters’ Ability and Accuracy to Position Parties in the 2010 Dutch Election Campaign

Election campaigns are expected to inform voters about parties’ issue positions, thereby increasing voters’ ability to influence future policy and thus enhancing the practice of democratic government. We argue that campaign learning is not only contingent on voters’ characteristics and different sources of information, but also on how parties communicate their issue positions in election debates. We combine a two-wave panel survey with content analysis data of three televised election debates. In cross-classified multilevel auto-regression models we examine the influence of these debates in the 2010 Dutch parliamentary election campaign on voters’ knowledge of the positions of eight parties on three issues. The Dutch multiparty system allows us to separate voters’ ability to position parties from their accuracy in ordering these parties. We reach three main conclusions. First, this study shows that voters become more able and accurate during the campaign. However, these campaign learning effects erode after the elections. Second, whereas voters’ attention to campaigns consistently contributes to their ability to position parties, its effect on accuracy is somewhat less consistent. Third, televised election debates contribute to what voters learn. Parties that advocate their issue positions in the debates stimulate debate viewers’ ability to position these parties on these issues. In the face of the complexity of campaigns and debates in multiparty systems, campaigns are more likely to boost voters’ subjective ability to position parties than their accuracy.     

Shaping the race issue: A special kind of journalism

The paper examines the press coverage of the Los Angeles Times in the 1982 gubernatorial election between Mayor Tom Bradley and George Deukmejian in terms of the proclivity to highlight Bradley's race in campaign news stories. The paper focuses on the statement made by Deukmejian campaign manager, Bill Roberts, in the early days of October, with his candidate trailing badly in the polls, that “there was a hidden anti‐black vote” that would aid Deukmejian on election day. The authors detail the Los Angeles Times coverage of this statement and the tendency of the Times to focus on this story during the entire month of October rather than to report on the issues addressed by the candidates. The analysis notes that as campaign coverage zeroed in on the race issue, so did polls and voter interest. After examining the coverage and Deukmejian's narrow victory, the authors pose questions of ethics to reporters engaged in this writing and outline concerns for such practices in future elections and campaigns.     

Campaign appeals in Nigeria's 2007 gubernatorial elections

Ethnicity has emerged as a prominent issue in electoral contests around the world, particularly in countries that have embraced multiparty elections in the past few decades. What factors influence ethnic mobilization and the politicization of ethnicity? Although a number of factors have been hypothesized to influence the politicization of ethnicity in the comparative politics literature, many of these relationships have not been established through empirical testing. This study empirically tests a number of the hypotheses derived from the literature with our unique data set on candidates' ethnic appeals in the Nigerian 2007 gubernatorial elections. We find that political parties' use of ethnic appeals is correlated with the competitiveness of the election, nature of the campaign, partisan attachments, and social, demographic, and economic characteristics of the states. Of particular note is the finding that the salience of ethnic identity in the electorate influences political leaders' use of ethnic appeals.     

The role of journalists’ questions in campaign forums

This article examines the role of journalists’ questions in campaign agenda‐setting, through an analysis of questions and answers from the 1984 campaign forums. The intention is to identify more fully the conditions and techniques in operation as the agenda is being composed and to illuminate ways in which questioners and candidates vie for dominance.

While the audience may see panel members as uninhibited inquisitors, the setting and context of forums circumscribe panelists’ actions and exert a moderating effect. Panel members are screened and can be vetoed by candidates, and they are bound by demands of television, concerned about embarrassment, reluctant to antagonize candidates, and influenced by the existing campaign agenda. They have influence in introducing topics and guiding discussion, but their questions can be disarmed or neutralized by an array of devices. To the extent that the forums contribute to the public agenda, the power to shape the contribution rests primarily with candidates and secondarily with questioners.     

Early Voting and Campaign News Coverage

The proportion of votes cast before election day has risen steadily over the last two decades. Previous research asked how early voting has impacted voter participation. In this article, we ask how early voting has affected the flow of information to voters through the mass media. By increasing the number of days voters are able to vote, are we also increasing the number of days that candidates and campaigns continuously disseminate campaign-related information to the news media? Is news coverage of campaigns quantitatively and qualitatively different when opportunities to vote early are available and utilized? Our expectation is that early voting significantly influences the volume and nature of campaign news coverage. We study the effects of early voting on campaign news coverage of gubernatorial and Senate races in 2006 and 2008. Our findings reveal that the volume and content of campaign news coverage is significantly influenced by early voting.

[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource: Appendix for Early Voting and Campaign News Coverage—Alternative Model Specifications.]     

Assessing the Television Campaign: The Impact of Party Election Broadcasting on Voters' Opinions in the 1997 British General Election

Although paid television and radio political advertising is banned in the United Kingdom, parties fielding sufficient candidates are entitled to free air time during election campaigns for a fixed number of party election broadcasts (PEBs). Over the years, parties have experimented with a variety of different PEB formats. But the impact of PEBs on voters is underresearched. This article therefore analyzes the influence of PEB viewing in the 1997 British General Election. Though a majority do not view PEBs, those who do are influenced by them, especially in terms of their evaluations of parties and their leaders: Other things being equal, viewers of a party's PEBs become more favorably disposed to the party and its leader than those who do not see the broadcast. Labour and Conservative PEBs have no impact on vote intentions, however. But viewers of Liberal Democrat broadcasts become more likely to support that party. We speculate that this reflects different background levels of media exposure for the major parties as compared to the third party.     

How Much Is Too Much? Media Attention and Popular Support for an Insurgent Party

It is commonly observed that parties and candidates tend to receive coverage in the news media and attention in proportion to their electoral support. Although this norm serves to ensure that coverage is balanced or fair, news values often produce a different pattern of coverage in the television news media. This article considers the dynamic relationship between coverage in the news media and popular support for an insurgent party - the Reform party - in the 1993 Canadian election campaign. The analysis shows that coverage of Reform in the news media underwent an important change during the campaign that appears to have occurred before any change in popular support. While this change in attention to Reform was critical for Reform's ability to mobilize its potential electoral support, it also provides empirical support for the argument that there is an underlying equilibrium between the amount of coverage a party receives and its political support. Data for this analysis come from a campaign wave survey of vote intentions as part of the 1993 Canadian Election Study and a television content analysis of campaign news. The analysis applies an error-correction approach, which assumes an underlying equilibrium relationship, to model media access and vote intentions. The article thus expands the current applications of the error-correction technique while offering substantively important evidence of the political impacts of media decisions for the electoral support of new parties.     

Immeasurable Pleasure and Meaningful Imperfection: Raising Good Citizens in a Bad State

Previous research has shown that a party's election results can depend on visibility and tone in the media. Using daily content data from the major news bulletins and daily survey data from the 2007 national election campaign in Denmark (N = 5,083), our analysis improves upon two central aspects of this earlier research. First, the effects on vote choice of the parties' visibility and tone in the media are studied concurrently in the same model. Second, a distinction is made between the effects of direct exposure to specific news content and the effects of the cumulative information environment created by the media. Overall, it is found that the more visible and the more positive the tone toward a given party is, the more voters are inclined to vote for this party. The effects are primarily effects of the information environment, not effects of direct exposure, though undecided voters are also directly affected. In the discussion, central conditions for the strength of media effects are identified.     

Issue Ownership Stability and Change: How Political Parties Claim and Maintain Issues Through Media Appearances

Drawing on a large-scale online experiment embedded in an electoral survey in Belgium, this study tests whether issue ownership is, rather than a stable condition, a dynamic process that can be manipulated by an experimental stimulus. Five thousand subjects were confronted with an embedded fake TV-news item in which the five leaders of the main Belgian parties offered their parties' stance on six issues. We find that issue ownership is a dynamic process and that news exposure leads to significant shifts in issue ownership. Especially on issues that are not owned by any party, a communicative performance by the party leader can make a difference. Regarding preowned issues, the effect is conditional; it depends on the balance of the news item.     

Anti-Americanism in Electoral Politics: Insights from South Korea's 2002 Presidential Election

Since September 11, 2001, anti-Americanism has emerged as an important issue in international politics. In democratic election campaigns, anti-Americanism should be an attractive issue where it is expected to have a favorable impact on key swing vote constituencies. Anti-Americanism has certain inherent ideological appeals and more varied historically-based attractions. Anti-Americanism should be least attractive where countries continue to rely on U.S. security guarantees. South Korea's December 2002 presidential election, in which winner Roh Moo-hyun openly sympathized with anti-American demonstrators, appears to contradict this expectation. Yet closer analysis of individual-level polling data shows that anti-Americanism was, both statistically and substantively, much less significant than alternative campaign issues. By activating the numerous voters hostile to the North Korean regime, anti-Americanism actually hurt the victor's electoral chances. The approach appears useful in understanding why anti-Americanism is a more prominent ideology and electoral issue in some regions, such as Western Europe and Latin America, and a less prominent one in others, for example Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Oceania.