From Eisenhower to Bush: Perceptions of candidates and parties

Abstract

The American Voter [Campbell, A., Converse, P.E., Miller, W.E., Stokes, D.E., 1960. The American Voter. Wiley & Sons, New York] put the perception of candidates and parties on the map of electoral inquiry. To explain a voter's choice, it proposed to probe the affectively loaded views of politics in a voter's mind, with candidates being located closest to the point of decision in the “funnel of causality.” The American Voter did so with a set of open-ended questions about the good and bad points of political parties and presidential candidates. Our analysis of the 2000 and 2004 elections, reported in The American Voter Revisited [Lewis-Beck, M.S., Jacoby, W.G., Norpoth, H., Weisberg, H.F., 2008. The American Voter Revisited. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor], confirms the utility of the open-ended survey method to come to grips with the key attitudes shaping the voting decision. The following compares perceptions of candidates and parties in 1952 and 2004, as reported by The American Voter and The American Voter Revisited. The critical imprint of perceptions of the candidates' personal attributes is unmistakable in both elections.