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Prior research theorizes that ambivalence makes opinions about an object unreliable in the sense of being haphazard, unpredictable, or variable. As such, ambivalence is a prominent explanation for seeming nonattitudes in opinion surveys. This study proposes an alternative account of the effects of ambivalence on attitudes. It posits that people who are ambivalent about an issue split the difference between their conflicting considerations by taking a position near the middle of the bipolar opinion scale, which reflects a moderate attitude. I show how the widely-used method of modeling the supposed variability of ambivalent opinions conflates variability and moderation. This problem is addressed by modeling variability and moderation of attitudes separately, without this confound. Using this strategy in analyses involving four datasets and three policy domains, the results show that ambivalence is associated with moderate, not variable, attitudes. Ambivalence does not increase the variability of opinions but, rather, moves them quite predictably toward the middle of the response scale. The results recast our understanding of the effects of ambivalence on political opinions and raise questions about the ability of ambivalence to explain nonattitudes in surveys. Adapted from the source document.

Despite recent periods of unified party control of government in Washington, DC, divided government has been the norm in recent decades. Scholars agree that when both presidential and congressional candidates are on the ballot the driving force behind divided government at the national level is split‐ticket voting. In this study, I present a new psychological model of split‐ticket voting. I posit that ticket splitting is motivated by ambivalence over the two major political parties. I test this partisan ambivalence explanation on split‐ticket votes between president and Congress nationally between 1988 and 2004 and voting for state executive offices in Ohio in 1998. I find that partisan ambivalence predicts ticket splitting at both the national and state levels and does so about as well as some other explanations. The results of this study suggest that divided government occurs, in part, because voters are divided within themselves.

"Which ONE issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for
president?" This survey question, which appeared on the 2004
National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll, attracted as much
controversy as any in recent years. More respondents chose "moral
values" than any other issue. Among this 22% of respondents, 80%
voted for President Bush. Initially, news reporters and pundits
interpreted this finding as indicating that moral values played a
decisive role in Bush's victory. The morning after the election,
Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC program Hardball,
suggested the election was "a referendum on values" ("Chris Matthews
Gives his Assessment"). Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet the
Press, said that "People had an agenda. They put their
moral values ahead of some of their economic interests"
("Analysis"). A reporter for the CBS Morning News
concluded that "in the end, the number-one voter motivator [was]
morality" ("Morality Proves Number One").

Objective-Research on opinion leadership examines the convergence of opinion between elites and masses on issues of public policy. I examine the confluence of opinion between Pope John Paul II and American Catholics on the death penalty and legalized abortion. Method-I use data from three nationally representative opinion surveys and one statewide survey conducted prior to John Paul's death. Results-The results support the supposition that Catholics who esteemed the pope are more negative in their evaluations of the death penalty and abortion. Conclusions-John Paul II, as leader of the Catholic Church, may have influenced Catholic opinion on political issues. Tables, Figures, 1, References. Adapted from the source document.

Most research on media effects in political science deals with the news media or political campaigns. Although some recent work looks at the effects of soft news on beliefs and opinions, little attention has been paid to the potential consequences of media that are fictional. Although viewers typically watch fiction for entertainment, the themes, plots, and dialogue may nevertheless influence their thoughts about politics. This article examines the effects of fiction on political beliefs. We do this in the context of an experimental design, where subjects in the treatment group watched the outlandish movie, Wag the Dog. The results show that those who watched the film were more likely to believe in a far-fetched conspiracy, namely that the U.S. government has and will fabricate a war for political gain. The findings stretch the boundaries of fictional influence by focusing on extreme, conspiratorial beliefs. We suggest that political science and communications scholars should focus greater attention on the implications of fiction for beliefs and attitudes, as the consequences can be perverse. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

Most research on media effects in political science deals with the news media or political campaigns. Although some recent work looks at the effects of soft news on beliefs and opinions, little attention has been paid to the potential consequences of media that are fictional. Although viewers typically watch fiction for entertainment, the themes, plots, and dialogue may nevertheless influence their thoughts about politics. This article examines the effects of fiction on political beliefs. We do this in the context of an experimental design, where subjects in the treatment group watched the outlandish movie, Wag the Dog. The results show that those who watched the film were more likely to believe in a far-fetched conspiracy, namely that the U.S. government has and will fabricate a war for political gain. The findings stretch the boundaries of fictional influence by focusing on extreme, conspiratorial beliefs. We suggest that political science and communications scholars should focus greater attention on the implications of fiction for beliefs and attitudes, as the consequences can be perverse.

Objectives. Most studies of media effects in political communication focus on news media. A smaller body of work extends theories of news media effects to fictional entertainment media. Just as news media engage in priming and agenda setting, these studies suggest that fictional media do as well. In this study, we deal with fictional media's framing of issues. No research has sought to test the effects of framing in explicitly fictional media on political opinions. We develop the outlines of a theory we call "fictional framing" and test it in an experiment.Methods. Participants in our treatment group watched the film Cider House Rules. The movie frames the issue of abortion in the case of incest in a pro‐choice way, and frames morality in terms of following one's own conscience.Results. The film influenced opinions in ways consistent with the framing of these issues.Conclusions. Since abortion opinions and moral values tend to be entrenched, we consider this a strong first test of the effects of fictional framing.

This study investigates the dynamics of public opinion on cultural policy issues over the past four decades. We find collective opinions on many such issues follow the same path over time, driven by an underlying cultural policy mood (CPM). We use more than 2,000 survey marginals, nested in more than 200 time series, that reflect aggregate opinions in 16 cultural policy domains, across 38 years. Using a dynamic principal components method, the results show that since the early 1970s, CPM has moved steadily and consistently in a liberal direction. Over this period, changes in CPM have been tightly linked to changes in aggregate religiosity. Opinion on two notable cultural issues-the death penalty and abortion-do not follow CPM. While public opinion has grown increasingly anti-death-penalty for more than a decade, over roughly the same period it has become as pro-life on abortion as at any time since Roe v. Wade. The measurement of CPM provides evidence of a macro construct of cultural issues that includes opinion toward many, but not all, morality policies. Adapted from the source document.