Presidential Rhetoric, Candidate Evaluations, and Party Identification: Can Parties "Own" Values?
In: Political research quarterly: PRQ ; official journal of the Western Political Science Association and other associations, Band 61, Heft 3, S. 419-433
ISSN: 1938-274X
By embedding value cues in their rhetoric, presidential candidates hope to present themselves and their parties as stewards of those values. This article examines the effects of this rhetoric by testing two hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that this rhetoric educates the public about the values of the candidates and their parties. The second suggests that this rhetoric primes existing perceptions of party "ownership" of values. The author's findings suggest that candidates are successful at using value rhetoric to modify public perceptions of their values as individuals. However, this rhetoric does not affect perceptions of party labels and individual candidates identically.