Gubernatorial Campaign Research Articles

Campaign ads and the differences between soliciting donations and mobilizing volunteers

ABSTRACT Research on political participation has long emphasized differences between Americans who donate money to political campaigns and Americans who perform other kinds of political activity. It’s unclear, however, if there are distinctions in how campaigns use advertisements to solicit donations and mobilize grassroots voters. Analyzing Facebook ad data from thousands of ads, donations, and e-mail sign-ups from a recent statewide gubernatorial campaign, we show that campaigns deploy ad themes that vary in their success at attracting donations and mobilizing grassroots activists. Ad effectiveness varies by region of the state as well. Ideological extremity boosts small donations and campaign sign-ups. However, less ideological campaign messages are also effective, perhaps because recipient lists are already curated to include the candidate’s likely supporters.

Oh, the Places They’ll Go: A Geographic Analysis of Gubernatorial Campaigns

Geography has long played a significant role in American electoral politics. Candidates engage in “retail politics” by visiting fairs, festivals, schools, churches, and businesses, to meet and greet potential voters. However, systematically understanding where candidates are actually going has plagued prior work due to small sample sizes and lack of data availability. Presidential elections have been used with success in previous scholarship, but there are few viable candidates to compare within a single cycle. Utilizing competitive gubernatorial elections, this work attempts to address these deficiencies by utilizing social media posts to track multiple candidates in real-time across the 2018 campaign cycle at the state level. The paper tests competing theories of candidate engagement regarding travel decisions: do candidates (1) focus their attention on their partisan base or (2) try to attract independent or “swing” voters? Following an original and intensive data collection effort, we identified location-specific information for over 4700 campaign stops made by major-party candidates across seventeen states. Our results lend support to candidates spending time with their respective bases of partisan support, with Republicans going to rural areas with non-college educated individuals while Democrats travel to urban counties with a more diverse electorate.

The Institute of Gubernatorial Elections as a Marker of Regional Features of the Political Culture of Russians (based on the results of Russian single voting day-2023)

The author examines the institution of elections of heads of subjects of the Russian Federation as a product of political and cultural orientations of both state and political figures of the federal and regional levels of government, and the ordinary citizens. Using comparative and statistical analysis, the relationship between political attitudes and expectations of Russians and the transformation of gubernatorial elections in the period from 1991 to 2022 is explored. The significance of the ethnonational and socio-economic specifics of the political culture of Russians in legitimizing such changes is described. During the analysis of direct gubernatorial elections in 2023, current features of political culture in the context of regions are noted, which may be important in the transformation of the institution of gubernatorial elections. The author compares the results of the gubernatorial campaigns of 2018 and 2023 from the point of view of the landscape of political involvement of Russians and the dynamics of support for federal parties in the regions. The phenomenon of distant electronic voting is analyzed, and the weakness of its perception by residents of Russian regions to ensure accessibility of elections and fair political competition.

Allusion as Discourse Strategy in Political Rhetoric: A Case of Selected Gubernatorial Campaign Speeches in Homa Bay County, Kenya

Allusion as Discourse Strategy in Political Rhetoric: A Case of Selected Gubernatorial Campaign Speeches in Homa Bay County, Kenya

‘A show of numbers’: campaign rallies and performing elite alliance-building in Kenya

ABSTRACT Campaign rallies are commonly understood as events where politicians appeal to a crowd of prospective voters to politically mobilise them. This article argues that an underexplored dimension of rallies is where they are used as performances to shape alliance-building between subnational and national politicians. Through focusing on two rallies organised by gubernatorial campaigns in Marsabit county, Kenya, for the president during the 2017 elections, the article shows how these rallies were used as tools to secure electoral alliances with the president’s campaign. It shows how organisers choreographed the crowd – through colour, props and positioning – to perform to the president their grassroots popularity, to secure electoral and post-election futures. This article builds on scholarship that takes a more complex look at what messages are performed at rallies, by and to whom, and how. It also offers insights on how elite alliance-building and devolution operate in a particular sub-national setting in Kenya.

Newspaper Coverage of the 1990 Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Campaign

A content analysis of five daily newspapers' coverage of the 1990 Pennsylvania gubernatorial contest revealed that, as hypothesized, the "strategic game," particularly the horse race, was the predominant press theme. Also confirmed were the predictions that a gubernatorial challenger would receive as much coverage as the incumbent but that differences in patterns of incumbent and challenger coverage would appear. The press focused more on the challenger's campaign mistakes and problems and on the incumbent's record and experience. The fact that the challenger was a female and the incumbent a male received little media attention, and there were very few mentions of candidate gender. Differences in coverage patterns among the five papers were also found: the larger papers were more attentive to the campaign, but contrary to expectations were not more attentive to the issues. Issue-oriented coverage was most prominent in the paper published in the state capital.

Brooks and Fitrakis, A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now

Reviewed by: A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now by Michael E. Brooks and Bob Fitrakis Jacob Smith A History of Hate in Ohio: Then and Now By Michael E. Brooks and Bob Fitrakis (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2021. Pp. vii, 243. Notes, bibliography, index. Paperbound, $24.95.) In Requiem for a Nun, author William Faulkner famously wrote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." In A History of Hate in Ohio, Michael Brooks and Bob Fitrakis reveal a long history of hate speech and actions in Ohio that extends back hundreds of years and has a clear line to the present. Marilyn Howard begins the book with an introduction discussing important national events, like the election of Andrew Jackson and the 1876 election, that provide context for the rest of the book. While sparse in footnotes, this section is packed with information, setting the stage for the better documented chapters that follow. The book's first section, "Then," focuses on hate in Ohio from a historical perspective. As the authors aptly note, school children are often taught a "rosy, sanitized version" of Ohio history, where the North (and Ohio especially) appear in a positive light, while the South is framed negatively. The truth is far from that sanitized version of history. The book chronicles hate directed towards a variety of groups, including Indigenous people who were forced off their land, Black people, Jewish people, and Catholics. Brooks and Fitrakis provide strong evidence that early Ohio was anti-Black, drawing upon the "Black Laws" passed early in Ohio history that prevented Black Ohioans from voting and made it difficult for Black people to move to the state. This book is very dark reading and uses quotes that include disturbing words. Indeed, after the "n-word" is used in place of a direct quote on page seven, it is a bit jarring later in the book when the word is often quoted in the context of hate speech. (Readers should also know that the authors use [End Page 147] quotes containing other racial epithets to provide evidence of hate speech.) This section is impressive, covering a wide history that ends near the present. For example, Brooks notes that racist American Independence Party candidate George Wallace performed better in Ohio than in other midwestern states. The next section of the book, "Now," covers more recent Ohio (though it also reaches back into the previous period to provide relevant information). One strength of this section is that it divides the period into decades with subheadings, helping the reader understand that some of the events chronicled took place in their lifetime. Notably, while the focus of the book is mostly on people and groups that are broadly conceived as extremists, this section also discusses more "mainstream" Republican politicians. For example, Brooks and Fitrakis note that investigative reporter Russ Bellant discovered that Eastern and Central European former Nazis and fascists made financial contributions to George Voinovich's 1990 gubernatorial campaign. It would have been helpful, however, to include information about whether Voinovich returned the money and disavowed the contributors. Because this section covers the period up to the early 2020s, the authors could have provided a useful discussion of the notable political trend of Ohio gravitating toward Donald Trump in the 2016 election, and his almost equal success in the state in 2020. In total, however, this work will be of interest to anyone who wants to situate the hatred we see today in a broader history. Jacob Smith Duke University Copyright © 2022 Trustees of Indiana University

Third-party candidates, newspaper editorials, and political debates

This study examines how newspapers in Virginia and the Washington Post covered the 2013 gubernatorial campaign of Libertarian Robert Sarvis in their editorials. In addition to comparing coverage volume and type, the study analyzes how the newspapers responded to his exclusion from the televised gubernatorial debates. The study found that newspaper editorials treated Sarvis like other third-party candidates, but some supported his inclusion in the political debates.

How effective are Governor's party affiliated campaign promises on crime? Evidence from U.S. states

Criminal justice policies are contested issues during gubernatorial campaigns, with Republicans advocating for tough policies, and Democrats for reforms. The controversy is exacerbated by lack of research on what actually works. Policies and rhetoric used by candidates could impact voter's decision and real world outcomes. In this paper, I use Regression Discontinuity Design framework to investigate the causal impact of party affiliation on crime, with affiliation serving as a proxy for policies. Although past research has shown some success of party affiliated campaign promises (education spending, labor market, etc.), I fail to find evidence of impact on crime rates in the short run. For potential mechanism, I find that governors do not impact criminal justice policy metrics. Thus, given the controversial nature of crime, it is difficult to deliver drastic changes, as such the effectiveness of crime related campaign promises in the short run is unreliable.

National Elections of governors in Context of Transformation of Federal Relations in Post-Soviet Russia (Early 1990s — Mid-2000s)

The features of the formation and conduct of direct nation-wide elections of senior officials (governors, heads of administrations, presidents) of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, the reasons for their temporary cancellation are considered. The relevance of the study is due to the significant influence of gubernatorial election campaigns (however, as well as the subsequent abolition of electivity) on the formation of the domestic political system, new democratic institutions and federal relations in Russia at the turn of 1990—2000. In preparing the article, a large array of regulatory and judicial documents and statistical data was used, which makes it possible to comprehensively characterize the process of applying the provisions of the electoral legislation and the trends in the development of the electoral system. It was found that the regions were more willing to defend the election of governors, while the federal center, declaring its commitment to democratic reforms, made efforts to slow down the decentralization of state power. The transition to widespread direct elections in the second half of the 1990s, in the face of the weakness of the central state apparatus, contributed to the strengthening of the political positions of regional leaders. The conclusion is substantiated that the reforms of the federal center in the first half of the 2000s, aimed at strengthening the “vertical of power”, strengthening federal control, compromising the institution of gubernatorial elections with falsifications and the use of aggressive political technologies led to a relatively quick cancellation of popular elections, which was met with restraint by the elites and the population.

How Candidates Influence Each Other in Electoral Politics: Intercandidate Agenda-Building in Florida’s 2018 Midterm Election

This study investigates how the electoral campaigns in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial and Senate races used information subsidies to influence each other’s integrated marketing communications. Informed by agenda-building theory, the study probes which campaign and which party had the strongest transfer of issue and stakeholder salience (first-level) and sentiment (second-level) in campaign communications across the two races. Data include issue statements, press releases, tweets, and email blasts. Results of a lexicon-based automated content analysis show evidence for both unidirectional and bi-directional agenda-building influence of stakeholder salience. Further, data suggest the gubernatorial campaigns (DeSantis and Gillum) engaged in subtly more positive, self-promotion-based marketing than their counterparts in the Senate race (Scott and Nelson). Findings contribute theoretical and practical applications to political communication in election campaigning.

Independent Regulators and Financial Stability: Evidence from Gubernatorial Campaigns and a Progressive Era Policy Experiment

Independent Regulators and Financial Stability: Evidence from Gubernatorial Campaigns and a Progressive Era Policy Experiment

Reexamining the Effects of Electoral Competition on Negative Advertising

Prior research suggests that campaigns become more negative when the election environment becomes more competitive. Much of this research suffers from data and design limitations. I replicate and extend prior analyses using a much larger number of cases. Using advertising data drawn from 374 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial campaigns contested from 2000 through 2018, I find evidence that electoral competition encourages candidates to engage in more negative advertising campaigns and that incumbency status conditions these effects. Incumbents of both parties use more negative messaging strategies as competition increases. The effects of competition among challengers and open seat candidates is mixed. These results add to what we know about campaign advertising behavior and suggest that researchers should take care to avoid ignoring important contextual factors that underlie candidates’ strategic choices.

Contemporary Black Populism and the Development of Multiracial Electoral Coalitions: The 2018 Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum Gubernatorial Campaigns

Contemporary Black Populism and the Development of Multiracial Electoral Coalitions: The 2018 Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum Gubernatorial Campaigns

Entertaining the Forgotten

During the late 1920s and ’30s, performative populism played a major role in the politics of the American Deep South. In the gubernatorial campaigns of three of the most prominent populist politicians of the era—Huey Long, Theodore Bilbo, and Eugene Talmadge—performance skills and entertainment were key strategies for gaining voter support and crafting personas within a popular imaginary.

William F. Winter: February 21, 1923–December 18, 2020

William F. WinterFebruary 21, 1923–December 18, 2020 Suzanne Marrs Eudora Welty's assessment of Mississippi political leaders could be as harsh as it was accurate. In a 1945 letter to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, she called for her fellow Mississippians to vote Theodore Bilbo out of office, and in 1962 she declared to a friend that Ross Barnett made her long for an escape to Timbuktu (Welty 224; Marrs 293). During the Mississippi gubernatorial campaign of 1979, however, Welty felt newfound hope for her state. She put a never-to-be-removed "William Winter for Governor" bumper sticker on her car and rejoiced when Winter was elected. Early in 1980, Eudora Welty wrote to fellow writer Ross Macdonald about the man soon to be inaugurated. Winter, she said, was a "good, first-rate, vigorously thoughtful and firmly spoken man. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't prove himself to be one of the best governors in the nation." And that is exactly what he did. Born February 21, 1923, in Grenada, Mississippi, William F. Winter was the son of Inez Parker Winter, a teacher, and William Aylmer Winter, a farm owner who served six terms in the state legislature, three in each chamber. Winter graduated from the University of Mississippi, served in the US Army during World War II, and returned to graduate from the Ole Miss School of Law. He went on to be elected three times as a state representative, to serve once again in the army during the Korean War, and subsequently to be elected as state treasurer and later as lieutenant governor. He ran for governor three times and lost twice (1967, 1975) before being elected in 1979. His inauguration signaled the "first-rate, vigorously thoughtful" tenure that Welty anticipated. Winter invited a distinguished and diverse array of Mississippians to take part in a symposium titled "Mississippi and the Nation, 1980." Both Eudora Welty and Margaret Walker Alexander were among the participants. At the inauguration itself, the internationally acclaimed Metropolitan Opera soprano Leontyne Price, a native of Laurel, sang the national anthem. And in his address after taking the oath of office, Winter declared: "There will be no place in this administration for bias or prejudice based on sectionalism or class or race or religion or anything else" (qtd. in Bolton 192). He went on to say: "We have spent too many of our years, too much of our energy being against things we did not understand, [End Page 1] being afraid of change, being suspicious of the intellectual, and being oblivious to our image and reputation" (192; see also Welty, Introduction). Winter's record as governor was to be as progressive and transformative as his words had promised. Seeking to reform the state's educational system with its racial inequities, he faced recalcitrance from the legislature but refused to accept defeat. He held hearings across the state, found support from the state's largest newspaper, and developed widespread enthusiasm for reform. Winter then called a special session of the legislature to be devoted only to the issue of education. The result was passage of the Education Reform Act of 1982—establishing public kindergartens, raising teacher standards and salaries, and providing reading aides. Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund, told the New York Times that Winter's work reversed decades of discriminatory policy (Risen). And such accomplishments did not end with his term in office. Notably, his service on President Clinton's National Advisory Board on Race (1997) led the University of Mississippi to establish the William Winter Institute of Racial Reconciliation. Winter and Welty had long been friends. Winter joined the Board of Trustees of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 1957, the year Welty began to donate her papers to MDAH. Elected president of the board in 1969, he remained in that position for thirty-eight illustrious years. In 1986, he was instrumental in convincing Welty to donate her home to the state of Mississippi, and he oversaw the opening of the Eudora Welty House in 2006. Between these events so crucial to Welty's legacy, he became an original member of the Welty...

Advancing Research on Gender and Gubernatorial Campaign Finance

ABSTRACT This research note argues for scholarly attention to campaign finance in order to better understand why more women have not achieved gubernatorial office. We present an exploratory analysis of newly available data with a focus on 2010 to 2018 open-seat primaries. Our findings of gender differences in the structure of campaign receipts demonstrate the need for additional investigation of gubernatorial elections – elections that previous gender and campaign finance studies have overlooked. We identify several areas for scholars to research in the future.

¿IMPORTAN LAS CAMPAÑAS (EN LAS NUEVAS DEMOCRACIAS)? INTERÉS DE LA CAMPAÑA, ELECCIÓN DEL VOTO Y SATISFACCIÓN DE LA ENCUESTA

Based on data from presidential campaigns and original data from gubernatorial campaigns in Mexico, this paper finds that the proportion of respondents who provide consistent answers to the vote intention questions during the same survey interview increases as the campaign unfolds and interest in the campaign grows. These voters are less likely to connect their vote choice with their political predispositions and have a disproportionate likelihood to change their vote choice throughout the campaign. This gives the impression that campaigns are more consequential than they are, when, in fact, vote shifts are a function of voters’ increased motivation to engage in a survey interview.

Intensified local grievances, enduring national control: the politics of land in the 2017 Kenyan elections

ABSTRACTConstitutional provisions for devolution and land reform sought to address local land grievances and decentralize land administration in ways that would prevent conflict. The article argues that partial implementation of this agenda has intensified local grievances in a context of enduring national control over land administration. Local grievances have intensified as devolution has empowered majority communities and stoked their attachment to homelands, while the constitutional recognition of ancestral land rights has provided them with a legal basis for their claims. The failed decentralization of land administration has left national institutions as the focus of these claims. We examine whether these trends affected the use of land as a political resource and the rhetoric of land grievance during the 2017 elections. Using regression analysis, we find that titles were used patrimonially in the presidential elections, with titles targeted at Kikuyu minorities outside of their homelands. Our qualitative analysis suggests that the rhetoric of land grievances was limited in gubernatorial campaigns, suggesting that continued centralization in land administration retains the focus of land issues at the national level. Overall, our findings suggest that the partial implementation of the Constitution has exacerbated the conditions that led to land-based conflict in the past.

It’s Who’s on the Inside that Counts: Campaign Practitioner Personality and Campaign Electoral Integrity

Candidates for public office (and the individuals who run their campaigns) are not a randomly selected subset of the general population. Individuals with certain personality traits are more likely to become involved in political campaigns, are more likely to harbor political ambition, are more likely to be recruited to run for public office, and are more likely to actually run for office. But what influence do differences in individual traits have on the behavior of political campaigns? Using a unique survey of staff and candidates working on congressional, senatorial, and gubernatorial campaigns in the 2016 election cycle, this research shows that individual personality traits influence the decisions that campaigns make during the election. Personality traits affect the acceptance of campaign negativity and unethical campaign behaviors.