What Voters Want From Political Campaign Communication

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Conventional wisdom holds that the public dislikes campaigns for their negativity and superficiality, preferring a cleaner, substantive, and more deliberative process. By contrast, the implication of Hibbing and Theiss-Morse's (2002) Stealth Democracy is that, while citizens will indeed dislike campaigns, they do not necessarily desire more deliberation, debate, and discussion of issues. Instead they want simple cues that allow them to size up candidates with minimal effort. In this article, we test these theories with survey and focus group data collected during the 2002 California gubernatorial race. Ultimately, the ideal campaign envisioned by the public falls somewhere between the substantive and participatory campaign envisioned by reformers and what we call an “undemanding campaign.” We also find that attitudes toward campaigns vary substantially based on political involvement and demographic attributes. Most important, politically involved citizens desire the more substantive campaigns envisioned by reformers, but less involved citizens want less demanding campaigns. This finding suggests not only that any generalizations about what the public wants from campaigns must be cautious, but also that reformers may need to tailor their proposals to the tastes of different groups of citizens if these proposals are to be effective.