Evaluation Of Political Candidates Research Articles

Party Identity and the Evaluation of Political Candidates

Party Identity and the Evaluation of Political Candidates

Says Who? An Experiment on Allegations of Corruption and Credibility of Sources

To hold politicians accountable for corrupt practices, voters must rely on reports from third parties and view these accusation sources as credible. We conducted a survey experiment varying sources for corruption accusations and measuring citizens’ evaluations of political candidates in Colombia. Consistent with prior surveys, we find that respondents trust newspapers more than the judiciary or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Corruption accusations coming from the leading national newspaper drive down levels of support and trust for corrupt politicians relative to identical accusations made against identical candidates by NGOs and the judiciary. Our results also indicate that people with lower levels of education were more responsive than more educated individuals to corruption accusations coming from newspapers when compared to those coming from the judiciary or an NGO. Perceptions of candidate competence did not move with perceived trustworthiness.

Political Ideology, Skin Tone, and the Psychology of Candidate Evaluations

In this paper, we examine the role of political ideology in shaping black voters’ evaluations of political candidates’ race and skin tone. Our findings challenge simplistic notions of black preference for descriptive representation. Instead, we argue that race matters to how black Americans evaluate candidates for political office, but that it does so in combination with both candidates’ skin tone and voters’ ideology. Specifically, our data from a set of randomized experiments show that black conservative Democrats, relative to their more liberal copartisans, express a stronger preference for black candidates relative to white counterparts and prefer darker-skinned candidates relative to lighter-skinned ones. In exploring this result, we argue that conservative black Democrats, who are liberal economically but more socially conservative, use skin tone as a heuristic to help determine which candidate is most likely to match their party-atypical but race-typical political preferences. Thus, despite being less likely to support affirmative action policies, black conservatives are actually more prone to using race and skin tone heuristics in their evaluations of candidates for political office. These findings are substantively significant. As black voters have become much more ideologically diverse, their preferences with respect to candidate race and skin tone may have greater electoral consequences.

A graph interpretation of the least squares ranking method

The paper aims at analyzing the least squares ranking method for generalized tournaments with possible missing and multiple paired comparisons. The bilateral relationships may reflect the outcomes of a sport competition, product comparisons, or evaluation of political candidates and policies. It is shown that the rating vector can be obtained as a limit point of an iterative process based on the scores in almost all cases. The calculation is interpreted on an undirected graph with loops attached to some nodes, revealing that the procedure takes into account not only the given object's results but also the strength of objects compared with it. We explore the connection between this method and another procedure defined for ranking the nodes in a digraph, the positional power measure. The decomposition of the least squares solution offers a number of ways to modify the method.

Modeling Configural Patterns in Latent Variable Profiles: Association With an Endogenous Variable

A model is proposed for identifying latent predictor score patterns associated with a latent outcome variable. The model employs 2 new devices: (a) a path coefficient vector of contrast coefficients to describe a configural pattern in a structural model, and (b) a new type of latent variable with values that quantify the match of the person's latent predictor variable profile pattern to a theoretical pattern associated with the factor. The model is illustrated using data on perceptions and evaluations of political candidates during a debate. Findings suggest a pattern of scores on the perceptual variables associated with perceived debate success for female observers but not for male observers.

The Use of Party Brand Labels in Congressional Election Campaigns

In spite of the centrality of partisanship to many theories of lawmaking, and the important role that party cues play in shaping voters' evaluations of political candidates, remarkably little is known about the circumstances under which congressional candidates use partisan symbols on the campaign trail. Employing data on candidates' televised advertisements over six elections (1998–2008), the present study explores the “supply side” of partisan cues and finds that candidates are strategic about their use of party symbols. And while personal and district‐level factors influence how candidates utilize partisan rhetoric, we show that the institutional context in which they campaign also matters.

Extrinsic Cues and the Evaluation of Political Candidates

In a political landscape where the content of politics is getting more and more complex and political parties less and less different, voters often base their voting behavior on extrinsic rather than intrinsic cues, a bundle of extrinsic cues constructed as an image and based on perceived personal traits. Based on survey data from a sample of Norwegian voters, this paper tests how a political candidate's credibility, charisma, and physical attractiveness are related to voters’ judgments of suitability for a leading political position. Across three different politicians, the results show that credibility plays a significant role in the evaluations performed by voters. More surprisingly, charisma does not have the expected effect, and to voters, physical attractiveness is found to be more important than charisma.

Voting For Mom: The Political Consequences of Being a Parent for Male and Female Candidates

In this article, I explore the political consequences of being a parent for men and women seeking political office. Although a long-standing body of research has concluded that family obligations constrain the political careers of women but not of men, almost no research examines how family status can affect voter evaluations of political candidates. Using an experiment in which I varied the candidate's gender and parental status, I find that on a number of indicators, voters rate childless female candidates substantially lower than childless male candidates, mother candidates, and father candidates. Childless women also lose the traditional “female advantage” on child-care and children's issues. Additionally, while mothers of young children are not significantly disadvantaged compared to mothers of older children and women with no children, they are disadvantaged in comparison to male candidates with young children. Furthermore, this study finds evidence that male candidates may receive a “fatherhood penalty” compared to men with no children. Thus, there are political consequences of being a parent, but the consequences are dependent on the candidate's gender. These findings have important implications for candidate campaign strategy and how female candidates should think about presenting their family lives to voters.

Losing on all fronts: The effects of negative versus positive person‐based campaigns on implicit and explicit evaluations of political candidates

The current research investigated the effects of negative as compared to positive person-based political campaigns on explicit and implicit evaluations of the involved candidates. Participants were presented with two political candidates and statements that one of them ostensibly said during the last political campaign. For half of the participants, the campaign included positive remarks about the source of the statement (positive campaign); for the remaining half, the campaign included negative remarks about the opponent (negative campaign). Afterwards, participants completed measures of explicit and implicit evaluations of both candidates. Results indicate that explicit evaluations of the source, but not the opponent, were less favourable after negative as compared to positive campaigns. In contrast, implicit evaluations were less favourable for both candidates after negative campaigns. The results are discussed in terms of associative and propositional processes, highlighting the importance of associative processes in political decision making.

An Experimental Study of the Role of Weight Bias in Candidate Evaluation

Obese individuals are evaluated negatively and attributed negative trait characteristics in several contexts including employment, health care, and education. The current experimental study of college students examined the effect of body mass on the evaluation of political candidates and examined whether the gender of the candidate moderated the relationship. A series of ordinary least squares regression analyses found an interactive effect between candidate obesity and candidate gender for global evaluation and for several trait characteristics. Specifically, obese female candidates were evaluated more negatively than nonobese female candidates and nonobese male candidates were evaluated more negatively than were obese male candidates. This interaction persisted even after controlling for standard political and demographic characteristics of the evaluator. These findings suggest that weight bias exists for obese female political candidates, but that larger body size may be an asset for male candidates. The ability of candidates to be successful may depend less on their policy positions or even party affiliation and more on their physical attributes than has been previously assumed.

The Role of Intersectional Stereotypes on Evaluations of Gay and Lesbian Political Candidates

Social scientists are increasingly taking a more complex theoretical approach to the role of stereotyping in the electorate's evaluation of political candidates. Within this literature, most studies investigate the impact of one stereotype on the public's evaluation of candidates from an underrepresented group. We build on and extend this literature by exploring what we term “intersectional stereotyping”: The role of stereotypes in shaping the electorate's evaluation of political candidates who share dual membership in stigmatized groups—women and sexual minorities. We empirically examine the impact of intersectional stereotyping in a unique 2003 survey of national adults. Our results indicate that gender, both of the respondent and the candidate, plays a key role in shaping attitudes toward gay and lesbian political candidates. These findings suggest that intersectional stereotyping plays a nuanced role in evaluations of candidates; in certain contexts gender stereotypes are more significant, and at other times stereotypes about sexual minorities appear to be driving evaluations of candidates.

Podcasting and Politics in Singapore: An Experimental Study of Medium Effects

A ban on political podcasting during the General Elections 2006 in Singapore was justified by the Singaporean government on the grounds that the new medium had a greater power to influence voters than traditional modes of political discourse. A between-subjects controlled experiment was conducted to test whether podcasts of political speeches had a greater power to influence voters’ evaluations of political candidates and likelihood of voting for them than online text-based transcripts of the same speeches. The study also examined whether mere exposure to political speeches online, irrespective of the modality, had an effect on voters’ more general political preferences, i.e. the likelihood of support and voting for the opposition. The findings suggest that political podcasts were no more persuasive than text-based websites and that the effects on political preferences, if any, were likely due the exposure to political content online, not because of the nature of the medium. The implications of the findings are discussed. Introduction The podcasting ban during the Singapore General Elections 2006 (GE 2006) was one of the first attempts in the world aimed specifically at outlawing Web streaming of political content. The impact of this decision was significant as it prompted a strong verbal rebuttal from the opposition parties in Singapore as well as from numerous critics who viewed podcasting as a new medium of democracy. The opposition parties in Singapore came out strongly against the noting that it was an attempt to curb alternative views (Chia, Low, & Luo, 2006). Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom watchdog, considered the ban a clear indication of Singapore “once again preventing democratic debate on the Internet” (Media watchdog slams podcast ban, 2006).

Priming Presidential Votes by Direct Democracy

We demonstrate that direct democracy can affect the issues voters consider when evaluating presidential candidates. Priming theory assumes that some voters have latent attitudes or predispositions that can be primed to affect evaluations of political candidates. We demonstrate that: (1) state ballot measures on same sex marriage increased the salience of marriage as an issue that voters used when evaluating presidential candidates in 2004, particularly those voters less interested in the campaign and those likely to be less attentive to the issue prior to the election; and (2) that the primed issue (gay marriage) was a more important factor affecting candidate choice in states where marriage was on the ballot.

Recent Articles in the Field of Public Opinion Research

In this section the International Journal of Public Opinion Research reviews articles that have recently been published in peer-refereed journals and which broadly relate to the field of public opinion. The intention is not to give an exhaustive overview of a given study but rather to alert our readers to interesting ideas and research in our field. For this issue thanks are due to Bruce Hardy (University of Pennsylvania) and Ken’ichi Ikeda (University of Tokyo) for help in compiling the reviews. Barrett, Andrew W., & Barrington, Lowell W. (2005). Is a picture worth a thousand words? Newspaper photographs and voter evaluations of political candidates, Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 10, 98–112. Barrett and Barrington examine the effects of photographs of candidates embedded in newspaper articles on voter evaluations. Specifically, they provided participants in three groups with a newspaper article that either contained a positive image, a negative image, or no image at all. The differences between these groups is striking, given the only manipulation was a different still image; moreover, they found that the influence of positive images and negative images apparently affect women and men differently: Women were more likely to be influenced by the positive picture, and men influenced by the negative picture. The authors conclude that ‘even in the present environment where voters are bombarded with visual and verbal messages, the power of the still image should not be dismissed.’

Negativity in the Evaluation of Political Candidates

Prior research has demonstrated a clear negativity effect (greater weighting of candidate weaknesses compared with strengths) in the evaluation of U.S. presidential candidates in each of the past six elections analyzed. The authors adopt a motivational view and question the robustness of this finding. They reanalyze past National Election Studies data along with new data and conclude that the negativity effect is not universal across voters; it is a robust effect only for voters who dislike the candidate. They argue that previous findings are due to aggregation of data across voters who vary in their motivations.

Fatal Attraction

A study was conducted to assess the effects of mortality salience on evaluations of political candidates as a function of leadership style. On the basis of terror management theory and previous research, we hypothesized that people would show increased preference for a charismatic political candidate and decreased preference for a relationship-oriented political candidate in response to subtle reminders of death. Following a mortality-salience or control induction, 190 participants read campaign statements by charismatic, task-oriented, and relationship-oriented gubernatorial candidates; evaluated their preferences for each candidate; and voted for one of them. Results were in accord with predictions. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are considered.

Correcting for Mood-Induced Bias in the Evaluation of Political Candidates: The Roles of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Participants were induced to feel either happy or sad while reading an article that described a politician’s stand on issues. When participants were unmotivated to evaluate the candidate at the time they read the article, they evaluated him more favorably when they were happy than when they were not. However, when participants were either intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to evaluate the candidate, they adjusted their evaluations to compensate for the biasing influence of the target-irrelevant affect they were experiencing. In fact, they overadjusted, reporting less favorable evaluations of him when they were happy than when they were not. These adjustments for bias occurred on-line, as the candidate’s issue stands were presented, rather than after all of the judgment-relevant information had been received.

Crime News and the Priming of Racial Attitudes During Evaluations of the President

This study explores the news media's ability to activate racial attitudes via stereotypic portrayals of minorities in common local crime coverage. The central hypothesis is that crime news containing minority suspects primes racial attitudes, which are subsequently brought to bear on evaluations of political candidates. In an experiment, subjects were shown no crime story, a story with nonminority suspects, or a story featuring minority suspects. President Clinton's support suffered when any crime story was present, but his support was lowest among those who saw news with minority suspects. Evaluation of Clinton's performance on crime was primed powerfully by exposure to crime news, and this effect was largest when the suspects in the story were nonwhite. Spreading activation to performance on welfare, another race-coded issue, was also evident among those exposed to racially stereotypic crime stories. Finally, among whites, exposure to minority suspects boosted the importance of the president's concern for whites as a predictor of his overall support. These results suggest that implicitly racial issues are connected in memory and can be simultaneously activated by common news coverage. The findings prompt further consideration of the political impact of stereotype-reinforcing news

Impact of Negative Advertising on Evaluations of Political Candidates: The 1993 Canadian Federal Election

We investigated the effects of negative political advertising on evaluations of political party leaders. During the 1993 Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservative party aired two advertisements highlighting the facial paralysis of Liberal leader Jean Chretien. A sample of 110 university students completed measures of attitudes, affective responses, and cognitive responses concerning Conservative leader Kim Campbell and Jean Chretien either before or after the airing of the advertisements. The results revealed that evaluations of Chretien became more positive after the broadcast of the advertisements, whereas evaluations of Campbell became more negative. A content analysis of participants' open-ended affective responses and stereotypic beliefs showed that those who participated after the advertisements' broadcast were (a) more likely to list positive feelings and attributes about Chretien and (b) more likely to list negative feelings about Campbell compared to those who participated beforehand.

Impact of Negative Advertising on Evaluations of Political Candidates: The 1993 Canadian Federal Election

We investigated the effects of negative political advertising on evaluations of political party leaders. During the 1993 Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservative party aired two advertisements highlighting the facial paralysis of Liberal leader Jean Chretien. A sample of 110 university students completed measures of attitudes, affective responses, and cognitive responses concerning Conservative leader Kim Campbell and Jean Chretien either before or after the airing of the advertisements. The results revealed that evaluations of Chretien became more positive after the broadcast of the advertisements, whereas evaluations of Campbell became more negative. A content analysis of participants' open-ended affective responses and stereotypic beliefs showed that those who participated after the advertisements' broadcast were (a) more likely to list positive feelings and attributes about Chretien and (b) more likely to list negative feelings about Campbell compared to those who participated beforehand.