Do political campaigns matter? Campaign effects in elections and referendums

2003 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-68
Author(s):  
Michael Gallagher
2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN GEER ◽  
RICHARD R. LAU

Scholars have invested a great deal of effort in trying to estimate the impact of political campaigns on the public. While progress has been made, one fundamental problem continues to plague our attempts to study campaigns: the lack of good, detailed data about the behaviour of candidates. In the United States, for instance, the presidential battle is a national struggle that unfolds locally on the stages of fifty states, yet most data collection efforts have treated presidential elections as if they were national contests, conducted (implicitly) in an identical manner across the entire country. Using available (national) data as a baseline and theory to predict plausible variations from that baseline, the authors devise a method for simulating variation in presidential campaigns across states and over election years—one of the crucial missing pieces of the puzzle. Their method generates a range of plausible effects, which is often narrow enough to shed light on important hypotheses. It can be employed whenever data are available at a more aggregate level than is desirable. This method is then applied to assess the debate over the impact of attack advertising on turnout. This approach suggests that campaign negativism stimulated (rather than demobilized) turnout in presidential elections from 1980 through 2000.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-103
Author(s):  
Ágnes Vass

AbstractPolicy towards Hungarians living in neighbouring countries has been a central issue for Hungarian governments, yet Hungarian diaspora living mainly in Western Europe and North America have received very little attention. This has changed after the 2010 landslide victory of Fidesz. The new government introduced a structured policy focused on engaging Hungarian diaspora, largely due to the nationalist rhetoric of the governing party. The article argues that this change reflects a turn of Hungarian nationalism into what Ragazzi and Balalowska (2011) have called post-territorial nationalism, where national belonging becomes disconnected from territory. It is because of this new conception of Hungarian nationalism that we witness the Hungarian government approach Hungarian communities living in other countries in new ways while using new policy tools: the offer of extraterritorial citizenship; political campaigns to motivate the diaspora to take part in Hungarian domestic politics by voting in legislative elections; or the never-before-seen high state budget allocated to support these communities. Our analysis is based on qualitative data gathered in 2016 from focus group discussions conducted in the Hungarian community of Western Canada to understand the effects of this diaspora politics from a bottom-up perspective. Using the theoretical framework of extraterritorial citizenship, external voting rights and diaspora engagement programmes, the paper gives a brief overview of the development of the Hungarian diaspora policy. We focus on how post-territorial nationalism of the Hungarian government after 2010 effects the ties of Hungarian communities in Canada with Hungary, how the members of these communities conceptualise the meaning of their “new” Hungarian citizenship, voting rights and other diaspora programmes. We argue that external citizenship and voting rights play a crucial role in the Orbán government’s attempt to govern Hungarian diaspora communities through diaspora policy.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yung-I Liu

<p><a>This study investigates the informing effects of communication in political campaigns from a geospatial perspective. The results from analyzing survey data collected during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections in the U.S. generally suggest that the main forms of traditional </a>communication, i.e., print newspapers and network and cable television news—but with the exception of local TV news—play a significant role in informing citizens about political campaigns. Political discussion also plays a role in this regard. The implications of the respective roles of a number of news forms in a democracy are discussed.</p>


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexei V. Ovtchinnikov ◽  
Philip Valta
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Lisel Hintz

This chapter introduces the book’s aim of turning the concept of identity politics inside out. It presents Turkey as an empirical window onto these dynamics, familiarizing readers with puzzling shifts in domestic politics and foreign policy that do not correspond to shifts in geopolitical dynamics, international economic conditions, or the coming to power of a new party. For example, after the AKP made progress toward EU membership in its first term, the party’s subsequent terms witnessed a sharp reorientation of Turkey, a traditional Western ally, toward the Middle East. This period also demonstrates a rise in “Ottomania”—reviled until recently as delusions of imperial Islamic grandeur—which now permeates everything from pop culture to political campaigns. How was such a drastic reorientation of Turkey possible under the AKP? This introduction lays out how the book solves this puzzle by turning identity politics inside out and outlines the structure of the book.


Author(s):  
Costas Panagopoulos

Over the past few decades, a fundamental shift in political campaign strategy has been afoot in U.S. elections: Political campaigns have been gradually shifting their attention away from swing voters toward their respective, partisan bases. Independents and weak partisans have been targeted with less frequency, and the emphasis in contemporary elections has been on strong partisans. This book documents this shift—away from persuasion toward base mobilization—in the context of U.S. presidential elections and explains that this phenomenon is likely linked to several developments, including advances in campaign technology and voter-targeting capabilities as well as insights from behavioral social science focusing on voter mobilization. The analyses show the 2000 presidential election represents a watershed cycle that punctuated this shift. The book also explores the implications of the shift toward base mobilization and links these developments to growing turnout rates for strong partisans and attenuating participation among independents or swing voters over time. The book concludes these patterns have contributed to heightened partisan polarization in the United States.


Author(s):  
Michael X. Delli Carpini ◽  
Bruce A. Williams

The media landscape of countries across the globe is changing in profound ways that are of relevance to the study and practice of political campaigns and elections. This chapter uses the concept of media regimes to put these changes in historical context and describe the major drivers that lead to a regime’s formation, institutionalization, and dissolution. It then turns to a more detailed examination of the causes and qualities of what is arguably a new media regime that has formed in the United States; the extent to which this phenomenon has or is occurring (albeit in different ways) elsewhere; and how the conduct of campaigns and elections are changing as a result. The chapter concludes with thoughts on the implications of the changing media landscape for the study and practice of campaigns and elections specifically, and democratic politics more generally.


Public Choice ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vuk Vukovic

AbstractIn 2008, as the financial crisis unfolded in the United States, the banking industry elevated its lobbying and campaign spending activities. By the end of 2008, and during 2009, the biggest political spenders, on average, received the largest bailout packages. Is that relationship causal? In this paper, I examine the effect of political connections on the allocation of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to the US financial services industry during the 2008–2009 financial crisis. I find that TARP recipients that lobbied the government, donated to political campaigns, or whose top executives had direct connections to politics received better bailout deals. I estimate regression discontinuity design and instrumental variable models to uncover how election outcomes for politicians in close races affected the distribution of bailout funds for connected firms. The results do not imply that some banks were deliberately favored over others, just that favored banks benefited because of their proximity to the right people in power. If being politically connected matters in general, in times of crisis it matters even more.


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