Online versus offline: Exploring the link between how candidates campaign and how voters cast their ballot

The Internet is playing an increasingly important role in shaping citizens’ political experience. We turn to it to consume political news and, in some countries, to even cast our ballots at parliamentary elections. Leading the way in embracing Internet voting (i-voting) is Estonia where nearly half of the ballots cast during the 2019 parliamentary election were submitted online. Using original data from the 2019 Estonian Candidate Study, this paper explores the relationship between how candidates campaign and their electoral performance. It finds greater use of both offline and online campaign tools to contribute to higher vote shares as candidates win more traditional and i-votes. These positive effects are similar in size, in terms of candidates’ overall electoral performance as well as their ability to attract different types of votes. The results show not only that individual-level campaigns continue to matter, but that online campaigns have become as important as offline campaigns for candidates, and voters’ political activity often transcends the medium through which they receive political communication.     

Macro Research on Campaign Mobilization in the United States

ABSTRACT

This essay reviews the macro or aggregate-level academic literature on campaign mobilization and voter turnout in the United States. The conclusion that emerges from this literature is that hard-fought, high-stimulus electoral contests get out the vote. In part, the level of turnout on election day is a product of the efforts of strategic political actors (e.g., candidates, campaign contributors, and political parties) in the pursuit of elective office. The essay suggests that the academic literature on campaign mobilization would benefit from greater appreciation of how real world campaigns operate. A lesson that academics should draw from the practitioners is that strategic campaigns target and attempt to get out their voters. Careful consideration of the flows of information in campaigns would lead to a richer theory of mobilization. Looking at campaigns in a differentiated fashion, future research should recognize some fundamental points about their turnout implications: what campaigns do and whom they target may be more important than simply how much they do.     

Online and Undecided: Voters and the Internet in the Contemporary Norwegian Election Campaign

This article addresses the Internet as a campaign communication channel, and the approach is to explore voters' use of the Internet for electoral information in the contemporary Norwegian campaign. Theoretically it is argued for a distinction between party-controlled and uncontrolled online communication channels, and this distinction proves important as patterns of use differ between these two types of the new media. Based on digital inequalities and assertions of web campaigning being 'preaching to the converted', the article explores the factors that contribute to the use of the Internet for electoral information, and to what extent online voters are available on the electoral market. The article finds that the Internet was an important information source for a relatively small, but nonetheless substantial, part of the electorate. However, most other channels of communication were considered more important. Digital inequalities related to socioeconomic status and gender are mostly about following the campaign on online newspapers (uncontrolled), not acquiring information from party websites (controlled). Moreover, while the youngest, most inexperienced voters visited party websites to a greater extent than their older cohorts, they did not follow the campaign on online newspapers to a greater extent. Furthermore, online voters are not 'converted' to a party, but are available on the electoral market.     

Simple politics for the people? Complexity in campaign messages and political knowledge

Which parties use simple language in their campaign messages, and do simple campaign messages resonate with voters’ information about parties? This study introduces a novel link between the language applied during election campaigns and citizens’ ability to position parties in the ideological space. To this end, how complexity of campaign messages varies across parties as well as how it affects voters’ knowledge about party positions is investigated. Theoretically, it is suggested that populist parties are more likely to simplify their campaign messages to demarcate themselves from mainstream competitors. In turn, voters should perceive and process simpler campaign messages better and, therefore, have more knowledge about the position of parties that communicate simpler campaign messages. The article presents and validates a measure of complexity and uses it to assess the language of manifestos in Austria and Germany in the period 1945–2013. It shows that political parties, in general, use barely comprehensible language to communicate their policy positions. However, differences between parties exist and support is found for the conjecture about populist parties as they employ significantly less complex language in their manifestos. Second, evidence is found that individuals are better able to place parties in the ideological space if parties use less complex campaign messages. The findings lead to greater understanding of mass‐elite linkages during election campaigns and have important consequences for the future analysis of manifesto data.     

Mobilizing different types of voters: The influence of campaign intensity on turnout in direct democratic votes

A well-established body of literature links voter turnout to political campaigns. In this view, intensive campaigns increase the perceived salience of a decision, fostering information-seeking and, ultimately, turnout. The existing literature has also advanced our understanding of how direct democratic institutions influence turnout in elections. Yet we still know little about whether and to what extent campaign efforts influence voter turnout in direct democratic votes, and we know even less about who is mobilized. We claim that campaign intensity has differentiated effects across voters, depending on voters’ participation profile. To test this claim we use a rich dataset of official turnout data covering more than 40 direct democratic votes in Switzerland. The results support our claim. While intensive political campaigns overall foster citizens to turn out to vote, they do so especially for “selective” (or “intermittent”) voters, who need to decide anew at each ballot whether to turn out or not. Interestingly, we also find that frequent abstainers are not immune from campaign effects, and get almost as strongly mobilized as selective voters in highly intensive campaigns.     

U.S. Congressional Campaign Communications in an Internet Age

New technologies – with perhaps the most notable being radio and television – often change the face of political campaigns. The Internet, and particularly campaign websites with their concomitant technologies (e.g. interactive and multimedia features), has evolved at a faster rate than any other prior innovation. This raises a critical question: have website technologies altered how congressional candidates campaign? We address this question with a novel dataset from 2008. Not only do we chart technological change on sites over the course of the campaign but we also explore how and when candidates use certain technologies. We discover two critical and, to our knowledge, novel points. First, congressional candidates use these technologies to a much lesser extent than one may suspect. Second, their scant usage is driven by how certain technologies limit control of the candidate's message, the candidate's status in the race and other key variables such as the employment of campaign consultants. In sum, the Web 2.0 era (which began around 2008) does not appear to have dramatically altered congressional campaigns.     

A Comparative Analysis of Political Communication Systems and Voter Turnout

This article explores how political communication institutions affect cross-national differences in voter turnout in democratic elections. It demonstrates how the structure and means of conveying political messages—gauged by media systems, access to paid political television advertising, and campaign finance laws—explain variations in turnout across 74 countries. Relying on a "mobilization" perspective, I argue that institutional settings that reduce information costs for voters will increase turnout. The major empirical findings are twofold. First, campaign finance systems that allow more money (and electioneering communication) to enter election campaigns are associated with higher levels of voter turnout. Second, broadcasting systems and access to paid political television advertising explain cross-national variation in turnout, but their effects are more complex than initially expected. While public broadcasting clearly promotes higher levels of turnout, it also modifies the effect of paid advertising access on turnout.     

Campaign Targets and Messages in Direct Mail Fundraising

Political campaigns raise millions of dollars each election cycle. While past research provides valuable insight into who these donors are and why they are motivated to give, little research takes into account the actions of political campaigns. This paper examines why and how campaigns target habitual donors for political donations. Using the 2004 Campaign Communication Survey, a national survey of registered voters who were asked to collect and send in all campaign mail they received during the last 3 weeks of a campaign, we show that campaigns send donation solicitations predominantly to individuals who have previously donated to a campaign. We also show that campaigns match targeting fundraising appeals to the potential motivations for giving: campaigns target the type of fundraising appeal they use, whether ideological, solidary, or material, to match the socioeconomic and partisan characteristics of the potential donor. The implication of effective targeting is that the “unequal” voice of participation in campaign contributions is not one-sided and simply resource based, but rather that campaigns also contribute to the situation with targeted messages to potential donors.     

Referendum Campaigns,Framing and Uncertainty

Research on campaign dynamics and voting behaviour in direct democracy suggests that referendum campaigns can be seen as processes of learning. This finding stems from two assumptions: (1) information has mediating effects – the more voters know about the issue at stake, the stronger the effect of issue preferences in their decision-making; (2) campaign volatility and framing effects are linked to weak campaigning and voters’ lack of information. The aim of this article is to suggest the limitations of this approach and discuss the effects of framing in referendum campaigning. It is argued that campaign volatility as well as framing effects are not always related to voter ignorance and information-weak campaigns but rather to qualitative shifts in the underlying value interpretation linked to referendum proposals. These shifts are possible no matter how well-informed voters are. The expectancy-value model, commonly used in psychological research, is used to make sense of framing effects in volatile as well as stable referendum campaigns.     

Do voters have a cue? Television advertisements as a source of information in citizen–initiated referendum campaigns

Abstract. In this article we examine the scope for campaign effects in citizen–initiated referendum (CIR) elections. Given the context of CIR elections, television effects can be seen to be even bigger and more important than in candidate elections. We use survey data on information demands made upon voters in CIR campaigns, and the information sources they use, in order to gauge the relative importance of various sources that voters rely upon in making voting decisions. We then examine the relative importance of television advertising as a source of information in CIR campaigns. We find that voters report using many sources of information, with few voters relying exclusively upon television advertisements. Rather than telling voters which way to vote, television campaigns may simply raise awareness of CIRs and so encourage voters to seek cues elsewhere, in particular from ballot guides where cues are more readily discerned.     

Social Influences on Online Political Information Search and Evaluation

Americans are turning to the Internet to learn about politics in greater and greater numbers. Under the current “Web 2.0” paradigm in which users are encouraged to interact with online content, voters encountering political information on the Internet are typically exposed to more than just the news; online information is often colored by the reactions of previous readers, whether in the form of displayed comments or in readily apparent tallies of the number of “likes” or “shares” a particular item has received. In this paper we consider the effect these social cues have on online political information search and evaluation. Using processing-tracing software to monitor the patterns of information search and evaluation among our subjects, we find that social cues can function as a heuristic, allowing voters to reach judgments similar to those of their more informed counterparts. However, we also find that negative cues can adversely influence candidate evaluation, making subjects less disposed to a candidate than they would be in the absence of such signals.     

Vote Oswego: Developing and Assessing the Campaign-as-Course Model

College campuses have taken on increased responsibility for mobilizing young voters. Despite the discipline’s commitment to civic engagement, political science departments play a minimal role in this programming. This article outlines a course structure—including learning objectives, course outline, and assessments—that treats a campus-wide voter mobilization drive as the basis of an applied political science course. Transforming a campus voter mobilization program into a political science practicum offers advanced skill-building for students seeking political careers and links learning objectives to real world activities. Participants report gains in both knowledge of campaigns and grassroots campaign skills. We argue this type of course particularly benefits students attending colleges and universities in geographic areas that receive little attention from political campaigns as well as those students for whom the traditional route of gaining political experience—an unpaid, off-campus internship—is impractical or even impossible.     

Greek Political Marketing Online

Abstract

The new communication system of interconnected computer networks is altering the nature of political communication in many innovative and significant ways. In Greece, the development of the Internet as a mass communication medium has a history of no more than five years, and it is far from being a fully fledged medium of political communication. With the exception of relatively few cases, the use of the Internet has been shown to increase during the pre-election campaign periods. This paper presents the results of a research project, which explores the personal Web sites of the Greek parliamentarians in an off-campaign period. The research was conducted through the systematic observation, examination, and analysis of a sample of personal Web pages owned by cross-party elected members of the Greek Parliament.     

Tempus Fugit

SUMMARY

This study examines campaign schedules from a sample of congressional and legislative candidates in Texas in the November 2002 general election. The schedules show that candidates focus most of their time on voter contact activities, followed by political activities. Despite expectations, fund raising is not the most common activity on campaigns. The data further demonstrate that congressional candidates spend much more time on the campaign trail than state legislative candidates, and a great deal more time raising money. Also, candidates in rural districts spend a greater proportion of their time on political activities, while urban and suburban candidates focus more attention on fund raising. The structure of these different types of districts seems to provide campaigns with different avenues of most efficiently contacting voters.     

MPs and web technologies: an untapped opportunity?

MPs have not previously been assigned a major role in electoral campaigning, being considered only one element of a political party's ‘marketing’ tools for winning votes. Evidence now suggests that the relationship between MPs and their constituents is changing. The concept of ‘constituency service’ implies that individual MPs can have a much greater influence on local voters and so possibly buck national trends. At the same time the concept of the ‘permanent campaign’ is transforming political campaigning whereby the political elite needs ever‐greater control of the tools used to provide messages to voters. The internet is a potential battleground between MPs who want greater control of their own local campaigning and the party elite who want to ensure a consistent, coherent and controlled message. The Internet is a new addition to the campaigning armoury, yet the focus so far has been on e‐government, e‐democracy and election campaigns. By concentrating on how and why MPs use their websites this paper considers whether MPs have fully understood and utilised this new medium. Key questions include whether their websites are ‘sticky’, interactive and a means of creating a targeted message. The findings of this detailed study of MPs' websites show that apart from a few pioneers, MPs have not progressed beyond using the Internet as ‘shovelware’ — the vast majority view their website as an electronic brochure and not a new form of two‐way communication. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Registrants,Voters, and Turnout Variability Across Neighborhoods

Although political participation has received wide-ranging scholarly attention, little is known for certain about the effects of social and political context on turnout. A scattered set of analyses—well-known by both political scientists and campaign consultants—suggests that ones neighborhood has a relatively minor impact on the decision to vote. These analyses, however, typically rely upon data from a single location. Drawing on official lists of registered voters from sixteen major counties across seven states (including Florida) from the 2000 presidential election, we use geographic/mapping information and hierarchical models to obtain a more accurate picture of how neighborhood characteristics affect participation, especially among partisans. Our research shows that neighborhoods influence voting by interacting with partisan affiliation to dampen turnout among voters we might otherwise expect to participate. Most notably, we find Republican partisans in enemy territory tend to vote less than expected, even after accounting for socioeconomic status. Our findings have implications for campaign strategy, and lead us to suggest that campaign targeting efforts could be improved by an integration of aggregate- and individual-level information about voters.     

Campaign Learning and Vote Determinants

How campaigns shape voters' decisions is central to the study of political behavior. The basic conclusion is simple: campaigns matter. While we know who campaigns influence, there is no clear empirical evidence of why or how campaigns matter. This comes from two things. First, despite different theories about campaigns, the existing studies measure the campaign as a function of time. Second, these studies ignore the individual-level psychological mediators of these effects. We know that there are differences across time during a campaign, but we do not know how or why. In this article I suggest that campaigns work by altering voters' uncertainty about the candidates and combine aggregate and individual-level data using a hierarchical logit estimated via Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. I find that voters change how they weigh their attitudes during the campaign because of changes in their uncertainty about the candidates.     

Campaign Persuasion and Nascent Partisanship in Mexico's New Democracy

Despite ample evidence of preelection volatility in vote intentions in new democracies, scholars of comparative politics remain skeptical that campaigns affect election outcomes. Research on the United States provides a theoretical rationale for campaign effects, but shows little of it in practice in presidential elections because candidates’ media investments are about equal and voters’ accumulated political knowledge and partisan attachments make them resistant to persuasive messages. I vary these parameters by examining a new democracy where voters’ weaker partisan attachments and lower levels of political information magnify the effects of candidates’ asymmetric media investments to create large persuasion effects. The findings have implications for the generalizability of campaign effects theory to new democracies, the development of mass partisanship, candidate advertising strategies, and the specific outcome of Mexico's hotly contested 2006 presidential election. Data come primarily from the Mexico 2006 Panel Study.     

Concepts,Crises and Campaigns

SUMMARY

This article enhances understanding of congressional campaigns by exploring how political professionals define campaign crises. Existing academic literature uses binary measures of candidate scandals as a proxy for campaign crises. However, in-depth interviews with senior political consultants and other experienced campaigners demonstrate that political professionals view crises as complex, interactive events. While scandals are one kind of campaign crisis, a variety of other factors account for most crises. After categorizing the different kinds of crises political professionals describe, a typology is developed to analyze the internal, external, expected and/or unexpected dimensions of campaign crises. This article focuses on crises in U.S. House and Senate campaigns, although general lessons apply to campaigns at other levels.     

Civic activism and Korean democracy: the impact of blacklisting campaigns in the 2000 and 2004 general elections

Abstract

For the general elections in 2000 and 2004, civic groups in South Korea joined forces to stage the so-called ‘blacklisting campaign’ or ‘defeat campaign’ against allegedly corrupt, incompetent or anti-reform politicians. The campaigns not only played a significant role in thwarting many politicians from getting nominated or elected but also heralded a new era in Korean politics: civic groups have now emerged as a major political force, capable not only of challenging party policies and pending legislation but also taking on an agenda-setting prominence in a wide array of policy areas. In analyzing the success of NGO political activities in the 2000 and 2004 general elections, this paper draws on resource mobilization theory to show how the civic groups effectively utilized various resources, including leadership skills, communications and office facilities, and access to the mass media, to achieve their objective rather than relying simply on the spontaneous participation of voters. In comparing the efforts of civic groups in the two elections, the paper also explains the factors that made their endeavors relatively less successful in 2004 (e.g. a splintering of alliances among the civic groups). On the whole, the paper argues that the greater political involvement by civic groups is likely to lead to a more pluralistic, open and competitive form of democracy, and that the vibrant civic activism in Korea is an indication not only of maturing democracy but also a more secure entrenchment of civil society.