Hearing Campaign Appeals: The Accountability Implications of Presidential Campaign Tone

Abstract

Citizen understanding of candidate priorities is highly consequential for both elections and postelection accountability and is especially key to the office of the presidency. I examine the impact of campaign advertising tone on citizen understanding of candidate agendas in the context of the 2000 presidential election. Merging data on political ads from the Wisconsin Advertising Project with individual survey data, I test whether citizens are more likely to accurately hear a positive campaign theme. The analysis provides empirical support for this benefit of positivity.

Keywords:

• accountability
• campaign advertising
• campaign tone
• presidential campaigns

Notes

1. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, with the requirement that sponsoring candidates must visually approve of the ad, could help overcome this.

2. Sampling was carried out on a daily basis. Thus, each day's interviews represent a very small sample that is independent of every other day's sample. Approximately 30 interviews were completed each week, producing a total of 1,511 respondents through election day.

3. The data were obtained from a joint project of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and Professor Kenneth Goldstein of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and include media-tracking data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group in Washington, DC. The Brennan Center–Wisconsin project was sponsored by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Brennan Center, Professor Goldstein, or the Pew Charitable Trusts.

4. Not every respondent resided in one of the top 75 media markets, however, so data on the information environment are unavailable for about 350 respondents.

5. Since much campaign information is transmitted via other sources—opinion leaders, social networks, or the mass media—the impact of such advertising does not rest solely on observation of the spots by individuals.

6. All ads sponsored by the candidate's campaign or the national party committee are included. Independent ads are not included here. While these ads add to the campaign information environment, for the purposes of understanding the presidential candidate agendas, such ads serve primarily to muddy the signal sent by the candidates.

7. In addition, I reestimated the models that follow using an ad measure that incorporated only the ads aired in a respondent's media market in the week leading up to her or his interview. Based on the Akaike Information Criteria (AIC), the model fit was better using the cumulative ad measures for positive ads in all eight cases. The cumulative ad measures for negative ads produced a better model fit statistic in five of eight cases, while the 7-day measure fit the data better in two of eight cases; in one case, the two measures produced indistinguishable AICs. For comparative ads, the model fit was better using the cumulative ad measures in three of eight cases, the model fit was better using the 7-day ad measures in three of eight cases, and the results were indistinguishable in two cases. Empirically, the cumulative measure appears to be more appropriate. Theoretically, the cumulative measure acknowledges that at the onset of the general election citizens, particularly in heavily fought primary states, are not blank slates.

8. Clustering the standard errors by media market produced substantively similar results.

9. Gore's advertising campaign also mentioned his background (in 30% of ad airings) and the environment (in 19% of ad airings) frequently. Bush's advertising campaign mentioned the budget extensively (in 19% of ad airings) in addition to these four issues.

10. Bush ran very few negative ads mentioning health care, so readers are urged to be circumspect in interpreting these results.

11. Gore ran very few comparative ads mentioning education, so readers should be circumspect in interpreting these results.

12. Because Gore aired few comparative education ads and these were relatively concentrated within media markets, the survey contains only six respondents with nonzero values for Gore's comparative education ads. The coefficient is, as a consequence, estimated imprecisely and the coefficients on the party–education emphasis interactions could not be estimated reliably at all. These results, then, are mostly suggestive.

13. The figures were created using Clarify to simulate the probabilities (King, Tomz, & Wittenberg, 2000; Tomz, Wittenberg, & King, 2003).

14. The range of the x-axis represents the minimum and maximum of ads in the respondents' media markets at the time of their interviews, not the maximum of ads aired across media markets.

15. Because Bush ran few negative ads that mentioned health care, there are only three respondents in this survey with nonzero values for Bush's negative health care ads. Consequently, the coefficient is estimated quite imprecisely and the interactions between Bush's negative health care emphasis and the party dummies could not be estimated at all.

16. The content analysis is based on all news segments mentioning Bush or Gore on NBC Nightly News. Stories were coded for the presence or absence of each issue in a story.

17. Though a few important negative agenda items spring readily to mind, most notably, Bush 41's no new taxes pledge.