Issue Stances Research Articles

The Electoral Consequences of Skin Color: The “Hidden” Side of Race in Politics

Despite the significant role that skin color plays in material well-being and social perceptions, scholars know little if anything about whether skin color and afrocentric features influence political cognition and behavior and specifically, if intraracial variation in addition to categorical difference affects the choices of voters. Do more phenotypically black minorities suffer an electoral penalty as they do in most aspects of life? This study investigates the impact of color and phenotypically black facial features on candidate evaluation, using a nationally representative survey experiment of over 2000 whites. Subjects were randomly assigned to campaign literature of two opposing candidates, in which the race, skin color and features, and issue stance of candidates was varied. I find that afrocentric phenotype is an important, albeit hidden, form of bias in racial attitudes and that the importance of race on candidate evaluation depends largely on skin color and afrocentric features. However, like other racial cues, color and black phenotype don’t influence voters’ evaluations uniformly but vary in magnitude and direction across the gender and partisan makeup of the electorate in theoretically explicable ways. Ultimately, I argue, scholars of race politics, implicit racial bias, and minority candidates are missing an important aspect of racial bias.

The Europeanization of Political Parties in Central and Eastern Europe? The Impact of EU Entry on Issue Stances, Salience and Programmatic Coherence

The completion of the two-wave entry of CEE states in the EU potentially changes the impact of European integration issues on party politics in the region. Membership entails movement from a general aspiration to ‘return to Europe’ to hard costs and specific policy instruments. But are these changes reflected in the Europe-relevant issue stances taken by parties and in the importance parties assign to them in their electoral appeals? Has the relationship of European and integration issues to the broader issue bases of party competition changed? Data from expert surveys of political parties in the ten new CEE member states conducted just before and just after accession reveal that, in line with expectations from comparative literature on party competition, entry has had little impact on party stances but greater impact on the salience of integration issues.

Explaining the President's Issue Based Liberalism: Pandering, Partisanship, or Pragmatism

Past research attempting to explain the president's issue based liberalism has produced a muddled image. The most prominent work has been grounded in centrist theory, positing that presidents tailor their policy stances to mass preferences. Other work has also suggested that presidents cater to mass preferences, but only when their approval ratings are low or during elections. Still others find no relation between presidential issue liberalism and mass preferences, suggesting the importance of partisanship and pragmatism. We develop and validate a new measure of the president's issue based liberalism grounded in presidential rhetoric. We then test the centrist versus partisanship and pragmatism models of presidential liberalism using graphical and Box-Jenkins methods. Our graphical and statistical analyses firmly reject the centrist model and support an image of presidents as partisans whose public issue stances are sometimes moderated by pragmatic concerns. From the standpoint of democratic theory, our results raise questions about the nature of presidential representation in the American system.

Effects of Campaign-to-User and Text-Based Interactivity in Political Candidate Campaign Web sites

This study examined the effects on users of two forms of interactivity commonly found on political candidate campaign Web sites in the 2002 U.S. House election cycle. The first form, campaign-to-user interactivity, focuses on features or mechanisms used to enable or facilitate communication between site users and the campaign. The second form, text-based interactivity, focuses on how site content is verbally and visually expressed. Study participants viewed one of four versions of either a Democratic or Republican campaign website. Both text-based and campaign-to-user interactivity increased the amount of time users spent on the site and their accurate recall of candidates' issue stances. The co-occurrence of both forms of interactivity, however, showed a noticeably lower level of issue recall, confirming earlier findings that too much interactivity can interfere with user recall of site content.

Elections: Personal Popularity in U.S. Presidential Elections

A commonly held view is that presidential elections are largely personality contests, and that the candidate with the best‐liked personality wins. But is this really the case? Based on a careful analysis of national survey data from the last 11 presidential elections, this article concludes that such a view is unfounded. The most personally popular candidate does not always win in the U.S.—indeed, in recent elections, the most personally popular candidate has generally lost. Much more central to candidate evaluations, and to who emerges victorious, are perceptions of candidates’ stands on the issues.

The Influence of Party: Evidence from the State Legislatures

American legislative studies in recent years have been occupied to a large degree with the question of the effects of political parties on the policy behavior of elected legislators, with most of the research focusing on the U.S. Congress. We undertake a comparative analysis of state legislatures for a window into the character and extent of party's effects. Specifically, we compare the impact of party on the partisan polarization and dimensionality of campaign issue stances and roll call voting in the Kansas Senate and the largely comparable, though nonpartisan, Nebraska Unicameral. This comparison offers us a nice quasi-experiment to assess the impact of party by establishing a baseline condition in Nebraska for what happens when party is absent. We argue that party lends order to conflict, producing the ideological low-dimensional space that is a trademark of American politics. Where parties are not active in the legislature—Nebraska is our test case—the clear structure found in partisan politics disappears. This works to sever the connection between voters and their elected representatives and, with it, the likelihood of electoral accountability that is essential for the health of liberal democracy.

Perceptions of 'Public Opinion' and 'Public' Opinion Expression

ABSTRACT A large number of studies have been devoted to the impact of perceptions of opiniondistributions on the expression of public opinion. In the present study we propose thatperceptions of opinion distributions have implications that go beyond influencingindividual issue stances, but rather influence respondents’ willingness to engage inpolitical activities. Specifically, we examine the link between opinion perceptionsand two dimensions of political participation: participatory behavior involving public expression of opinion, and participatory behavior that does not involve the publicexpression of a person’s opinion. Based on data collected as part of the AmericanNational Election Study, we examine the role that communication variables, groupmembership, attitude strength, and perceptions of public opinion play in predictingpublic and non-public forms of participation in the US. Implications for research inthe areas of political participation and public opinion expression are outlined.

Presidential Campaigns: 1952–1996

significant changes in party organizations and their relevance to the nomination of presi dential candidates. What this literature has so far neglected is the explicit link between nomination procedures and the possibility of maintaining democratic governance. Vari ous authors have speculated that the evolution of the presidential nominating proce dures from a party-brokered system to a candidate-centered system should have pro found implications for the way in which candidates act during the campaign and once they assume office,1 but few studies have explicitly explored the probable links between nominating procedures and governing activities.2 In this paper, we argue that as presidential campaigns have evolved from a brokered-convention system to a candidate-centered system, we should expect to see a shift in the way in which presidential candidates relate to the various elements in their nominating, electoral, and governing coalitions. We first look at the number of presiden tial issue stances taken by the candidates. We then compare these positions to the party platforms. The rate of agreement between the presidential candidates and their parties' platforms indicates the extent to which candidates take seriously the various elements of the coalitions that nominated them. Second, we categorize the types of issues that presi dential candidates address. The types of issues are relevant both to campaigns and to gov ernance. The types of issues reveal the coalitions, appeals, and strategies on which candidates will rely. If the actors in presidential campaigns have changed over time, then we should expect changes in the nature of the appeals candidates make. Finally, we com pare the stances of the candidates to positions taken by congressional leaders. If congres sional leaders have truly been excluded from the process of nominating presidential candidates, then we should expect candidates to articulate a greater number of positions that diverge from those taken by the party leaders. Congressional leaders once exercised a modicum of control over the presidential selection process. In the absence of such con trol, congressional leaders and presidential candidates are less likely to agree.

Doing the Traditional Media Sidestep: Comparing the Effects of the Internet and Other Nontraditional Media with Traditional Media in the 1996 Presidential Campaign

This study examined the extent to which heavy users of the Internet and other nontraditional media differ from heavy users of traditional media in their knowledge of the issue stances of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole as well as their images of the two candidates. Nontraditional media had little influence on political knowledge. Although nontraditional media had a greater impact on images of the two candidates than traditional media, few relationships remained significant after controlling for other factors. In 1996, the Internet was getting a “test drive” as a new campaign medium. The election of 2000 should be studied to determine how Internet use has changed and how Internet content might affect future political campaigns.

Exploring the positioning process in political campaigning

This paper explores the process used to communicate public policy in political campaigns. Empirical research has been conducted into determining the voters' consideration of the importance of national political issues and the association of the electorate's consideration of the importance of issues with identification with parties in the UK. This paper attempts to show how political parties can position themselves on the basis of issue stances when targeting groups of voters. A model is suggested to aid in public policy evaluation with implications for positioning; recognising that those parties that formed the previous government have significant advantages over the opposition during the conduct of electoral campaigns since they can make use of the government's communication networks. However, the paper looks at this process from a party‐oriented perspective (where issues are used more to persuade the electorate) rather than a candidate‐centred perspective (where personalities tend to be used more). Thus, further research needs to be conducted in order to ascertain the model's suitability in and adaptability for candidate‐driven political markets.

Ethnicity is not Enough

The concept of deracialized electoral strategies has been applied primarily to African-American candidates running in majority white or racially mixed jurisdictions. The author explores the use of deracialized electoral strategies by victorious Latino city council candidates in Los Angeles. These candidates ran in Latino-majority city council districts, yet faced multiracial electorates. To build cross-racial support, the winning Latino candidates employed deracialized political styles, issue stances, and mobilization strategies. On the council, Latinos have pursued a largely deracialized agenda.

Age difference in political decision making: Strategies for evaluating political candidates

To investigate age-related differences in strategies used to evaluate political candidates, an experimental study employed protocol tracing techniques with a computerized information matrix. Forty younger and forty older adults gathered information about and evaluated candidates in national and local elections. Older adults accessed less information but took longer to examine information and make choices. Differences in strategic processing suggest that young adults were more likely to organize their information searches by issues and to eliminate candidates based on issue stances. In contrast, older adults were more likely to organize their information searches by candidates and to engage in satisficing.

Policy Voting in the U. S. Senate: Who Is Represented?

This study develops new state-level measures of mass and party elite ideology to assess senatorial responsiveness to different constituencies. The ideological preferences of two groups-independent identifiers and senators' state party elites-prove important in accounting for senatorial Conservative Coalition scores (1981-84), while the preferences of state partisans have no direct effect on roll-call voting. The often noted ideological differences between same-state senators from different parties are explained by the differing values of their respective state party elites. Challengers, in contrast to incumbents, are unresponsive to independents; their campaign issue stances are consistent with the more extreme values of their state party elites. As a result Senate elections tend to be contests between relatively moderate incumbents and ideologically extreme challengers. Popular understanding and academic theory agree that a fundamental feature of modern democratic government is the representation of constituency interests by elected legislators. Studies of representation examine how constituency opinion is related to legislative attitudes and behavior and what conditions promote or inhibit this central relationship. In the theoretical and empirical work on legislative elections, a growing number of studies deals with the role of issues and policy in explaining Senate elections. This work assumes that elections are the chief mechanism for achieving accountability and for insuring legislative responsiveness to constituency preferences. Several features of the contemporary U.S. context shape the potential for legislative responsiveness to constituents. Our electoral rules-single-member district elections, the direct primary, and the Australian ballot-enhance legislative responsiveness to voters rather than to party or the president, as does the decline in partisanship among voters and within Congress. Split-ticket voting is at such levels that while many seats are safe for specific incumbents, fewer and fewer can be considered safe for the parties. Of course the institutional changes in Congress-decentralized power, increased perquisites of office with

On the Structure and Sequence of Issue Evolution

How do political issues arise, and come to affect political party politics? We develop a theory and model of issue evolution, illustrating both by examining the dynamic evolution of the issue of racial desegregation. Our modeling concerns two central problems: (1) the structure of the evolution—a pattern of dynamic causality between the early policy cues from professional politicians, in Congress in the case at hand, and later mass response, and (2) the sequence of changes in elite behavior, changes in mass perceptions of party issue stances, changes in mass affect toward the parties, and changes in party identifications among citizens. We suggest that the causal process developed for the racial case is quite general for other times, other nations, and other issues. The theory of issue evolution is developed as a general statement of the organic connection between elite and mass behavior, a working model of the dynamics of American politics across time and issues.

Policy Motivation and Party Differences in a Dynamic Spatial Model of Party Competition

We present a model of party competition that produces more realistic patterns of results than those often emphasized in the literature. Reversing Downs (1957), we assume that parties win elections in order to formulate policies, rather than formulate policies in order to win elections. Voters are modeled first as having perfect information about candidate positions, and then under conditions of uncertainty. In simulation experiments we show that policy motivation and voter uncertainty can bring about persistent and predictable party differences in sequential majority rule elections. As the degree of voter certainty decreases, parties diverge towards their optima, whereas increases in voter certainty draw parties towards cycles in which party positions vary, but predictable issue stances are maintained on the average.

Political Cynicism: Measurement and Meaning

Political Cynicism: Measurement and Meaning