Election-Day Radio-Television and Western Voting

Abstract

A GREAT DEAL has already been written about how the broadcast media affect voting behavior. The sum of all of this research seems to be that maybe some people are affected in some fashion or another under certain conditions. This paper is surely not the end of the line on broadcast research. As is often found, whether or not one's fallen hypotheses need post hoc rationalization, more questions seem to have been raised by this effort than answered. Some of these questions, however, are in important areas that up to now were thought to have been rather thoroughly laid to rest. It should become clear as this is read that more research on media effect is needed in future presidential elections. The June 1964 presidential primary election in California was the immediate stimulus behind this research and presumably behind the other major studies-done by two of the national broadcasting networks. That primary, as most will still recall, constituted the climax of the Goldwater-Rockefeller fight for the Republican candidacy. Because of nationwide interest, the networks went to great lengths to provide comprehensive and rapid coverage. The Columbia Broadcasting System, using its expert computer-backed reporting team, managed to declare Senator Goldwater the victor more than half an hour before the polls closed in most of northern California. The method they used to derive the prediction was validated in spades when the final tally was made. On the basis of only i8 out of some 32,ooo precincts, they achieved almost ioo per cent accuracy in predicting the final Goldwater margin of victory. When the news of this declaration of victory was broadcast across the state at 7:22 P.M., probably few persons were discouraged from casting a ballot they would otherwise have cast. There were stories, of course, about Goldwater people making the news known at some polling places, and thus causing waiting Rockefeller people to quit the lines and go home without voting. If this was the case, though, it is doubtful that the final results would have changed had everyone stayed to vote. There were probably just not that many people left in line or on the way to the polls by 7:22 that evening. The presidential election, taking place in three different continental time zones to say nothing of Alaska and Hawaii, was obviously a po-