American Progressivism and the Obama Presidency

US progressivism is half espoused, half rejected, by an ambivalent if talented President. The Republican image of the President as ‘socialist’ is one which the social democratic Democrats wish were true. The President's readiness to compromise has not tempered the extreme hostility of the Republicans. It has been exploited by the political agents of business and finance. It has used by the permanent war party: the campaign against ‘terror’ enables it to retain mastery of foreign and military policy. The New Deal's heirs, seeking more social democracy and less militarism, are bereft of new forms of political action. US democracy is threatened by an eruption of cultural and religious fundamentalism, racism, and xenophobia, as well as a compulsive refusal of social solidarity. Withal, the situation is open as well as complex, and the President in the long run may be much more successful than his angry detractors and disappointed supporters allow.     

The mass media and changes in adolescents' political knowledge during an election cycle

Two questions are considered: to what extent do children's levels of political knowledge and news media use change during an election campaign? To what extent are levels of political knowledge related to levels and types of news media use? The hypothesis that news media use at one point in time is related to subsequent levels of political knowledge is tested using crosslagged partial correlation analysis. The patterns of political knowledge and news media use in January (prior to the 1976 primaries), late May and early June, and after the general election among a panel of high school students are examined. The means indicate a small increase in news media use and a more substantial increase in political knowledge. A greater increase occurs in political knowledge about campaign and election relevant institutions and processes than about other types of political institutions and processes. Limited support is provided for the hypothesized lagged influence of news media use; the impact varies with the political interest of the student and the type of news media used.     

Issue convergence or issue divergence in a political campaign?

In this article, a two-party contest where candidates allocate their campaign resources strategically between two salient issues is studied. The analysis aims to determine the circumstances under which there is issue convergence (both parties emphasizing the same issue) or issue divergence (different parties emphasizing different issues) during a political campaign. For this purpose, the concepts of a party’s absolute and comparative advantage are used. A party has an absolute advantage on an issue if a majority of voters prefer its position on this issue to that of its opponent. A party has a comparative advantage on an issue if the percentage of votes that it would obtain if voters cared only about that issue is larger than those that it would obtain if voters cared only about the other issue. It is shown here that issue convergence can occur only if one of the parties has an absolute advantage on both issues, but its comparative advantage is not too large. Otherwise, there will be issue divergence in the political campaign.     

Value Conflict, Group Affect, and the Issue of Campaign Finance

The issue of campaign finance reform creates a potential conflict between the democratic values of expression and equality. Using a unique experiment embedded in a national survey of the American electorate, we examine the extent to which group affect influences citizens' commitment to these values and how it contributes to the resolution of value conflict. We find that citizens' commitment to the values of expression and equality in the campaign finance system is structured by their feelings toward those whose rights and influence are perceived to be at stake. Our analysis further shows that the effects of group affect are conditioned by issue frame. The effects of group affect are less pronounced when campaign finance is framed as an issue of political expression and rights than when it is framed in terms of political equality and influence. Finally, we find that affective information contributes to the resolution of value conflict by helping citizens to make tradeoffs between competing values in judgment situations.     

Primed by the Euro: The Impact of a Referendum Campaign on Public Opinion and Evaluations of Government and Political Leaders

The premise of political priming is that public evaluations of political leaders are made on the basis of issues that are on the top of citizens' minds. This study investigated the impact of a national referendum campaign about a European integration issue on the evaluation of the incumbent government, the prime minister, and the opposition leaders. Drawing on a content analysis of news media and a two-wave panel survey, the results showed that as the topic of the referendum (the introduction of the euro) became more visible in the media during the campaign the importance of the euro issue for formulating general evaluations of political leaders increased. The incumbent government that was seen to handle the referendum poorly was penalized by the referendum. Exposure to news media outlets that covered the referendum extensively and offered negative evaluations of political leaders boosted the decline in the overall performance rating of political leaders by politically less involved respondents. These results stress the necessity of considering the campaign and the specific content of the media to understand fluctuations in public opinion during a referendum campaign. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of a referendum campaign for political leaders.     

Platforms,media and voters

Abstract The paper presents data on party platforms, political communication and public opinion in the 1996 Italian election campaign. It is shown that the electoral platforms of the two major coalitions were largely overlapping, except for some economic and social issues. The centre–right coalition seemed more inclined to adopt pro–market policies, while the platform of the Ulivo coalition was more oriented toward a social partnership approach. In the month before the elections, policy issues were discussed on television more extensively than political issues. Public and private networks covered the 1996 election campaign at the same level as in 1994 and to some extent with the same bias. Voting intentions seem to have remained stable prior to and during the electoral campaign.     

Do campaign strategies and tactics matter? Exploring party elite perceptions of what matters when explaining election outcomes

In research on political campaign communication, it is often assumed that campaign strategies and tactics are highly important for explaining election outcomes. In contrast, most research in political science tends to emphasize the importance of political substance, long‐term factors such as party identification, and real‐world conditions for explaining election outcomes. Although political parties in practice treat election campaigns as highly important and consequential, there is virtually no research on how party elites perceive the importance of campaign strategies and tactics when explaining election outcomes. Hence, drawing on a survey among Swedish members of parliament, this study investigates party elite perceptions of what matters when people decide which party to vote for and of what matters when explaining election outcomes. In brief, the results show that members of parliament perceive campaign strategies and tactics as significantly less important than the substance of politics. In the concluding analysis, the implications of the results are analyzed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Cultivating Campaign Managers: A Discussion Regarding the Creation and Implementation of a Campaign Management Course

When approached about working with colleagues to develop a new course revolving around the inner-workings of a political campaign, one thing was obvious to me: We had to give the course the unique element of making it as closely mimic real-world campaign activities as possible. If we were going to attempt to actually prepare students for work on a political campaign, they would have to participate in activities focusing on the practical application of theoretical information. As such, I designed a section of this course where students were matched with a partner and given the task of running a mock political campaign. Students were presented with a series of activities to complete in their role as campaign managers. This article outlines the way the course was set up, explains the activities used in the course, discusses the success of the course based on observation and survey data, and suggests improvements for the future.     

Agenda Setting and the Blogosphere: An Analysis of the Relationship between Mainstream Media and Political Blogs

This paper asks: what is the relationship between the mainstream media and blog agendas? To be more precise, this paper tracks media coverage and blog discussion of 35 issues during the 2004 presidential campaign to test the hypothesis that the mainstream media agenda exerts a substantial impact on the blog agenda against the increasingly popular hypothesis that the blog agenda exerts a strong influence on the mainstream media agenda. Using a computer‐assisted, quantitative content analysis of ten randomly selected A‐list political blogs and 50 randomly selected, less popular political blogs over the five‐month period from July 1 to November 30, 2004, the author finds that on the vast majority of issues there was a complex, bidirectional relationship between mainstream media coverage and blog discussion rather than a unidirectional media or blog agenda‐setting effect.     

Sub-National Election Campaigns: The Danish Local Elections of November 1989*

Electoral campaigning is studied almost without exception at the national level. This article has chosen another road, claiming that electoral campaigning can also be studied at the local election level. Campaigning before the Danish local elections of 21 November 1989 is studied. The design permits comparisons between the two levels (national/local) as well as between different units at the local level. It furthermore provides an opportunity for studying the influence of local party systems as well as local mass media on election campaigning. A substantial part of the article discusses the institutional frameworks surrounding electoral campaigning in the municipalities studied and in general. It is maintained that the electoral system, the mass media structure, and the (local) party system are important contextual factors or frameworks. Given this, it is argued that organization, past performance, and campaign focus as a mix of policy proposals and leader image are paramount in affecting the local election vote. The main conclusions are: local election campaigning differs from national election campaigning; local election campaigning matters, i.e. it has a direct effect on the vote; and the functions of local party organizations in connection with local elections and local performance make them less vulnerable to organizational decline, which most mass membership political parties are experiencing at the national level.     

Platforms, media and voters

The paper presents data on party platforms, political communication and public opinion in the 1996 Italian election campaign. It is shown that the electoral platforms of the two major coalitions were largely overlapping, except for some economic and social issues. The centre–right coalition seemed more inclined to adopt pro–market policies, while the platform of the Ulivo coalition was more oriented toward a social partnership approach. In the month before the elections, policy issues were discussed on television more extensively than political issues. Public and private networks covered the 1996 election campaign at the same level as in 1994 and to some extent with the same bias. Voting intentions seem to have remained stable prior to and during the electoral campaign.     

The Roots of the Gender Gap in Political Knowledge in Adolescence

Why do men score better than women do on tests of political knowledge? We consider the roots of the gender gap in political knowledge in late adolescence. Using a panel survey of high school seniors, we consider the differences between young men and young women in what they know about politics and how they learn over the course of a midterm election campaign. We find that even after controlling for differences in dispositions like political interest and efficacy, young women are still significantly less politically knowledgeable than young men. While campaigns neither widen nor close the gender gap in political knowledge, we find important gender differences in how young people respond to the campaign environment. While partisan conflict is more likely to promote learning among young men, young women are more likely to gain information in environments marked by consensus rather than conflict.     

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.     

Use of the World Wide Web in the 1996 US election

The role of the World Wide Web in the 1996 US election was analyzed from three perspectives: receiver, source, and effects. A test Web site was set up to provide political information, and the pattern of use indicates that users seemed more interested in seeking news than in deciding how to vote. An analysis of campaign characteristics and subsequent votes indicates that the higher the office being sought, the more likely a campaign is to have a supporting Web site, and that having a Web site was also associated, for one reason or another, with a statistically significant number of additional votes on the average.     

Election campaigns and the cyclical nature of emotions—How politicians engage in affective polarization

Do politicians get emotional during an election campaign? We examine the existence of changes in partisan in-group favoritism and partisan out-group hostility among political elites by evaluating the degree to which they fluctuate before, during and after election campaigns. The lack of elite level panel data has prevented scholars from studying the dynamics of politicians' emotions around the most emotionally intense political event in democracies: elections. We focus on Sweden around the 2014 election and follow more than 700 Swedish politicians before, during and after a national election campaign using a unique three-wave panel survey. The results reveal that politicians' emotions towards other parties are affected during the election, but less so for their own party. Our study adds to the body of recent evidence that campaigns mobilize partisan identities and increase partisan animus.     

Rough Terrain: Spatial Variation in Campaign Contributing and Volunteerism

We examine spatial patterns of mass political participation in the form of volunteering and donating to a major statewide election campaign. While these forms of participation are predictably associated with the political and socioeconomic characteristics of the precincts in which the participants reside, we find that these statistical relationships are spatially nonstationary. High-income neighborhoods, for example, are associated with stronger effects on participation at some locations more than at others. By using geographically weighted regression (GWR) to specify local regression parameters, we are able to capture the heterogeneity of contextual processes that generate the geographically uneven flow of volunteers and contributors into a political campaign. Since spatial nonstationarity may well be a rule rather than an exception in the study of many political phenomena, social scientific analyses should be mindful that relationships may vary by location.     

Impact of American Political Marketing on Israeli Society

The extensive literature examining the impact of American campaign styles in other countries generally attributes various political changes to the presence of American professionals and imported campaign techniques. Yet foreign professionals working on international campaigns may have more or less influence, and there is little systematic understanding of the factors that contribute to their actual influence over the local campaign. This paper examines the Israeli case as an example of strong penetration of American campaign professionals and techniques and analyzes the factors that contributed to their relatively high level of influence. Following this, a framework is proposed for assessing when imported American professionals and/or styles are likely to have a strong or weak influence on a campaign, based on factors leading to easy adoption or requiring more extensive adaptation. The study finds that in Israel, endogenous factors including social, political, cultural, and economic evolution contributed to the easy adoption of American campaign practices, creating a welcoming environment for American professionals. Thus, the major changes in campaigns often attributed to Americanization in other countries may be due at least in part to organic social, economic, and cultural changes of that society.     

Election campaign resource allocation

This paper examines an electoral competition model where a candidate allocates his campaign efforts (resources) on two competing projects prior to election. A candidate is congruent if his objective is consistent with the wishes of his constituents and there is no potential political shirking. We show that a congruent candidate needs not exert any efforts towards successful implementation prior to election; however, a less than perfectly congruent candidate must exert efforts prior to election. In equilibrium, two campaign resource allocation strategies emerge; (1) concentrate resources on one project and (2) allocate resources evenly across both projects. We discuss potential inefficiencies that are resulted by these allocation strategies.     

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.