Presidential Campaign Research Articles

The Role of Social Forgiveness and Non-Forgiveness in Shaping the Political Discourse Around Gustavo Petro during the 2022 Colombian Presidential Elections

Objective/context: This article examines the use of emotional argumentation patterns of social forgiveness and non-forgiveness regarding Gustavo Petro’s past in the M-19 movement in the context of the 2022 Colombian presidential elections. Methodology: An inductive media framing analysis of selected Colombian newspapers was carried out. The frames analyzed exemplify the relevance different newspapers have attributed to Petro’s past in their pre-election coverage. Conclusions: This analysis demonstrates that those frames that project a negative view of Petro’s past carried especially marked patterns of non-forgiveness and an accompanying delegitimization of his person and political ambitions. The negative portrayal in a particular newspaper presented clear patterns of emotional argumentation of politically ideological opposition to Petro in contrast to the media landscape in general. The other newspapers analyzed, however, revealed a predominantly neutral pattern of argumentation that paid attention to Petro’s past but did not use it judgmentally against him. In relatively few cases, the argument of social forgiveness was even used in his favor. The results show that, especially for the ideological opposition to Petro, reference to his past in the M-19 was considered a legitimate means to undermine his political ambitions. However, considering the general overall coverage of the newspapers, Petro’s past was of marginal importance. Originality: This analysis provides insights into how Colombian media framed the past of the current Colombian president in the M-19 during the 2022 presidential campaign, potentially influencing public opinion-making processes. The results can serve as a reference for more comprehensive analyses to better understand the role of forgiveness and non-forgiveness in the context of political discourses in post-conflict states.

The Insurrectionist Playbook: Jair Bolsonaro and the National Congress of Brazil

This study unpacks the 2022 Brazilian Presidential campaign marked by multiple claims of electoral fraud and calls for a coup d’état by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro. We identify the narrative frames underpinning this insurrectionist playbook by analyzing Bolsonaro’s statements during the presidential campaign. We subsequently test the penetration of this playbook on members of the Brazilian National Congress during the campaign trail and the transition of power to the opposition candidate, when pro-Bolsonaro protesters attempted to overthrow the Federal Government. Our analyses lend support to the thesis that the coup d’état was not successful due to the dwindling support beyond the hard-core Bolsonaro base. Our results also describe an insurrectionist playbook largely centered on the blueprint of false claims of electoral fraud, a playbook that can be monitored through the public statements of elected officials. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and recommendations for future research.

Articulating Islamist Sectarian Group Antagonism Memes on the Indonesian Politics

Polarisation among Indonesians has arisen after the presidential rematch in the 2019 presidential election. It stimulated the repressive action of the Jokowi government has made Indonesian democracy to be on decline. Some scholars consider this as an atavism of an entrenching ideological conflict since hundreds of years ago between nationalism vs. Islamism. However, we argue that polarisation is more complex than what we expected before. This article examines the Islamist grassroots discourses to get an alternative perspective regarding the resurrection of conservatism in Indonesia. We collected and analysed qualitatively data of internet memes during the 2019 Indonesia Presidential campaign. We argue that antagonism occurred among the Islamist sectarian groups as a continuation of the Aksi Bela Islam (The Defending Islam Movement) in 2016. The antagonism among the groups indicates the rise of the Islamic radical-conservatism groups through the presentation of the antagonism between Islam Nusantara and Islamist puristic movement. The Islamic radical-conservatism group has successfully exploited the anti-Ahok movement with the Bela Islam (defending Islam) discourse. However, using Islamist issues during the 2019 presidential election has represented the triumph of the Politics of Islam: Islamization of Indonesian political ideology. Islam has harmonised into nationalism and secularism despite the internet memes' incoherent and irrational language. The triumph of Islamic hegemony transformed and infected Indonesia's political ideology. Islam has become an obligatory symbol in Indonesian politics. Keywords: Islam conservatism, politics of Islam, political internet memes, Indonesian Politics, humorous political communication.

Candidate Identity and Campaign Priming: Analyzing Voter Support for Pete Buttigieg’s Presidential Run as an Openly Gay Man

Pete Buttigieg’s candidacy in the 2020 Democratic primaries caught fire more than most predicted. An openly gay man, Buttigieg is also a veteran and a Christian. Did voters penalize Buttigieg for being gay and in a same-sex relationship? Did his other traits offset voter negative bias? We conducted a survey with over 6000 likely voters during the primaries. We included a priming experiment that manipulated the salience of Buttigieg’s identity traits. We then asked respondents how much they liked Buttigieg and who they would support in a match-up between Buttigieg and Trump. Overall, voters penalized Buttigieg for being in a same-sex relationship. The penalty surprisingly increased when his religiosity was highlighted. In contrast, Buttigieg’s military background mitigated voter discrimination when he was presented as a veteran married to a man. This article reveals how double standards and heterosexism penalize gay candidates, and contributes to discussions on minority candidates and electability.

Assessing Trump's presidential endorsements while in and out of office (2018–2022)

In the 2022 midterm elections, Donald Trump made a slew of high-profile endorsements, continuing a trend of prolific endorsement activity established during his time in office. While existing works have largely focused on presidential campaigning in congressional races from sitting presidents, little is known about the effects of this continued activity once a president has left office. This paper therefore assesses trends in President Trump's endorsements across three election cycles (2018–2022), testing whether the types of candidates that Trump chose to endorse and the engagement and electoral effects of these endorsements changed over time. Across all election cycles, his endorsements produced little benefit for candidates in the general election. Endorsed candidates did not benefit financially and collectively received an aggregate vote share penalty of approximately 1.5 percentage points. However, endorsed candidates received a consistent and substantial electoral benefit in Republican primary elections, with these benefits growing marginally over time. Trump's endorsements came increasingly early in the election cycle, with an increased focus on backing likely winners and rewarding political allies during the primaries. As such, significant changes in the types of candidates receiving endorsements after President Trump left office highlight an important shift in post-presidency endorsement strategy, where partisan electoral goals were secondary to a strategic focus on retaining personal influence within the Republican party.

TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR ON INDONESIAN STATE SPEECH OF JOKO WIDODO

This research aimed to analyze the transitivity in political speech by using systemic functional grammar in each sentence. The data in this research were fragments of clauses which identified the type of transitivity (process, participant, and circumstance), logical meaning, and context of the situation while the source of the data was Jokowi's presidential campaign speech to his volunteer in the 2019 election. This research was carried out using recording and note-taking techniques. The result showed five types of process is used by Joko Widodo, such as material process, relational process, mental process, verbal process, and existential process. The material process in ideational metafunction was the most dominant with the choice of the word "work" as an interpretation of an invitation or call for volunteers to work even harder. Besides, the most dominant theme used in President Jokowi's speech text was the Marked Theme thematic structure, namely the thematic structure that was in the phrase that occupied the subject function indicated that Jokowi gave more emphasis on the things that were meant.

Emmanuel Macron's 2017 and 2022 Presidential Campaigns: Selected Aspects

The aim of this article is to analyse Emmanuel Macron's 2017 and 2022 election campaigns. The first part of the article focuses on Macron's 2017 campaign, taking into account elements specific to election campaigns, such as election slogans, social media activity, the electoral programme, television debates, and describes the main themes of the election campaign, along with a discussion of the results of the first and second rounds of the election. An analogous analysis is then presented in relation to the 2022 election campaign. The issue of the war in Ukraine and its role for the campaign taking place at the same time is highlighted. The paper concludes by considering the differences noted in the two campaigns run by the leader of the En Marche!/ Renaissance.

From local elections to appointments: How has municipal reform changed vote delivery in Russian municipalities?

Authoritarian regimes broadly rely on sub-national elections to sustain political support and uphold legitimacy. Strong political machines are known for strengthening the capacity of an authoritarian regime to increase vote share cast for the incumbent and demonstrate high turnout. However, some autocracies rely on appointed mayors. Russia exemplifies a paradigmatic case of an autocracy that made a transition from elected mayors to appointees as a result of the last municipal reform in 2014–2015. Do elected mayors deliver votes better than appointees? We argue that appointed mayors unequivocally deliver votes better at the national elections than elected mayors. We rely on the difference-in-difference quasi-experimental design of the lower-tier municipal data of 637 cities and municipal districts over two presidential campaigns.

Molly Dewson, the women's division, and grassroots presidential campaigning during the New Deal

AbstractIn the 1930s, Molly Dewson built the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee into a central cog of FDR's presidential campaigns. She leveraged her personal friendship with the Roosevelts to develop a connected, national network of women who became the foot soldiers of the Democratic Party. By designing structures that made women the eyes and ears of the New Deal at the local level, the tactics and organizations she established persisted after her retirement and were copied by Republicans. Dewson ushered in a 30‐year period when women were at the center of presidential campaigns

Reduced health care utilization among young children of immigrants after Donald Trump's election and proposed public charge rule.

Widespread fear among immigrants from hostile 2016 presidential campaign rhetoric decreased social and health care service enrollment (chilling effect). Health care utilization effects among immigrant families with young children are unknown. We examined whether former President Trump's election had chilling effects on well-child visit (WCV) schedule adherence, hospitalizations, and emergency department (ED) visits among children of immigrant vs US-born mothers in 3 US cities. Cross-sectional surveys of children <4 years receiving care in hospitals were linked to 2015-2018 electronic health records. We applied difference-in-difference analysis with a 12-month pre/post-election study period. Trump's election was associated with a 5-percentage-point decrease (-0.05; 95% CI: -0.08, -0.02) in WCV adherence for children of immigrant vs US-born mothers with no difference in hospitalizations or ED visits. Secondary analyses extending the treatment period to a leaked draft of proposed changes to public charge rules also showed significantly decreased WCV adherence among children of immigrant vs US-born mothers. Findings indicate likely missed opportunities for American Academy of Pediatrics-recommended early childhood vaccinations, health and developmental screenings, and family support. Policies and rhetoric promoting immigrant inclusion create a more just and equitable society for all US children.

A Long War and a Short Temper: A Bureaucratic Politics Analysis of the Trump Administration’s Policy in Afghanistan

ABSTRACT During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made clear that he loathed the nation-building missions that previous administrations had initiated and continued; chief among them was the then 15-year-old war in Afghanistan. Despite his oft-stated desire to end the war, during his first year in office, Trump decided to maintain the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and added thousands more soldiers to the conflict. Later in his term, the U.S. signed a peace agreement with the Taliban and began a phased withdrawal in 2020. However, when Trump left office in January 2021, 2,500 U.S. soldiers remained in Afghanistan. To explain the gap between the President’s clearly stated preferences and U.S. policy, I employ the bureaucratic politics model of foreign policy analysis. I examine two crucial intra-administration debates over the future of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. The first occurred in 2017 when the new President ordered a comprehensive review of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. The second covers the period from 2018–2020, when the Administration pivoted to seeking a diplomatic solution to the conflict and debated the pace of U.S. withdrawals. In both instances, I find that members of the President’s national security team successfully persuaded the President that the political and strategic risks of a total withdrawal from Afghanistan were prohibitively high.

Ethnonationalist Engagements, Historic Norms, and the Politics of Sport in American Culture

Abstract Activism and political mobilization in and around the athletic world in the last decade have given rise to a renewed interest in the relationships among sport, politics, and social change. Much of the analysis so far has been driven by public reception of left-leaning activism; curiously missing from these discussions, however, has been the impact of more conservative and populist engagements. This article takes up that topic by examining the ways in which Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement dealt with sport and race-based athlete activism during his presidential campaign and term in office. Starting with their attacks on Black athlete activists, I will set ethnonationalist uses of sport in historical and theoretical context and explicate the ways in which these engagements challenge long-held cultural norms and established social conventions about the role of sport in social and political life. Ultimately, I argue that a critical, historically informed analysis of recent ethnonational populist engagements can enhance theories of both populism and the cultural status and political functioning of sport itself.

Virality is not enough when the audience misses the point: A Content Analysis of YouTube Comments on Environmental Documentary “Sexy Killers”

During the Indonesian presidential election campaign, a documentary on coal mining problems in Indonesia titled “ Sexy Killers” became viral and was highly engaged on YouTube in early 2019, attracting 36 million views and above 100,000 comments. The documentary also received mainstream media coverage and had such a far-reaching appeal that it swayed many voters into not voting in the election. Showing the impact of coal mining on Indonesia’s environment and its people, the documentary exposed networks of business owners and politicians who had stakes in the coal mining company. This research thus delves into understanding the public discourse, especially the high number of YouTube comments on the documentary. The analysis revealed that despite the documentary’s widespread popularity, the discussion within the comments did not focus on the environmental problems (72.9%). Most of the comments discussed the political campaign and presidential candidates (41.3%), instead of discussing the environmental impact of coal mining in Indonesia (13.9%). The research is valuable in highlighting the centrality of political debates dwarfing real environmental issues in Indonesia. Environment activists use documentary movies as one of their advocacy strategies, but it must be followed by audience engagement strategy to assure the discussions are still relevant to increase audience awareness on the issue. Keywords: Social media, environment, text analysis, YouTube, Indonesia.

FROM ISLAMOPHOBIA TO NEO-ISLAMOPHOBIA: A NEW STYLE OF GOVERNANCE IN THE WEST

Islamophobia is thought to be a modernized version of Orientalism, which was initially used to justify European political actions against the Ottoman Empire and, later, after its decline, to support their imperialist pursuits in the Muslim world. It is now used as a strategy for governing Western societies, particularly the United States, where people are forced to live with historical prejudices against Islam and Muslims. The nature of this animosity points to a new form of Islamophobia, which, like the old one, appears in discourses and practices alike. This study aims to ascertain how Islamophobia manifests as new Islamophobia in the modern West. It investigates the presence of this phenomenon in US media discourse using the theoretical framework of securitization. The researchers employed an analytical framework adapted from Discourse-Historical-Approach and studied 3153 news and opinion pieces from US newspapers and wire services between November 2016 and January 2017. This study has revealed an Islamophobic society where Muslims were the targets of hate crimes due to their Islamic identity. It has been found that Trump's anti-Islamic rhetoric during his presidential campaign contributed to the emergence of this new societal syndrome. It concludes that "neo-Islamophobia" is a name for a new style of governance adopted by some Western politicians who capitalize on Islamophobia as a political strategy to gain power, thereby shaping the existing social order into an Islamophobic one. The researchers recommend similar inquiries into other contexts too.

New Polish Right – politeness and radicalism. A corpus analysis of Krzysztof Bosak’s (de)legitimation strategies on twitter

The article discusses (de)legitimation strategies of Krzysztof Bosak, one of the leaders of the Confederation Liberty and Independence, a Polish coalition of right-wing movements. The success of the formation appears to be in line with that of other European (far) right-wing parties, which have become politically relevant in recent decades. Despite the Confederation’s growing position in European politics, there is a paucity of research devoted to the party. The present paper attempts to bridge the gap by focusing on Bosak’s 2020 presidential campaign and the politician’s use of Twitter. In order to investigate Bosak’s discourse in detail, corpus linguistic methods were used. As they allow the researcher to work on large samples of data, Bosak’s tweets were investigated at both qualitative and quantitative levels. The results suggest that the candidate focused on legitimizing Catholicism and conservative ideas. At the same time, he delegitimised the left and LGBT communities, framing the presidential campaign as a clash between the conservative order.

Electoral Politics in the Classroom: Reflections on the Sociology of Simulated Characters

Simulations have become a staple of political science education due to their effectiveness and creative nature that contributes to learning success. In this contribution, we argue that simulations can also offer new insights not only into student engagement and active learning, but also into the sociology of political processes. In this case it is a political communication seminar, that included a simulation of presidential campaigns and an election in a fictionalized setting. This article shows that in a classroom setting the students are prone to reproduce existing electoral leanings and behavior. In the proposed simulation of elections in a fictional country of Genovia, the students naturally aligned around two candidates: a right-wing populist and an environmental activist who ultimately lost the elections. This article offers several insights into an online simulation format and breaks down the sociology of the surprisingly realistic representation of a Euro-American electorate.

DISPUTool 2.0: A Modular Architecture for Multi-Layer Argumentative Analysis of Political Debates

Political debates are one of the most salient moments of an election campaign, where candidates are challenged to discuss the main contemporary and historical issues in a country. These debates represent a natural ground for argumentative analysis, which has always been employed to investigate political discourse structure and strategy in philosophy and linguistics. In this paper, we present DISPUTool 2.0, an automated tool which relies on Argument Mining methods to analyse the political debates from the US presidential campaigns to extract argument components (i.e., premise and claim) and relations (i.e., support and attack), and highlight fallacious arguments. DISPUTool 2.0 allows also for the automatic analysis of a piece of a debate proposed by the user to identify and classify the arguments contained in the text. A REST API is provided to exploit the tool's functionalities.

Political Communication on Social Media During Poland’s 2020 Presidential Campaign

Proper political communication is one of the most crucial areas of activity for political actors and organizations. The processes of political communication have been constantly evolving for years, however, the greatest dynamics is associated with the emergence of the Internet and, in particular, some of the most important channels of communication belonging to the Web 2.0, i.e. social media, which enable the performance of all strategic functions of political communication. The article is an attempt to present political communication in social networks on the basis of the recent 2020 presidential campaign in Poland.

Propaganda Pemberitaan Jokowi pada Pemilu 2014 di Majalah Tempo dalam Perspektif Ideologies And Power

Tempo magazine is one of the media that is in the line of 'loving' Jokowi. Tempo Magazine doubled Jokowi in the 2014 election as a modest man and a hobby of blusukan. This is based on the total duration, frequency, and tendency of the object of the news to Jokowi. Jokowi's image, which was initially positive, especially during the 2014 presidential election campaign, immediately changed after Jokowi became president in the news of Tempo Magazine. This was proven by Tempo Magazine supporting Jokowi during the 2014 presidential election because it was based on his ideology that Prabowo Subianto was a human rights criminal. In the 5-11 August 2013 edition of Tempo Magazine, they gave the title “Suddenly Jokowi” with a picture of Jokowi singing in pause. This tendency is a form of the failure of Tempo Magazine to become a balanced media. Tempo magazine chose issues, used angles, and published 11 out of 20 total Main Reports using the glittering generalities propaganda technique. The theory used is from Branston and Stafford (2003: 117-133) namely marxist approaches, post-marxism and critical pluralism, and discourses and lived culture. The relevant concepts are mukhtalif, kabilah, dan al-hadarah. Tempo Magazine's reporting sparked polarization, as seen from the concentration in political currents and ideology. The existence of this news as a political message that is more effective in raising issues to the public.

Propaganda Pemberitaan Jokowi pada Pemilu 2014 di Majalah Tempo dalam Perspektif Ideologies And Power

Tempo magazine is one of the media that is in the line of 'loving' Jokowi. Tempo Magazine doubled Jokowi in the 2014 election as a modest man and a hobby of blusukan. This is based on the total duration, frequency, and tendency of the object of the news to Jokowi. Jokowi's image, which was initially positive, especially during the 2014 presidential election campaign, immediately changed after Jokowi became president in the news of Tempo Magazine. This was proven by Tempo Magazine supporting Jokowi during the 2014 presidential election because it was based on his ideology that Prabowo Subianto was a human rights criminal. In the 5-11 August 2013 edition of Tempo Magazine, they gave the title “Suddenly Jokowi” with a picture of Jokowi singing in pause. This tendency is a form of the failure of Tempo Magazine to become a balanced media. Tempo magazine chose issues, used angles, and published 11 out of 20 total Main Reports using the glittering generalities propaganda technique. The theory used is from Branston and Stafford (2003: 117-133) namely marxist approaches, post-marxism and critical pluralism, and discourses and lived culture. The relevant concepts are mukhtalif, kabilah, dan al-hadarah. Tempo Magazine's reporting sparked polarization, as seen from the concentration in political currents and ideology. The existence of this news as a political message that is more effective in raising issues to the public.