Download Political communication

Electoral Campaigns
Selling candidates like soap
Ideal functions of elections
• Choose the best people for public service
• Provide for orderly succession of regimes
• Confer legitimacy on the regime and the
government
• Provide a means for public control over
government
– The main source of public control in a
representative democracy
– Punish the scoundrels
• Register changes in public policy preferences
• People choose candidates that will promote their
favored issues and policies within government
Ideal functions of electoral
campaigns
• Inform the electorate
• Test and evaluate candidates
• Generate popular debate over public
policy
• Energize system support
• Socialize new citizens
– Education
– Legitimation
– Activism/conduct
Approaches to campaigning
• Open forum/policy debate
• Marketing campaign
To meet the democratic ideal, a
campaign would
• Engage the [entire] public in a thoughtful debate
over public policy, reveal the character, ideology
and policy preferences of the candidates for public
office, act as a watchdog to see that the process is
clean, and encourage the public to take action to
promote its interests by voting and other political
acts. If the campaign is clean and the vote clear,
the new government should be considered
legitimate.
The campaign should
• Reach out to all members of the electorate
• Attack the most crucial issues of the day
• Provide a sophisticated and nuanced
discussion of the issues, providing a clear
picture of the candidates’ positions that
delineates their areas of agreement and
disagreement
• Encourage dialogue among members of the
public and between the public and elites
The marketing approach
• The earliest significant television
advertising campaign for a presidential
candidate was Rosser Reeves’ campaign for
Dwight Eisenhower in 1952
– “Eisenhower Answers America”
Eisenhower Answers America
http://www.ciadvertising.org/student_account/fall_00/adv382j/derrellwilson/p2/politics.html
• The marketing approach to political
campaigns has accelerated since that time
till now it dominates political campaigning
for major political office
The marketing campaign model
• Rather than leading a debate, the marketing
model sees the goal as ‘selling the candidate’
– Product marketing professionals brought in
• The sale is a one-time sale on a single day
with everyone buying at once
• Communications are meant to convince
rather than inform
• Winning is everything
• Decline of in-person campaigning,
especially at state-wide and federal levels
• Rising costs of campaigns
• Media-centered, especially TV
• Development of political marketing as a
profession
– Success?
Undecideds
• The ‘swing vote’ in elections is made up
largely of those persons who are relatively
ill-informed, have a less-developed
ideology and are swayed by late events,
advertising and non-policy news
• They often decide the elections, though, and
are a major target of candidates
– Going negative can work here
Political communication
• Advertising
• News coverage
– Press relations, PR
• Debates
• Political parties
Political advertising
• “Televised political advertising is now the
dominant form of communication between
candidates and voters in the presidential
elections and in most statewide contests”
– Kaid, “Political advertising”
Image
• Parallel to branding in commercial product
campaigns
– If I mentioned a politician, the image would be
the first, general impression of that person
• How would you describe that person to someone
who doesn’t know him/her?
Image development
• General presentation of a candidate
– Must be clear and simple
– How candidate comes across in the media
– Asserted character
• “traditional values”
– Basic ideology
• Simplified
– Issue stands
• Limited number varying in specificity
Image
• Should relate well to target audience
– Republicans want a strong leader
– Democrats want a caring leader
Image
• Challenge opposing candidate’s image
– Compare to record
• Opposition research
• Identify opposition with disfavored idea
John Kerry
George Bush
Issues v. images
• Most advertising focuses on issues rather than
image
– 78% of 2000 presidential campaign ads (historic high)
• However, “the percentage of spots with specific
policy issue information was much lower than the
overall number of issue spots”
– Vague, general statements
– Claims without context (often misleading or even false)
• Researchers have come to conclude that the two
are intertwined and inseparable
Emotion and cultural symbols
• Common use of non-rational appeals
• Clearly a successful strategy
• Spots contain an enormous amount of emotional
content
• “more emotional proof than logical or ethical
proof”
• According to Hart “one must never underestimate
the importance of that which advertising most
reliably delivers—political emotion”
Review of presidential
advertising
Emotional appeals
• “Winners use more words indicating
activity and optimism than losers. Losers,
alternately, demonstrated less certainty but
higher realism in their spots.”
– Ballotti & Kaid, 2000
Issues ‘owned’ by the parties
• Democrats
– Domestic policy
• Health care, environment, social security
• Republicans
– Foreign policy
• Terrorism, strong defense
– Spending
• Taxes, fiscal responsibility
– Religious values
Kaid: “The Television Advertising Battleground in the
2004 Preseidential Election”
Negative v. positive
• There has been a significant increase in
negativity over the last 30 years
2000 [all] elections
Positive v. Negative
• Challengers more likely to engage in negative
advertising, while incumbents tend to be positive
– Challenger criticizing record, incumbent defending it
• Attack ads are more common in competitive races
– Most races against incumbents are long shots
• Negative ads are more likely to be sponsored by
parties or advocacy groups
• Negative ads have more substantive issue
information
Goldstein, “Lessons learned”
Positive v. negative
• Positive ads tend to focus on the present or
future
• Negative ads tend to focus on the past and
express anger
Effects of political advertising
• “One of the earliest surprises in political
advertising research was the finding that
political television commercials do a good
job of communicating information,
especially issue information, to voters
regardless of partisan selectivity.”
– Kaid, “Political advertising”
Effects
• Enhances candidate name recognition
• Increases voter recall about specific
campaign issues and candidate issue
positions
– Some research has found television advertising
to be more effective in educating the public
than television news or even print
• A minority of research refutes this
Effects
• Agenda setting
• “Exposure to campaign spots can affect
candidate image evaluation”
– Effects may be mixed due to competitive
claims exposure
Effects
• Electoral outcomes
– “higher levels of spending seem to have some
relationship to turnout and success for the
candidate”
• Especially strong for late deciders
– Little evidence of impact in initiatives and
referenda
Negative ad effects
• Negative ads usually are more effective for recall
than positive ads
– Especially effective in generating negative attitudes
toward opposition
– Focus on opponent’s issue positions are more effective
than attacks on character
– When attacking character, focus on competence or
experience are most effective
• Rebuttals are helpful
– However, may be a ‘sleeper effect’
• Inoculation can work
Negative ad effects
• “negative ads do affect voting preferences”
• Works more for challengers than for
incumbents
• Mixed findings concerning whether
negative advertising leads to political
alienation and cynicism
Female candidates
• Female candidates tend to focus more on
issues than men do, and to emphasize
domestic issues
– May be more due to greater number of
Democrats who are women than to gender
• Those who view ads for information are
more likely to learn and to have their vote
intention influenced
• “Voters with low levels of campaign
involvement are most likely to be affected
by political spots”
• http://www.pbs.org/30secondcandidate/time
line/years/1964b.html
• http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us
/index.php
• http://www.theaapc.org/content/pollieaward
s/pastwinners/pastwinners2005.asp
Media strategy
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Targeting
Costs v impact
Reach and frequency
Timing
Generating “free media”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/me
dia/july-dec04/ad_7-19.html
Quinn & Kivijarv, “US political media buying 2004”