Presidential Primary Candidates Research Articles

Facing the Competition: Gender Differences in Facial Emotion and Prominence in Visual News Coverage of Democratic Presidential Primary Candidates

This study considered the impact of gender on visual coverage of the top 12 candidates in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary. Using Microsoft Azure’s Face API, we analyzed 9,529 still images from 43 mainstream news sources for facial emotion (happiness, anger, neutrality) and prominence (close-up, medium, long shots). We found visual evidence for an age-old narrative that undermines confidence in women’s leadership fitness: They were presented as emotionally less composed than men. Although we found no gender differences for facial prominence per se, its interaction with facial emotion gave nuance to gender differences in visual coverage of leadership performances.

Do high engagement Instagram images influence presidential candidate evaluation? The moderating effect of familiarity

PurposeThis paper aims to examine how exposure to a presidential candidate's high engagement Instagram images influences a citizen's candidate evaluations.Design/methodology/approachData were collected via Amazon MTurk. A 3 × 2 experimental design was employed to test the persuasive effect of exposure of the “most liked” and “most commented on” images of the top four 2016 US presidential primary candidates on a US citizen's candidate evaluation.FindingsResults reveal that highly engaging Instagram images of unfamiliar presidential candidates positively influenced candidate evaluations. However, the same was not true for more well-known presidential candidates.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was not conducted during a live campaign and only examined four of the top 2016 presidential primary candidates.Practical implicationsThe research includes implications for marketers seeking to increase engagement and reach in Instagram marketing campaigns. This study shows that even brief exposure to a highly engaged post involving an unfamiliar person/product on social media can significantly alter evaluations of that person or product.Originality/valueTo the authors' knowledge, no experimental designs have addressed how Instagram posts influence users' political attitudes and behaviors within the political marketing and communications literature.

Replicating the discovery, scrutiny, and decline model of media coverage in presidential primaries

ABSTRACT Media coverage has long been thought crucial to shaping the electoral fortunes of presidential primary candidates in the post-reform era, making how the media allot coverage a topic of paramount importance. Sides and Vavreck (2013. The Gamble: Choice and Change in the 2012 Presidential Election. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) make a notable contribution to the study of media coverage in primaries with their “discovery, scrutiny, and decline” (DSD) model. This model, based on the 2012 Republican primary, suggests that the media’s preference for novelty leads to a cyclical identification of new and interesting candidates, a surge in coverage of that candidate, and a culminating drop of coverage back to baseline levels. But the generalizability of the DSD model beyond the 2012 GOP primary has not yet been thoroughly tested. This paper conducts such a test using the Presidential Primary Communication Corpus (PPCC) which contains news stories by The New York Times and the Washington Post of each candidate in the nine primaries from 2000 to 2020. The evidence is most supportive of the DSD model in the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries and the 2004 and 2020 Democratic primaries but less supportive in the remaining five. This paper concludes with a discussion of why some campaigns don’t match the DSD model’s expectations.

Clearing the Field: How do Presidential Primary Candidates Win Big on Super Tuesday?

In presidential primaries, Super Tuesday elections play a significant role in winnowing candidate fields and establishing nomination frontrunners. Despite their importance, scholars know little about why and how candidates win or lose the states comprising these events. This study explores which factors help explain candidate performance in Super Tuesday primaries between 2008 and 2016. Using pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis, the results indicate three key drivers of Super Tuesday success: candidate viability, public attention, and media attention. These findings imply that presidential campaigns continue to be complex electoral events beyond the early primary states and suggest that underdog candidates can still win states under the right conditions. Future research should explore the interrelatedness of these three critical factors.

Race and Politics: Predicting Support for 2016 Presidential Primary Candidates among White Americans

Using a sample of up to 859 white Americans in the United States, we examine how racial resentment, perceptions of discrimination toward majority and minority populations, white identity salience, and American identity salience influence support for five candidates running for President in 2016. Using data from the American National Election Studies 2016 Pilot Study, we find that racial resentment influences support for both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, and white identity salience increases support for Trump and Clinton. Although policy issues, including the economy, health care, immigration, and terrorism, also shape attitudes toward political candidates, the effects of racial resentment and white identity salience persist. We conclude by arguing that America continues to be shaped by a white racial frame which views minorities as inferior and that this view is perpetuated through support for candidates who support white supremacy.

Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health

Howard Waitzkin and his co-authors argue that it is better to trust civil servants and governments with our health than capitalist managers and corporations, since the former can be held more publicly accountable and the latter cannot. They look askance at public-private partnerships, non-governmental organizations, and foundations that receive tax deductible contributions. These are plutocratic health governance systems in which wealthy foundation trustees decide what is to be done and spent in the public sphere without first seeking democratic input. Edited by sociologist and physician Howard Waitzkin, Health Care Under the Knife explores the shortcomings and failures of neoliberal health care systems in the US, Western Europe, and Latin America. It contributes to the current health care debate among the 2020 presidential primary candidates, and describes how social forces and health care movements led by progressive physicians can bring about social action and change health care systems. The volume’s 15 chapters are grouped into five parts: Social Class and Medical Work; The Medical Industrial Complex in the Age of Financialization; Neoliberalism and Health Care Reform; The Trajectory of Imperialism’s Health Component, and The Road Ahead. The book includes 66 pages of notes.

Gender, race, and stereotypes in the 2008 presidential primary

ABSTRACT To better understand the role of local news in voters’ opinions of candidates, we ask whether candidate coverage in local news sources readily activates race and gender stereotypes in voters’ opinions of presidential primary candidates? We conduct an original content analysis of local newspaper coverage of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential primary season. We code 1,849 news articles in 11 battleground and early primary states to evaluate how local news coverage frames issues of race and gender for each candidate. Then we utilize the 2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP) to match primary voters with their local news content. We find considerable variation in local news coverage of candidates’ race and gender across states. While local news coverage frames Obama and Clinton in terms of race and gender issues, we find that race is covered more frequently. In addition, we find that as news coverage of gender issues increases, voters are not less likely to characterize Clinton as a strong leader. However, as local news focuses more readily on Obama’s race, voters are less likely to consider him trustworthy. These findings illustrate the power of local news media to activate stereotypes related to race and gender.

Oh Snap: Chat Style in the 2016 US Presidential Primaries

Based on Goffman’s theories of self-presentation and framing, this exploratory investigation adapted Videostyle and Webstyle protocols to analyse the 2016 US presidential primary candidates’ Snapchat posts. This quantitative content analysis ( N = 871) coded for the visual content, production techniques, nonverbal content and frames used by the five candidates who used Snapchat as a strategic tool to engage voters throughout the course of the 2016 US primary campaign. The results indicate Clinton (D) deviated from the other candidates in the visual and nonverbal content as well as the frames used in her snaps. The implications of these findings on gendered self-presentation theory as well as inferences about the campaigns’ strategic social media motivations and effectiveness are also explored.

Picture Perfect? The Role of Instagram in Issue Agenda Setting During the 2016 Presidential Primary Campaign

Instagram emerged as a pivotal campaign tool in the 2016 presidential campaign. This study examines the agenda-setting effects between the presidential primary candidates’ Instagram posts and articles published in the mainstream newspapers during the primary period. A reciprocal relationship between Democratic and Republican candidates’ Instagram posts and newspaper articles is expected. A content analysis of issues recorded daily issue frequencies in each medium which were then examined using a time-series analysis. Results offer evidence of a relationship between Democratic and Republican candidates’ Instagram posts and newspapers on some of the top issues in the primary campaign. However, the findings also reveal that candidate Instagram posts independently predicted newspapers’ issue agendas on certain issues with no reverse effects.

Reassessing Twitter’s Agenda-Building Power

This study examined the relationship between elite news media agendas and campaign agendas during the 2016 presidential primary season. Computer-assisted content analysis was used to assess issue emphasis within Twitter feeds of U.S. presidential primary candidates and their campaigns as well as the nation’s top newspapers. The relationship between the overall Twitter agenda and that of newspapers, as well as the influence of front-runners Clinton, Cruz, Sanders, and Trump, was investigated using time series analysis. Aggregate and candidate-specific findings reveal some reciprocal relationships, but overall greater influence of newspapers on the Twitter agenda was detected. Findings suggest that Twitter has the potential to break free from and influence traditional media gatekeeping.

The Image is the Message: Instagram Marketing and the 2016 Presidential Primary Season

The 2016 presidential primary candidates expanded their social media marketing campaigns to include the image- and video-centered social network platform Instagram. To explore the role that images play in framing political character development and to identify which images received higher levels of engagement, content analyses were performed on the top seven primary candidates’ Instagram accounts. Results indicate that candidates most frequently employ the ideal candidate frame in their images, which also garnered the highest number of user likes and comments. Results also reveal that among Instagram image attributes, candidates frequently and successfully used text within their images, but filters were inconsistently applied across the candidates.

The Rise of Twitter in the Political Campaign: Searching for Intermedia Agenda-Setting Effects in the Presidential Primary

Questions exist over the extent to which social media content may bypass, follow, or attract the attention of traditional media. This study sheds light on such dynamics by examining intermedia agenda-setting effects among the Twitter feeds of the 2012 presidential primary candidates, Twitter feeds of the Republican and Democratic parties, and articles published in the nation's top newspapers. Daily issue frequencies within media were analyzed using time series analysis. A symbiotic relationship was found between agendas in Twitter posts and traditional news, with varying levels of intensity and differential time lags by issue. While traditional media follow candidates on certain topics, on others they are able to predict the political agenda on Twitter.

Twitter Use by Presidential Primary Candidates During the 2012 Campaign

This study examines Twitter use by presidential candidates during the 2012 primary election. The Twitter feeds and activity levels of candidates from the Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, and Americans Elect parties and their campaigns were gathered over a 3-month span. Variables examined include the number of tweets posted, followers gained, and followers added as well as the occurrence of hashtags, user mentions, hyperlinks, and content categories within tweets. Results showed candidates’ presence on Twitter was not uniform. Tweet frequency did not necessarily result in followers gained. Interestingly, the candidates who tweeted the most were not major party nominees. As the Republican primary campaign progressed, the amount of daily tweeting by the candidates was not higher than it had been earlier in the primary season.

More Supply, More Demand: The Changing Nature of Campaign Financing for Presidential Primary Candidates

Financing a presidential party nomination campaign has been a complicated affair for some time: candidates face contribution limits, source limitations, extensive reporting requirements, and, for those candidates opting into the voluntary public financing program, a strict spending limit. Moreover, the campaign financing system is not only complex but dynamic. The system recently has undergone two fundamental changes: (1) the voluntary public financing system, with its accompanying strict spending limit, is no longer an option for serious presidential candidates, who would be grossly outspent by nonparticipating rivals; and (2), the campaigns have come to rely ever more upon campaign finance bundlers, who collect maximum contributions (currently set at $2,300) from friends and associates, and upon micro-donors, who give less than $200 in the aggregate to a primary campaign. These changes arose because of the changing legal rules governing money in presidential elections and a dramatic lowering of the costs of campaigning facilitated by the Internet. They may alter both the nature of presidential campaigns as well as the types of candidates who are viable to become general election candidates. This paper has three parts. First, it describes the two recently-emerging fundamental changes in the campaign financing system for presidential primary candidates. Second, it explains why these changes have emerged now. Finally, it evaluates whether these changes are likely to be positive or negative from the standpoint of political equality and in terms of the quality and type of presidential candidates who win their parties' nominations.

The Internet election: perspectives on the Web in campaign 2004

Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 1 Campaign Finance Reform and the Internet: Regulating Web Messages in the 2004 Election and Beyond Chapter 3 2 Web Campaigning by U.S. Presidential Primary Candidates in 2000 and 2004 Chapter 4 3 Webstyles in 2004: The Gendering of Candidates on Campaign Web Sites? Chapter 5 4 Online Organization: Dean, Kerry, and Internet Politicking in the 2004 Iowa Caucus Chapter 6 5 Political Web Wars: The Use of the Internet for Political Advertising Chapter 7 6 Self-Referential and Opponent-Based Framing: Candidate E-Mail Strategies in Campaign 2004 Chapter 8 7 The Role of Campaign Web Sites in Promoting Candidates and Attracting Campaign Resources Chapter 9 8 Joy and Sorrow of Interactivity on the Campaign Trail: Blogs in the Primary Campaign of Howard Dean Chapter 10 9 The Blogging of the President Chapter 11 10 The Age of Reasons: Motives for Using Different Components of the Internet for Political Information Chapter 12 11 Discrediting Teresa: Wounded by Whispers on the Web Chapter 13 12 Web Interactivity and Young Adult Political Efficacy

“It's the electability, stupid” − or maybe not? Electability, substance, and strategic voting in presidential primaries

In an experiment that tests the effects of different information on the role of electability and policy considerations in people's evaluations of presidential candidates, we find that both substance and electability affect those assessments. In the context of the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, evaluations of candidates by more politically sophisticated partisans were affected by the experimental treatment that mentioned the traditional Democratic issue of social security, whereas less sophisticated respondents were more affected by the issue treatment that mentioned the economy. Because both groups were affected by positive electability information, we find some evidence of strategic considerations in voters' decision-making processes. In contrast to complaints that citizens do not use substantive information when assessing candidates in presidential nomination campaigns, we find that presidential primary candidates' electability and issue emphases both matter.

The Calculus of Concession

In this research we outline and evaluate a theory of the “calculus of concession”: when and why presidential primary candidates exit the race. Our explanation builds on prior studies of candidate attrition that traditionally emphasize money. However, we focus additional attention on the role of the press and its potential to influence a candidate’s exit decision. Data from the 2000 Republican presidential nomination campaign are used to test a Weibull model of candidate exit. Our results suggest that money is a critical component. But our research also demonstrates that the influence of money on candidates’ decisions depends on the candidate’s competitive position in the race. The availability of financial resources is far more critical to a close runner-up than to a less established long shot. Conversely, news coverage is far more critical to the decisions of longshot candidates early in the campaign than it is to big-shot candidates later on.

Effects of Horse-Race Coverage on Campaign Coffers: Strategic Contributing in Presidential Primaries

The quantity of "horse-race" coverage of political campaigns has been amply documented, but its consequences for the dynamics of campaigns are less well understood. This study examines the effects of media portrayals of public support for candidates on the behavior of potential campaign contributors. This relationship is tested in the context of the four leading Democratic presidential primary candidates in 1988. A time-series analysis of contributor behavior suggests that horse-race spin--that is, the extent of media coverage suggesting a candidate is gaining or losing political support--helps determine the frequency of campaign contributions. Consistent with previous research, some contributors are motivated to donate by coverage suggesting that their strongly favored candidate is losing ground, while other candidacies benefit from coverage suggesting increased viability. Overall, findings suggest that strategic considerations weigh heavily in decisions to donate money to political candidates.

Defining the issues of a presidential election from televised political spot advertisements

This article discerned the issues of the 1980 presidential primary campaigns from a content analysis of the issues presented in televised political spot advertisements created for nine presidential primary candidates.

Dogmatism and exposure to political candidates.

Formation and change of political as well as other beliefs are a function of a person's exposure to information which is subject partially to his control. He may actively seek or avoid additional information, particularly information that might be discrepant with preconceived opinions. The hypothesis was that Ss with high scores on dogmatism were less willing than Ss with low scores to attend speeches of presidential primary candidates whose views were discrepant with their own. A sample of 181 Ss was drawn from franchised university students. In a questionnaire covering a wide variety of opinions, Ss were asked to indicate agreement-disagreement with active candidates and speech attendance. An analysis using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test supported the hypothesis. The findings suggest implications for formation of beliefs about other public issues.