Danny Hayes' Web site

Mass Media | CANDIDATE TRAITS | INFORMATION PROCESSING & COSTS | Partisan Change in the South

MASS Media in American Politics

1. Media Coverage and the Iraq War
Criticism of the news media’s performance in the months before the Iraq War has been profuse. Scholars, commentators, and journalists themselves have argued the media aided the Bush administration in its march to war by failing to air a wide-ranging debate that offered analysis and commentary from diverse perspectives. As a result, critics say, the public was denied the opportunity to weigh the claims of those arguing both for and against military action in Iraq. In a paper with Matt Guardino, we report the results of a systematic analysis of ABC and CBS nightly news coverage in the eight months before the invasion (Aug. 1, 2002 through March 19, 2003). We find news coverage conformed in some ways to the conventional wisdom: Bush administration officials were the most frequently quoted sources, the voices of anti-war groups and opposition Democrats were barely audible, and the overall thrust of coverage favored a pro-war perspective. But while domestic dissent on the war was minimal, opposition from abroad—in particular, from Iraq and officials from countries such as France, who argued for a diplomatic solution to the standoff—was commonly reported on the networks. While we surmise the opinions of foreign leaders would probably have been accorded less credibility by many Americans than the views of U.S. officials, the public was not entirely deprived of an alternative viewpoint. Our findings suggest that media researchers should further examine the inclusion of non-U.S. views on high-profile foreign policy debates, and they also raise normative questions about how the news filters the communications of political actors and refracts—rather than merely reflects—the contours of debate.

2. Media Framing of Immigration Reform
Recent work has found that framing effects depend not only on the content of communication frames, but also on individuals’ frequency of exposure to them and perceptions of the credibility of their source. As part of a larger project exploring the role of the media in shaping American immigration attitudes, I examine immigration-related communication frames on network television news from May 2005 through June 2007. Though the frames on different sides of the debate—those arguing for more “restrictive” immigration policies and those arguing for more “welcoming” policies—were given nearly equal air time, the sources of those frames were dramatically different. Restrictive frames came largely from government officials and politicians. Welcoming frames were articulated predominantly by immigrants and demonstrators at rallies. The results suggest that to the extent elected officials, on one hand, and immigrants and demonstrators, on the other, are perceived as differentially credible sources, the media’s representation of the immigration debate may play a role in the public’s reaction to different immigration reform proposals.

Related paper: "Media Frames and the Immigration Debate"

3. Has Television Personalized Voting Behavior?
Scholars and political observers have suggested that television has “personalized” voting behavior in American presidential elections by encouraging citizens to cast ballots on the basis of candidate image and personality. Though an oft-heard assertion, little solid evidence exists that this is true, and the reinvigoration of partisanship and the persistence of ideological conflict suggest personalization may be less pervasive than supposed. In this paper, I use National Election Studies data to examine whether voters are more concerned with candidates’ personal characteristics now than they were at the outset of the television era. I find, however, that voters are no more likely today to mention candidate personality as a reason for their vote choice than they were in the 1950s and 1960s. Moreover, while personality affects voting behavior, its influence on candidate choice is not significantly larger than it was a half-century ago. The results are not contingent on exposure to television or political awareness and are insensitive to different measures of perceptions of candidate image. The findings are consistent with the resurgence of partisan voting in American elections and suggest that some concerns about TV’s effects on political judgment are exaggerated.

4. The Content and Consequence of Issue News in Presidential Elections
This project examines both the content and consequence of media coverage of issues during political campaigns. I seek to answer two questions. First, what shapes the content of issue news during elections? Second, what are the effects on voters of such coverage, in concert with candidate communications? In answering these questions, I focus on the role of political context in shaping election news and in mediating its effects on voters. I argue that in relying largely on a “journalistic model” of news reporting -- emphasizing the influence of economic, professional, and ideological factors on political journalism -- scholars have neglected to fully account for the effects of the political environment on the content of media coverage. Factors such as electoral competitiveness, the issue concerns of candidates and citizens, and long-standing issue-handling reputations of the political parties interact with journalistic norms to shape the news during campaigns. Likewise, the same factors mediate the effects of news coverage on voters. In particular, the extent to which candidates and journalists converge on the same issue agenda and the activation of partisan stereotypes work in tandem with individual-level factors to condition voters’ susceptibility to the effects of news coverage and candidate communications. Ultimately, accounting for variation in the political environment should shed light on the nature and influence of issue news in political campaigns.

The PERCEPTION AND INFLUENCE of Candidate Traits in American Political Campaigns

1. Trait Ownership and Trait Effects in U.S. Senate Elections
Despite the common claim that candidate personality plays a role in non-presidential elections, existing research has not convincingly demonstrated this to be true. Using new data from the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I examine the effects of candidate traits in U.S. Senate elections. Testing the theory of “trait ownership,” I find some evidence of partisan stereotyping of candidates’ personal attributes, and strong evidence that trait perceptions affect candidate evaluation, which drives vote choice. As in presidential campaigns, the results also suggest senate candidates have an incentive to “trespass” on their opponent’s trait territory. In demonstrating the importance of personality, the findings show that scholars need to account for the effect of trait perceptions on candidate evaluation and vote choice, even in sub-presidential contests.

2. Feminine Democrats, Masculine Republicans?
A growing body of research suggests that the effect of candidate gender on voters’ evaluations of a candidate is influenced by other information, particularly party affiliation. In this paper, I propose a model of “stereotype accessibility” that contends in most cases, party stereotypes will override gender stereotypes in the process of candidate evaluation. Because of its greater accessibility and salience, I argue that voters are more likely to rely on a candidate’s party affiliation than gender in assessing his or her attributes. Drawing on recent work on partisan “trait ownership,” I test this argument by investigating the assessment of candidate personality traits. In two non-experimental studies from the 2006 elections, I find evidence of party stereotyping but no evidence of sex stereotyping. I also find neither that gender stereotypes “bolster” party stereotypes nor that a voter’s level of political sophistication increases reliance on sex stereotyping when gender and party cues conflict, two suggestions from the existing literature. Trait perceptions matter because they strongly affect overall candidate evaluation. The results affirm the primacy of parties in shaping voters’ views of the political world and raise questions about the public’s reliance on simple shortcuts and cues in evaluating candidates.

3. Trait Ownership in Presidential Elections
In a paper published in 2005 in the American Journal of Political Science, I use Petrocik’s (1996) theory of issue ownership as a point of departure to develop and test a theory of “trait ownership” that provides an explanation for the origins of candidate trait perceptions and illustrates an important way that candidates affect voters. Specifically, I argue for a direct connection between the issues owned by a political party and evaluations of the personal attributes of its candidates. As a result, the American public views Republicans as stronger leaders and more moral, while Democrats hold advantages on compassion and empathy. I also draw on “expectations gap” arguments from psychology and political science to demonstrate how a candidate may gain an electoral advantage by successfully “trespassing” on his opponent’s trait territory. National Election Studies data from the 1980-2004 presidential elections are used to demonstrate the existence, durability, and effects of trait ownership in contemporary American political campaigns.

4. The Effect of Media Exposure and Political Sophistication on Candidate Trait Perceptions
This paper examines the effect of media exposure and political sophistication on voter perceptions of presidential candidate traits. While sophistication exerts very little influence on how favorably citizens view the candidates’ personal attributes, media exposure does. Television news viewing produces favorable assessments of the candidates, but print media exposure increases the likelihood of negative evaluations. The findings are interesting in light of media research that decries the increasing negativity of political journalism in a candidate-centered electoral era.

Information Processing and information costs in election campaigns

1. Voter Information Processing in Election Campaigns
Substantial work in political science over the last two decades has focused on explaining how people acquire and use campaign information to make their judgments. Yet this literature has had little to say about a major emerging trend in American politics—the growing ideological divergence between the Republican and Democratic parties and their candidates. Drawing on research in political psychology, Mathieu Turgeon and I examine whether the ideological positioning of candidates influences information processing during election campaigns. Using a nationally representative survey-experiment, we show that candidate polarization—the convergence or divergence of candidates’ issue positions—affects voter information consumption, recall of campaign information, and the balance of on-line and memory-based processing employed in the vote decision. In showing that voters faced with more similar candidates rely more heavily on memory-based processing, the findings provide further support for hybrid models of information processing and carry important implications for the increasing polarization of candidates in American politics.

2. Voter Roll-off and the Information Costs of Redistricting
Considerable work in political science has revealed the effects of legal and institutional factors on political participation. Yet there has been very little consideration of the potential participatory effects of one of the United States’ most important electoral laws: constitutionally-mandated reapportionment. In a paper with Seth McKee, we argue that by severing the ties between constituents and their incumbents redistricting raises information costs, leading to increased levels of non-voting in U.S. House contests. Survey data from the 1992 American National Election Studies show that redrawn citizens are half as likely to know their incumbent’s name as citizens who remain in a familiar incumbent’s district and, consequently, significantly more likely to roll off, or abstain from voting in the House election after having cast a presidential vote. We then use data from the 2002-2006 U.S. House elections in Texas—each of which followed a redistricting—to show that roll-off rates among redrawn voters were between 3% and 7% higher than among citizens who remained in a district with the same incumbent, controlling for other factors. Abstention rates among those who were redrawn into districts with a new incumbent in consecutive elections—the “re-redistricted”—were 8% higher. The results demonstrate redistricting’s participatory effects, and suggest that scholars and policy makers ought to be concerned with the extent to which the redrawing of congressional lines affects citizens’ exercise of political voice.

3. Information Costs and Voter Turnout in the California Recall
In a paper coauthored with Brian K. Arbour, we examine how the explosion of media coverage about the 2003 California recall election lowered information costs for voters and helped boost turnout some 10% over the previous gubernatorial campaign. Prior to the race, pundits and academics pondered how a host of factors -- including the historic nature of the recall and the unusual cast of characters on the ballot -- would influence voter turnout. Here, we examine two questions to shed some light on the turnout dynamics of the election: How was the recall electorate different from its 2002 counterpart, and what explains the 10% increase in registered voter turnout compared to 2002? Using the statewide voter file, we find the recall produced a younger, less partisan, and less politically experienced electorate. Citizens who stayed home in 2002 but cast ballots in 2003 tended to be intermittent voters. Media attention appears to have helped boost turnout, confirming in a new context other studies that find that lowering the costs of voting affects most strongly those citizens with demographic characteristics somewhere between habitual voters and hard-core nonvoters.

PARTISAN CHANGE IN THE SOUTH

1. The Transformation of Southern Presidential Primaries
Presidential primaries in recent years have taken place against the backdrop of a secular realignment in the South, a shift that carries important consequences for nomination politics. In this article, Seth McKee and I use statewide exit polls to trace changes between 1988 and 2008 in the southern Democratic and Republican primary electorates. We find that the Democratic electorate has in the last 20 years grown strikingly more liberal, more racially diverse, and less heavily Protestant. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has solidified into a conservative, almost exclusively White primary electorate. We also identify a growing partisan gender gap in the region. Our findings suggest that it will be increasingly difficult for a centrist White Democrat, like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, to use the South as a launching pad to the nomination. In addition, the growing polarization in the parties’ southern primary electorates will likely continue to widen the ideological distance between the major presidential nominees.

2. Toward a One-Party South?
Most observers now consider the American South a two-party region, with Democrats and Republicans competing vigorously for political office. In this paper, Seth McKee and I raise the possibility that the South has begun a transformation into a one-party region dominated by the GOP. Three factors tip the scales in the party’s favor: the ideological congruence between the Republican Party and the region’s electorate; the Republican trend among the region’s younger voters; and the incumbency advantage accrued by current Republican officeholders. Using a vast array of South-wide longitudinal data, we provide evidence that speaks to the daunting challenges facing the Democratic Party in the South. We also address the results in the South of the 2006 midterm elections. The findings suggest that as the United States’ most reliably Republican region continues to change, Democrats may have an exceedingly difficult time winning statewide races.

3. Booting Barnes: The 2002 Georgia Gubernatorial Election
Republican Sonny Perdue’s defeat of Democrat Roy Barnes in the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial election was a stunning upset. Not only did Barnes, the incumbent, have history on his side -- no Republican had been elected governor of Georgia since Reconstruction -- but he led in every pre-election poll and outspent Perdue six to one. To explain Perdue’s victory, Seth McKee and I rely on a unique exit poll conducted by Fox News and a county-level statistical model. Our analyses of these data show that several issues salient in the campaign helped Perdue win. Specifically, Barnes was hurt by anger over his positions on education reform and a drastic overhaul of the state flag. At the same time, the victory can be interpreted more broadly in terms of an ongoing realignment among white Georgia voters.

Papers and Projects