Emotions, Campaigns, and Political Participation

Abstract

There has been a scarcity of work examining the political consequences of discrete emotions. This article examines the political effects of several emotions—anger, sadness, fear, and enthusiasm. Emotional ads should influence whether voters become politically active. To test this, two experiments were administered. The first examines emotional responses to campaign messages; the second tests whether emotions influence political participation. The results indicate anger is mobilizing, by increasing participatory intentions and factors related to participate. This result is then replicated using ad-tracking data. The findings indicate that emotions are an important factor in studying campaign effects.