Rallying Votes? A Multilevel Approach to Understanding Voter Decision-Making in the 2016 Presidential Nominating Contests

Abstract

The 2016 presidential nominating process presented the American public with an interesting and tumultuous set of contests. Despite the unique nature of both the Democratic and Republican contests, the candidates stuck to the usual campaign activities to help influence voters. However, one of these campaign tactics, campaign visits, has been vastly understudied. Using a uniquely compiled dataset and a hierarchical linear model, I am able to test how campaign effects, including visits, as well as an individual’s predispositions impacted vote choice in the 2016 presidential nominating contests. The results demonstrate that the 2016 presidential nominating contests were decided based on a combination of both campaign activities and individual-level predictors.

Keywords:

• campaign advertisements
• campaign effects
• campaign visits
• presidential nominations

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jay Wendland

Jay Wendland is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Daemen College in Amherst, New York.