Search results

Campaign Dynamics: The Race for Governor explores the dynamic interaction between candidates and voters that takes place during campaigns. It finds that voters respond in a meaningful way to what candidates say and do during their campaigns. Candidates for state-wide and national offices spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours trying to convey their messages to voters. Do voters hear them and respond? More specifically, do the issues candidates stress on the campaign trail influence the choices voters make when casting their ballots? The evidence presented in this book suggests that the answer is a resounding yes. Campaign Dynamics examines more than one hundred gubernatorial elections from 1982 through 1994, beginning with case studies of the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey in 1993. Combining interviews and observations with empirical analysis of public opinion polls, the case studies develop the basic understanding of how campaigns define the set of important issues in an election. Then the analysis is expanded to consider the abortion issue in thirty-four gubernatorial elections in 1990. Later chapters test these ideas in over one hundred gubernatorial elections, combining exit poll data on upwards of 100,000 voters from dozens of races with measures of campaign themes developed out of a content analysis of newspaper coverage. This book employs multiple methods and sources of data and represents one of the most comprehensive theoretical and empirical efforts to understand the role of campaigns in voting behavior ever undertaken. Campaign Dynamics will be of interest to those who study state politics, voting behavior and campaigns, and democratic theory. It should also guide students and scholars interested in performing empirical tests of formal models and those wishing to combine multiple methods in their research. Thomas M. Carsey is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois at Chicago

Calls for greater data access and research transparency have emerged on many fronts within professional social science. For example, the American Political Science Association (APSA) recently adopted new guidelines for data access and research transparency. APSA has also appointed the Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT) ad hoc committee to continue exploring these issues. DA-RT sponsored this symposium. In addition, funding agencies like the National Institutes for Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have expanded requirements for data management and data distribution. These pressures present challenges to researchers, but they also present opportunities. Adapted from the source document.

Calls for greater data access and research transparency have emerged on many fronts within professional social science. For example, the American Political Science Association (APSA) recently adopted new guidelines for data access and research transparency. APSA has also appointed the Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT) ad hoc committee to continue exploring these issues. DA-RT sponsored this symposium. In addition, funding agencies like the National Institutes for Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have expanded requirements for data management and data distribution. These pressures present challenges to researchers, but they also present opportunities.

Carsey reviews 'Democracy and Elections' by Rochard S. Katz.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-213) and index. ; Mode of access: Internet.

The most prominent theories of electoral participation focus on the individual-level characteristics of citizens as the primary determinants of voter turnout. However, seeking to re-incorporate "politics" into the study of electoral participation, scholars have increasingly turned their attention toward the stimulus provided by political campaigns. A major point of emphasis within this research has been whether negative campaigns mobilize or demobilize citizens. Findings thus far have been mixed. We further this line of inquiry by conducting a broad-based study of the impact of state-level campaigns on individual voter turnout. Merging media market-level measures of television campaign advertising in US Senate elections with individual-level data from the 1998 National Election Study and the Voter Supplement File of the November 1998 Current Population Survey, we find strong support for a mobilization effect. We further demonstrate that the mobilization effect of these advertising campaigns results almost entirely from the volume of negative ads aired. Our results help to clarify the role of campaigns in general, and negative campaigning in particular, in bringing voters to the polls. [Copyright 2006 Elsevier Ltd.]