Obama Campaign Research Articles

Barack Obama Meets Celebrity Metaphor

Common knowledge suggests that elections are won or lost based on demographics, finances, and other structural elements. Whether candidates win or lose, however, is a matter of action. Symbolic identification, metaphor, and an unfolding narrative—and how they are managed and interpreted in the flow of events—determine who will emerge victorious from the democratic struggle for power. The McCain campaign’s effort to cast Obama as a celebrity, with the hollow trivialities and self-aggrandizement of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, proves to be one of the most dangerous episodes for the Obama campaign. In response, the Democrats must adjust the staging of Obama’s Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver as a performance of purpose and gravitas, rather than glitz and adoration.

Obama on the Stump: Features and Determinants of a Rhetorical Approach

From the moment Barack Obama entered the national political scene in 2004, his formidable rhetorical skills were a central component of his public persona and his political success. Not surprisingly, a growing body of research has examined Obama's rhetorical techniques. Thus far, however, these studies have consisted almost entirely of qualitative analyses of single speeches, making it difficult to generalize about the broader features of Obama's rhetorical approach and impossible to understand the determinants of his rhetorical choices. This study fills these gaps in the literature by systematically tracking Obama's rhetoric over the course of campaign 2008 and testing competing explanations for the variation that occurs during this period. Using a unique computer‐assisted content analysis procedure that draws coding categories directly from the more than 11,500 distinct words that Obama used during his campaign, the authors analyze 183 speeches and debates from his announcement of candidacy in February 2007 to his victory speech in November 2008. Obama's campaign rhetoric varied by speaking context, geography, and poll position, indicating a twofold rhetorical approach of emphasizing policy and thematic appeals while downplaying more contentious issues.

Online Relationship Management in a Presidential Campaign: A Case Study of the Obama Campaign's Management of Its Internet-Integrated Grassroots Effort

This case study examines the Obama presidential campaign's use of the participatory Internet to manage its grassroots campaign. Grounded in relationship-management theory and dialogic principles in online relationship building, the study analyzed interviews with campaign staff, its Web site, and its news articles. Five themes emerged regarding the campaign's integration of the Internet and grassroots strategy; 6 themes surfaced regarding the campaign's Internet use to manage relationships. Recommendations are made for exploring relationship management theory's intersection with the Internet and political campaigns.

Obama: The marketing lessons

Barack Obama's double campaign for the democrat nomination and then for the Presidency presented numerous opportunities for improved marketing based on savvy use of technology. Integrating data, using the internet (particularly social media), exploiting text messaging, embracing interactive methods of communication and building on technology already developed for others all combined to give Obama's campaign a boost. But the key factor was the message and leadership from the top.

Lo local, lo global, lo cotidiano del latino: una mirada a la campaña presidencial de Obama y Clinton

Este trabajo presenta el análisis de un material videográfico que compone la campaña presidencial de Hillary Clinton y Barack Obama dirigida a conquistar el voto latino. A través del método etnográfico (Martínez, 1994) se realiza el análisis de los estereotipos de latino presentados en los videos y se interpreta la descripción de los grupos a los cuales está dirigida la campaña, desde la presentación de lo local, lo cotidiano y la imagen globalizada del latino en dichos videos. Se seleccionaron para este estudio una muestra de dos videos de cada candidato y se procedió a la aplicación de la técnica estudio de caso (Velazco y Díaz, 1997) explicando, desde los aportes de Bourdieu (1990), el papel de los medios en las audiencias actuales para la conformación del mundo social, la percepción de grupos sociales y suposiciones compartidas. Para el análisis del contenido verbal se hace referencia a los trabajos de Ernesto Laclau.

“Yes We Can”: How Online Viewership, Blog Discussion, Campaign Statements, and Mainstream Media Coverage Produced a Viral Video Phenomenon

ABSTRACT “Viral videos”—online video clips that gain widespread popularity when they are passed from person to person via e-mail, instant messages, and media-sharing Web sites—can exert a strong influence on election campaigns. Unfortunately, there has been almost no systematic empirical research on the factors that lead viral videos to spread across the Internet and permeate into the dominant political discourse. This article provides an initial assessment of the complex relationships that drive viral political videos by examining the interplay between audience size, blog discussion, campaign statements, and mainstream media coverage of the most popular online political video of the 2008 campaign—will.i.am's “Yes We Can” music video. Using vector autoregression, I find strong evidence that the relationship between these variables is complex and multidirectional. More specifically, I argue that bloggers and members of the Obama campaign played crucial roles in convincing people to watch the video and in attracting media coverage, while journalists had little influence on the levels of online viewership, blog discussion, or campaign support. Bloggers and campaign members, in other words, seem to occupy a unique and influential position in determining whether an online political video goes viral.

Did Bush Voters Cause Obama's Victory?

AbstractIn the 2008 election, Barack Obama's campaign brought many new voters to the polls. Were these new voters necessary for Obama's victory? In this study, I find that they were not. The basis of this finding is an examination of decisions made by people who voted for George W. Bush in 2004. I show that Bush voters' decisions not to vote or to support Obama were a sufficient condition for Obama's victory.

A Celebration That Defined a Generation: Grant Park, New Media, and Barack Obama's Historic Victory of the US Presidency

From the earliest days of recorded history, people have celebrated for many reasons: to commemorate important events; to mark seasonal changes or the stages of human life; to honor endings; and to rejoice in beginnings. (Joanne Taylor Hane and Catherine Holshouser, A Feast of Festivals: 10) This is an excitement. This is a celebration. We're very proud that he [Obama] comes from Chicago and that this is a moment of celebration. (Chicago Mayor Richard Daley) Searchlights scythed through the night sky. Mr. Obama was blessed even by unseasonably warm November weather. It was a presidential victory party on a scale never seen before. (Martin Fletcher and James Bone, Times Online) It was a party like no other. On the afternoon of election day-November 4, 2008 - a crowd marked by its youthfulness began forming in Chicago's historic Grant Park, situated along Lake Michigan, for a celebration for presidential hopeful Barack Obama. As election results rolled in signaling Obama's lead, Grant Park swelled with people anxious to experience- firsthand - history in the making, as the first African American elected president of the United States gave his victory speech. At approximately 10:00 p.m. Central Time, when giant television screens on the lawn displayed CNN's report of Obama's apparent win over Republican rival John McCain, the crowd roared. Later that evening, by the time a triumphant Obama, his wife, Michelle and young daughters Sasha and Malia strode across the stage, nearly 250,000 people had assembled almost spontaneously, comprising one of the largest impromptu authences for a newly elected president, the first to have been born in the 1960s. Enthusiastic gatherings following elections are not unusual, but the size and intensity of the Obama party were extraordinary by all measures. The Chicago celebration that took place that night- not unlike the rejoicing in Times Square that marked the end of World War II or the Woodstock concert on Max Yasgur's farm in upstate New York- proved pivotal in defining a large youth generation on the brink of assuming its social power and influence. The Obama camp understood this generation, using digital technology to create new forms of political mobilization attractive to these new voters. The Grant Park celebration functions as a microcosm of how and why some of Obama's campaign strategies worked in attracting a new generation of voters and sheds light on the mechanics of planning a momentous celebration in a changing political, social, and communication environment. Grant Park on Election Day By election night, Grant Park, which began filling up several hours earlier, was a veritable sea of people packed so tightly that individuals found it difficult to sit or move. A finite number of invited guests - such as Chicago talk show host Oprah Winfrey and film director Spike Lee- occupied a gated area in front of the stage. Others, who responded immediately to an online offer for tickets, congregated in a ticketed area, some after standing in line for hours to enter the chain-link enclosed park. While approximately 65,000-70,000 had tickets, the vast majority- nearly three times as many-assembled outside the lawn and clogged the surrounding streets, and most of them were youths. Attendees reported that they had never seen so many people gathered in one place, nor had they felt as cramped as they did on this warm, balmy November night. Those who wandered off from their group found it difficult to find their friends later. As Northwestern University party goer Cary Elza recalled, [I]f you left to go to the bathroom, it was impossible to find your group again. At one point I had to get up on a friend's shoulders in order to provide a landmark for Brian [her husband] to find us again. Cell phone conversations went like this: 'We're near the big flag that's exactly between the left-side fence and the screen, if you're facing the screen. …

The State We Lost

In the summer of 2008, I went to work as a volunteer for the Obama campaign in my hometown of Gainesville, Georgia. To my and everyone’s surprise, the campaign had hired a field organizer for Gainesville, a nineteen-year-old Jewish student from Northwestern, Adam Yalowitz. What made the choice of Adam surprising was that Hall County, which includes Gainesville, has even fewer Jews (under 1 percent) than it does African Americans (7 percent). Adam held his first meeting in the basement of St. John's church. There was a decent crowd considering that the number of registered Democrats in Gainesville was only 20 percent of the county's population. Adam told us about himself, about why he thought Barack Obama should be president, and then he did something that was both surprising and brilliant. He started talking about us.

Motivated by Change: Political Activism of Young Women in the 2008 Presidential Campaign

Motivated by Change: Political Activism of Young Women in the 2008 Presidential Campaign Jane Booth-Tobin (bio) and Hahrie Han (bio) A persistent gender gap in political participation has plagued American politics for many years. Although women are more likely than men to vote, they are less likely to engage in other political activities, such as volunteering for campaigns, being active in community politics, or discussing political beliefs among friends and co-workers (Center for American Woman and Politics [CAWP] 2005; Schlozman, Burns, and Verba 1994; Welch 1977). Although small, this gap in political activism has significant implications for women’s citizenship. Citizenship is, at its core, about the ability to exercise a voice in politics and make that voice heard by those in the government. Participation in politics is a key way in which men and women can make their voices heard. As Sidney Verba, Nancy Burns, and Kay Lehman Schlozman write, “Those who are less active pay a price in terms of representation. Public officials hear less about—and, therefore, presumably pay less attention to—their concerns, preferences, and needs” (1997, 1053). Without a voice in politics, women miss a fundamental piece of what it means to be a democratic citizen. Resolving this gender gap in participation depends on changing our assumptions about why women become engaged in politics. We argue that traditional assumptions about what it means to be political may not hold for women, thereby suppressing female participation in politics. To examine this, we focus on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, which—unlike other campaigns—engaged significant numbers of young women in campaign activism. A postelection survey of campaign activists under the age of twenty-five found that young women were 5 percentage points more likely than young men to engage in some form of activism [End Page 115] within the Obama campaign. Likewise, a 2008 study by CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) found that, of the 52 percent of young voters who turned out to vote, young women were 8 percentage points more likely to vote than young men (Kirby and Kawashima-Ginsberg 2009). Although the trends in voting among young women were not historically unique, the trends in campaign activism were. To understand the reasons behind this dramatic rise in political activism among young women, we look beyond traditional understandings of what motivates political participation. Our findings suggest that traditional conceptions of politics are limited in their understanding of the factors that motivate young women to get involved. They explain the engagement of young men in politics, but do little to expand our understanding of participation among young women. The young women in our study are less likely to call themselves “political” in the traditional sense, but are more likely than men to be driven by a sense of wanting to make change and be part of a larger movement. To better incorporate women into our political system, then, we need to recognize the alternative factors that can draw women into politics. By exploring new ways to motivate women to participate, we open up the possibility of increasing women’s participation and strengthening women’s citizenship. Understanding the Gender Gap in Participation Although previous research has made large strides in expanding our understanding of the way resource disparities between men and women contribute to the gender gap in participation, questions about how men and women are motivated to participate remain unanswered. Previous research has not examined the possibility that nontraditional sources of motivation propel women’s participation. In addition, most research on the gender gap has focused solely on adult women’s participation. We focus particularly on young women and examine the possibility that women are motivated to get involved in ways different from those of men. Given the strong connection between early political activity and lifelong habits, we cannot ignore youth participation when studying the gender gap in participation. Early experiences with civic and political activity can shape people’s orientations towards participation for life (Yates and Youniss 1996; Plutzer 2002; Jennings 1987). Understanding why young [End Page 116] women in 2008 were more likely to participate could potentially have important implications for understanding the political...

The Difference a Letter Makes

Barack Obama is often compared to past national lenders: Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr., to name a few. These comparisons have, for the most part, produced narratives of continuity in which Obama figures as the current leader in a legacy of social progress. However, on bumper stickers, t-shirts, posters, screensavers, Facebook icons, and other-digital and physical paraphernalia, another adequation has emerged for a radically different political purpose. Since the early days of his presidential campaign to the present, moment, adversaries of Obama have associated him with Osama bin Laden in efforts to cast Obama as a. domestic of sorts. From verbal slips on newscasts to political cartoons, to YouTube videos that transform Obama into bin Laden, to bumper slicker campaigns exemplified in the figure above, these correlations between Obama and bin Laden illustrate more than just an internationalized form of American racism. They represent the role that politics of identity and difference play in today's global mediascape--which is defined by decentralized forms of communication, social networks, peer-produced knowledge, and a general sense of openness for production, distribution, and reception. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This analysis will trace recent developments in the global mediascape as they relate to the representation of bin Laden and Obama within the new public sphere. I will begin by focusing on the ways bin Laden was generated as a figure of digital terror- in the early years of the War on Terror, and will primarily focus on the reception of his video messages in western via Al Jazeera. I will then look at the use of new in Obama's presidential campaign that established his identity as a product of mass collaboration in the my media society and how this identity created the conditions for his comparison with bin Laden--often manifested in mass-produced forms of pop art, such as the bumper slicker that claims only difference between Obama and Osama is BS. IN SEARCH OF OSAMA BIN LADEN WITHIN SATELLITE TELEVISION On October 29, 2004, news anchor Aaron Brown introduced a segment entitled Uninvited Guest' explaining that Just after 4:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time today, bin Laden stopped being a shadowy presence, stopped being a talking point, and once again started talking. (1) Brown went on to explain that earlier that day, the Arab television network, Al Jazeera, released a video submitted to their offices in Qatar that depicted bin Laden standing at a podium in front of a brown rock wall, delivering a speech to the American people about the upcoming (2004) U.S. presidential election and the causes of terrorism. In the days that followed the release of the video, Brown and other American news anchors continuously analyzed the meaning of the video. The central focus was not the content of bin Laden's speech so much as the impact his resurfacing would have upon the election. Analysts touched on everything: his apparent health, his facial expression when speaking directly to the American people, and his apparel--which one pundit even suggested included a John Kerry campaign button. All of these observations were used to support claims regarding the questionable safety of the presidential election and which candidate would be helped or hurt by the presence of bin Laden. After the first post-9/11 video message from bin Laden was circulated in October 2001, bin Laden's videoed body became a site upon which the American War on Terror was marked. The United States Department of State, CNN, and terrorist watch websites scoured images of bin Laden's body for meaning, including deconstructions of the image to determine if it is really bin Laden, analyses of the positioning of his appendages relative to the setting to assess hidden messages, and claims that the video files hold digitally encrypted messages for sleeper cells. …

Coming to Washington

To sit in your dorm room and believe you can change the world may be a certain kind of American collegiate tradition, akin to tailgating at Homecoming, taking Bob Marley seriously, and holding your roommate's head over the toilet bowl after his first frat party. Yet as I paced around my Bard College dorm room on a freezing February night in 2007, on a conference call with other students across the country hoping to organize ourselves for Barack Obama's nascent presidential campaign, I was convinced of only thing: we were not going to change the world. Obama might be a generational spokesman, he might invoke the memory of John Kennedy, but he was facing the most powerful family in Democratic politics, as an inexperienced liberal senator from a major city. And he was black. Why should young people get behind such a futile cause? Why should anyone?

Bosom Buddies?

surfaced that rocked the traditionally calm corridors of the United Nations secretariat, while at the same time highlighting the depths of the problems faced by the UN secretary-general. Spineless, ineffectual, lacking in charisma and above all “conspicuous in [his] absence at critical moments,” the memo from the distinguished deputy chief of mission of Norway only highlighted publicly what many had known for some time: Ban Ki-moon is in deep trouble. At the same time that Obama appears to have his own problems with Congress and America’s worsening economic problems, the UN chief is faced with having to find his own way out of a wilderness. It is now almost axiomatic to say that the election of Barack Obama inspired hopes for a new American relationship with the United Nations. Not only did Obama campaign for the White House on a platform of renewed American multilateralism, but in his first year in office, he pressed for dramatic changes in U.S. policy at the United Nations and sought a deepening American involvement in the world’s only universal security organization. But, after the initial engagement period, the close U.S.-UN partnership, which many observers had expected and hoped for after the contentious relationship of the George W. Bush presidency, has not developed. In fact, though Washington has arranged its priorities more along the lines of the UN’s own agendas, there is now an unacknowledged but discordant note in the Obama administration’s dealings with the United Nations. In his recent speeches, Obama rarely mentions the organization. While he has met the secretary-general in a few private get-togethers, the relationship is cordial but not personal. Furthermore, in the White House’s pursuit of its overseas policies, especially on the critical issues of Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as Iran and North Korea (except for sanctions), and on other matters like global warming and terrorism, the administration has, for the most part, sidelined the United Nations. Admittedly, President Obama has been preoccupied by a series of domestic issues— above all, the economic crisis and health care reform, not to mention his sagging popularity. But beyond those priorities, American disenchantment with the United Nations seems to stem from a more general feeling that the body is simply not acting as forcefully as it should be in the global arena. Obama clearly desires a UN leadership he can work with, along the lines of President Stephen Schlesinger is a fellow at the Century Foundation and the former director of the World Policy Institute. He is the author of Bitter Fruit (Doubleday, 1982), about the U.S. coup in Guatemala; Act of Creation (Westview, 2003) about the founding of the United Nations; and coeditor of Journals 1952–2000, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (Penguin, 2007).

Voter Mobilization and the Obama Victory

As with the other presidential elections from this decade, the 2008 election was followed by considerable speculation as to how new efforts to mobilize voters affected the eventual outcome. Although the conventional wisdom implies that “Democrats benefit from higher turnout,” previous research in political science demonstrates that such a conclusion applies to actual election results inconsistently. In this article, we outline the difficulties involved with assessing turnout effects within a particular election and proceed to test the hypothesis that the Obama campaign benefited from higher turnout using three different methods. The evidence suggests that the Obama campaign benefited substantially from voter turnout, particularly in comparison with the Kerry campaign in 2004, yet they also were successful in changing the minds of already mobilized voters. Although various data difficulties suggest the presence of some bias in our estimates, the consistency of the results across tests supports the general conclusion.

The Streets of Laredo: Mercurian Rhetoric and the Obama Campaign

This essay documents one small but intense episode in the historic presidential election of 2008—the primary campaign waged in Hispanic South Texas between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Told from the perspectives of out-of-state volunteer and rhetorically trained participant-observer, it depicts rhetorical scenes on the ground, partly created by the author, and worked out through embodied, Anglo-Hispano interaction. Beyond documenting the campaign at its grassroots, the essay is also a performative criticism of the coproduced rhetorical dramas, an exercise in rhetorical hermeneutics, and a contribution to interpretive rhetorical theory. It introduces the concept of “Mercurian rhetoric” as a category for mobile border-crossers and translators, and uses it as an interpretive pathway for charting the Obama campaign and resistances to it on the ground. Building from Michael McGee and Thomas Benson, the essay links criticism, fieldwork, and rhetorical production, and makes a case for embodied, neo-sophistic Mercurian rhetoric as practice and ideal.

Ethical Issues in U.S. Presidential Leadership

This issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly presents a collection of papers that examine diverse ethical issues concerning the office of president of the United States. The collection focuses on the role of ethics, character, and virtue in determining what constitutes good presidential leadership and evaluating the performance of individual presidents and presidential candidates. The collection grew out of a symposium organized by the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University and held at the Center for Jewish History in New York City on January 30, 2008. The contributors examine, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, such questions as whether a president can be both effective and ethical, whether ethical leadership is possible or even desirable in a dangerous global environment, and whether effective leadership requires dirty hands. (1) Since the crisis of authority brought on by the Vietnam War and Watergate, many Americans have come to view political as an oxymoron. At the same time, the public has continued to demand ethical leadership from its elected representatives. This is particularly true of the president, who sits at the pinnacle of government and sets the moral tone for the executive branch. Hence the rapid decline of public support for presidents whose leadership appears ethically compromised. That happened to Gerald Ford when he pardoned Richard M. Nixon without providing an adequate justification, and to Ronald Reagan when news broke that his aides had been secretly selling arms to Iran to finance legally prohibited support to Central American insurgents. Most recently, public support for President George W. Bush went into a free fall when it became evident that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the United States seemed mired in an endless war initiated under false pretenses. A desire for ethical leadership may help explain the excitement behind Barack Obama's campaign, his dramatic victory in November 2008, and the widespread euphoria sparked by his election. A far-reaching exploration of the role of ethics and character in presidential leadership seems particularly important at this juncture. The papers in this collection draw on, and advance, the growing literature on issues of character in moral philosophy, psychology, science, and history. The past two decades have seen the emergence of virtue ethics, with its emphasis on moral character, as a major theoretical approach in philosophy. Taking up the rich tradition of Aristotelian ethics, virtue theorists such as Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (1997) and Rosalind Hursthouse (2001) regard character rather than individual actions as the primary subject of moral evaluation, and virtues rather than specific rules or consequences as the primary source of moral guidance. This renewed interest in virtue and character is not limited to virtue ethicists; it is shared by leading contemporary philosophers, including Elizabeth Anscombe (1958), Bernard Williams (1985), and Robert Adams (2006), who seek to extend ethics beyond the narrow legal paradigm of duties and rights. At the same time, some contemporary psychologists and philosophers have challenged the explanatory value of character and the influence of individual differences in moral behavior and decision making (Doris 2002; but see Sabini and Silver 2005). This debate intersects with a much older one among historians and scientists about the importance of individual character and individual decisions in shaping events and institutions. Among historians, for example, structural and systemic analysis has been pitted against narratives of events that stress the impact of individual actors and their personal qualities. These tensions may finally be giving rise to creative resolutions, as many scholars who had long focused on broad movements and structures have shown new appreciation for the role of the individual, including leaders (Chafe 2005; Wood 2006). …

Barack Obama’s 2008 Campaign for the U.S. Presidency and Visual Design

This article examines the role that visual design played in efforts to elect Barack Obama president of the United States in 2008. Visual design has been an important factor in many past U.S. presidential political marketing campaigns, but it has been less significant in the last two decades—at least in printed material. This trend was reversed in the Obama campaign. Visuals were not only a key element in the Obama campaign’s posters and stickers, but also on its Web site, as well as in its television advertisements and T-shirts. Furthermore, the campaign’s logo was a departure from ones typically developed for U.S. candidates, in that it captured the essence of the Obama campaign symbolically, using pictorial elements inventively. The posters and stickers designed by independent artists—many of whom incorporated the logo—helped generate excitement for the candidate and supported the unique positive brand that his marketing team had devised.

First Impressions, “America's Paper” and Pre-Primary Black Presidential Candidates: The New York Times Coverage of Rev. Jesse Jackson (1983), Rev. AI Sharpton (2003), and Sen. Barack Obama (2007) Campaign Announcements and Initial Days

Recent research documents how party rules, election reforms, and the growth of primaries and caucuses have greatly changed the presidential nomination process. Acknowledging that most Americans get their information about presidential candidates through the news and that mass media have played a significant role in introducing candidates to potential voters, I conduct an longitudinal content analysis of the New York Times articles to ethnographically explain how language, article placement and content in ‘America's Paper’ has significantly impacted the framing of black presidential candidates' pre-primary presidential campaigns. In particular, the data reveal how the newspaper's coverage of the candidates appears to vary based on perceived viability and as willingness to vote for a black president increases.

“Yes We Can” or “Yes We Did”?

The election of Barack Obama as the first African American president speaks to the progress made in fulfilling the promise of one nation for all people. Obama’s success reflects retrospective changes, such as the advent of viral technology, the mobilization of Black voters, and the shift toward tolerance in White racial attitudes, all of which allowed a strategic Obama campaign to make landmark gains. But are these changes permanent? Moreover, will these retrospective changes benefit future African American candidates seeking political office? On the other hand, following an extremely unpopular Bush administration, the Obama victory could reflect the prospective changes that many voters believed would follow, including the restoration of American credibility abroad, economic recovery, and the move toward a postracial state. Have Obama’s first 100 days fulfilled these prospective visions? And if so, will Obama’s actions in these areas prove advantageous to minority candidates who follow in his historic footsteps?

Efficacy and Estrangement: Effects of Voting

This study examined changes in political efficacy and feelings of estrangement as a function of voting behavior in the 2008 presidential election in the U.S. Participants (n = 224), recruited from an online marketing company's representative panel of U.S. adults, completed a survey 4‐6 weeks before the election and again 2‐4 weeks after the election. Changes in internal and external political efficacy and feelings of estrangement were examined for three groups of voters (McCain voters, Obama voters, and non‐voters) as well as by party affiliation. Internal political efficacy was and remained relatively high among Obama and McCain voters pre‐election to post‐election, but decreased for non‐voters. Among Democrats, there was a significant increase in internal political efficacy, among Republicans, there was no change, and among those with no or a different party affiliation, there was a significant decrease. External political efficacy significantly increased pre‐election to post‐election among Obama voters and non‐voters, but decreased for McCain voters. Additionally, post‐election cultural estrangement was significantly higher among non‐voters than voters. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical implications for understanding the potential impact of different forms of political participation. Several of the specific and distinctive aspects of the 2008 election and President Obama's campaign are also highlighted as they relate to voting behavior and potential changes in the American electorate.