How the Bush and Gore Campaigns Conceptualized and Used the Internet in 2000

Abstract

Political scientists and campaign professionals have been intrigued by the potential of the Internet as a tool for accessing and conveying political information since the mass marketing of the first Web browser in 1993. Optimists have pointed to the possibility for more expansive participation and more substantive, in-depth issue discussions. Pessimists have countered that universal access to the Internet is still years down the road, pointing out there is little reason to believe campaigns will use the Internet either to spice up or to elevate the national political conversation. Such long-term assessments are premature, but we can offer preliminary assessments of how candidates conceptualize and use the Internet. Relying on surveys of online registered voters and interviews with campaign operatives and Webmasters, I examine how the online electorate was perceived and approached by the Bush and Gore campaigns in 2000.1 find that (1) voters were unlikely to seek political information from candidate or party Web sites, (2) voters were skeptical of information presented on these sites, and (3) the campaigns understood this and therefore saw the Internet primarily as a vehicle for internal communication and grassroots activation.     

Book reviews

James A. Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 313 pp. $24.95.

Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: The Free Press, 1991)., 319 pp.

Michael Glennon, Constitutional Diplomacy and Constitutionalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 353 pp. $35.00.     

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.     

Issue-Related Learning in a Gubernatorial Campaign: A Panel Study

This study is based on data from a three-wave telephone panel survey conducted during the 1998 governor's race in Florida. The evidence suggests that a considerable amount of issue-related learning (having to do with candidate policy stands and group endorsements) took place over the course of the general election campaign, though substantial differences were observed from one issue area to the next. Further analysis indicates that learning was especially likely to occur among voters (a) who were more knowledgeable about political affairs to start with (confirming that the so-called “knowledge gap” may be exacerbated during campaigns), (b) who scored high on a measure of advertising negativity (for one candidate but not the other), and (c) who early in the campaign, read their local newspaper less frequently. Consistent with prior research, TV news appears to have done little or nothing to boost issue-based learning among the electorate.     

A Review of: “Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers,by Pablo J. Boczkowski”

This study examines the way in which USA Today used tracking poll data in its strategy‐oriented coverage of the 1992 presidential campaign. Scrutiny of the methodological features of tracking polls suggests the news media's potential misuses of them. Studies on media polling lead to the general hypothesis that tracking polls serve the mass media as a device for generating news accounts that focus on candidate strategy. Using the ARIMA modeling technique, I conclude that as changes in the margin of difference between Bush and Clinton in the Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll increased, USA Today cited the poll results more frequently. The increase in the number of tracking poll references corresponded to an increase in the number of strategy‐oriented words in USA Today's campaign coverage. I discuss the implications within the context of the 1992 election campaign coverage.     

Who Advocates? Determinants of Political Advocacy in Presidential Election Years

Political discussion research often focuses on general discussion without analyzing interesting subsets of interpersonal communication, such as political advocacy. Political advocacy is crucial to study because it is where citizens make clear statements of their beliefs when trying to influence others, which democratic theorists cite as valuable in spreading information in discussion networks. In this project, we test theoretically relevant determinants of political advocacy, focusing on campaign spending. Using multilevel logistic regression models of American National Election Study survey data from presidential elections between 1976 and 2008, we find that campaign spending correlates with an increase in the likelihood of advocating. We also find that the likelihood of being an advocate correlates with greater political discussion, television usage, interest in politics, partisanship, efficacy, and socioeconomic status. Additionally, we break these results down by party spending and party identification, and find differentiated results by party. Generally, these results show how the electoral environment shapes interpersonal communication.     

Accentuating the Negative: Candidate Race and Campaign Strategy

This article examines the impact of candidate race and campaign negativity on candidate evaluations and turnout. Unlike previous research, we argue that candidate race and campaign negativity should be considered simultaneously. In order to test this argument, we conduct a survey experiment of a nationally representative sample of White adults and a replication study. While we find, consistent with previous research, that respondents unfavorably evaluate candidates who decide to sponsor a negative ad, there are two important exceptions to this pattern: When the ad sponsor is Black, among White respondents who view Blacks negatively, the penalty for going negative is disproportionately large, while among White respondents who view Blacks positively, the penalty for going negative is disproportionately small. More generally, our findings suggest that the effects of candidate attributes and campaign strategy on voter behavior should not be considered in isolation, as they are mutually reinforcing.     

Economic Voting Appeals in Congressional Campaigns

Although they agree that economics and elections are intertwined, theories of economic voting disagree on the policy focus (on positions taken or outcomes achieved) and time horizon (retrospective or prospective) that guides voters’ decisions. Most research on these debates looks at the considerations voters weigh. Instead, I explore the types of economic voting that candidates encourage through their campaign appeals. Content-coded advertising data from the 2004 congressional elections show that appeals focus more on policy positions than outcomes and more on the past than the future. Consistent with predictions from emphasis allocation theory, strategic incentives and electoral context shape the exact mix of economic appeals campaigns make. When promoting their own candidacy, politicians ask voters to think about (more unifying) future economic outcomes; when attacking their opponent’s candidacy, they ask voters to think about (more divisive) past policy positions. In districts experiencing worsening economic conditions, voters are exposed to more information about policy outcomes; in districts where the incumbent is ideologically “out of step,” they hear more about policy positions. Studies that seek to evaluate competing theories of economic voting are thus likely to draw misleading conclusions if they treat the information environment as a homogeneous constant: Campaigns in different districts, facing different strategic incentives, encourage significantly different types of economic voting.     

Political Communication and the Unexpected Outcome of the 2002 French Presidential Elections

ABSTRACT

The results of the first round of the 2002 French presidential election were a profound shock. Prime Minister Jospin did not make it to the final round run-off, beaten as he was by the far right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen who claimed second place. This article argues that use (and misuse) of modern campaigning methods proved decisive to this outcome. Paradoxically, Jospin's overtly professional approach actually hindered him. His flawed strategy failed to target crucial voters, and assorted tactical decisions compounded this error. Nor did the media coverage and distorted public opinion polls help a beleaguered Jospin candidacy. In this election the cautious would be the main beneficiaries.     

Images of Labour

Abstract

This paper looks at the continuities and changes in the nature of election campaigns in Britain since 1900 by focusing on the way campaigning has changed and become more professional and marketing driven. The piece discusses the ramifications of these developments in relation to the Labour Party's ideological response to mass communication and the role now played by external media in the internal affairs of this organisation. The paper also seeks to assess how campaigns have historically developed in a country with an almost continuous, century long cycle of elections.