Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T13:24:03.871Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2009

JAMES N. DRUCKMAN ,
MARTIN J. KIFER  and
MICHAEL PARKIN
JAMES N. DRUCKMAN*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
MARTIN J. KIFER*
Affiliation:
High Point University
MICHAEL PARKIN*
Affiliation:
Oberlin College
*
James N. Druckman is Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, 601 University Place, Evanston, IL 60208 (druckman@northwestern.edu).
Martin J. Kifer is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Survey Research Center, High Point University, 833 Montlieu Avenue, High Point, NC 27262 (mkifer@highpoint.edu).
Michael Parkin is Assistant Professor of Politics, Oberlin College, 10 N. Professor Street, Oberlin, OH 44074 (Michael.Parkin@oberlin.edu).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Electoral campaigns are the foundation of democratic governance; yet scholarship on the content of campaign communications remains underdeveloped. In this paper, we advance research on U.S. congressional campaigns by integrating and extending extant theories of campaign communication. We test the resulting predictions with a novel dataset based on candidate Web sites over three election cycles. Unlike television advertisements or newspaper coverage, Web sites provide an unmediated, holistic, and representative portrait of campaigns. We find that incumbents and challengers differ across a broad range of behavior that reflects varying attitudes toward risk, that incumbents’ strategies depend on the competitiveness of the race, and that candidates link negative campaigning to other aspects of their rhetorical strategies. Our efforts provide researchers with a basis for moving toward a more complete understanding of congressional campaigns.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 103 , Issue 3 , August 2009 , pp. 343 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abramowitz, Alan I., Alexander, Brad, and Gunning, Matthew. 2006. “Incumbency, Redistricting, and the Decline of Competition in U.S. House Elections.” Journal of Politics 68: 75–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, and Iyengar, Shanto. 1995. Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, and Snyder, James M.. 2002. “The Incumbency Advantage in U.S. Elections: An Analysis of State and Federal Offices, 1942–2000.” Election Law Journal 1: 315–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, and Snyder, James M.. 2004. “Using Term Limits to Estimate Incumbency Advantages When Officeholders Retire Strategically.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 29: 487–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumeister, Roy. F., Bratslavsky, Ellen, Fickenauer, Catrin, and Vohs, Kathleen D.. 2001. “Bad Is Stronger Than Good.” Review of General Psychology 5: 323–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berelson, Bernhard R., Lazarsfeld, Paul F., and McPhee, William N.. 1954. Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bimber, Bruce, and Davis, Richard. 2003. Campaigning Online: The Internet in U.S. Elections. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blalock, Hubert M. Jr. 1979. Social Statistics. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw–Hill.Google Scholar
Bucy, Erik P. 2004. “Interactivity in Society: Locating an Elusive Concept.” The Information Society 20: 373–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BuellEmmett H., Jr. Emmett H., Jr., and Sigelman, Lee. 2008. Attack Politics. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Carson, Jamie L., Engstrom, Erik J., and Roberts, Jason M.. 2006. “Redistricting, Candidate Entry, and U.S. House Elections.” American Political Science Review 50: 283–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chadwick, Andrew. 2006. Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chinni, Dante. 2002. Oct. 29. How the Web Is Changing Election Campaigns. Christian Science Monitor (on-line edition). <http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1029/p02s01-uspo.html>. (August 2, 2007)..+(August+2,+2007).>Google Scholar
Couper, Mick P. 2008. Designing Effective Web Surveys. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Democracy Online Project. 1999. Online Campaigning: A Primer. Washington, DC: Graduate School of Political Management, George Washington University.Google Scholar
Dolan, Kathleen. 2005. “Do Women Candidates Play to Gender Stereotypes? Do Men Candidates Play to Women? Candidate Sex and Issues Priorities on Campaign Web Sites.” Political Research Quarterly 58: 31–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Druckman, James N. 2004. “Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and the (Ir)relevance of Framing Effects.” American Political Science Review 98: 671–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, James N., Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Ostermeier, Eric. 2004. “Candidate Strategies to Prime Issues and Image.” The Journal of Politics 66: 1205–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, James N., Kifer, Martin J., and Parkin, Michael. 2007. “The Technological Development of Candidate Web Sites: How and Why Candidates Use Web Innovations.” Social Science Computer Review 25: 425–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, James N., Kifer, Martin J., and Parkin, Michael. N.d. “Timeless Strategy Meets New Medium: Going Negative on Congressional Campaign Web Sites, 2002–2006.” Political Communication. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Druckman, James N., and McDermott, Rose. 2008. “Emotion and the Framing of Risky Choice.”Political Behavior 30: 297–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esterling, Kevin M., Lazer, David M. J., and Neblo, Michael A.. 2005. “Home (Page) Style: Determinants of the Quality of House Members’ Web Sites.” International Journal of Electronic Government Research 1: 50–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eveland, William P., and Dunwoody, Sharon. 2002. “An Investigation of Elaboration and Selective Scanning as Mediators of Learning from the Web and Print.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 46: 34–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenno, Richard. 1978. Homestyle: House Members in Their Districts. Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman, and Company.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1989. Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 2004. “Keystone Reconsidered.” In Congress Reconsidered, ed. Dodd, Lawrence C. and Oppenheimer, Bruce I.. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.Google Scholar
Foot, Kirsten A., and Schneider, Steven M.. 2006. Web Campaigning. Cambridge: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, Charles H. 1991. “Eschewing Obfuscation? Campaigns and the Perception of U.S. Senate Incumbents.” American Political Science Review 85: 1193–1214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franz, Michael M., Freedman, Paul B., Goldstein, Kenneth M., and Ridout, Travis N.. 2008. Campaign Advertising and American Democracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Funk, Carolyn L. 1999. “Bringing the Candidate into Models of Candidate Evaluations.” Journal of Politics 61: 700–720.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geer, John G. 2006. In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, Alan S. 2004. “Does Campaign Spending Work? Field Experiments Provide Evidence and Suggest New Theory.” American Behavioral Scientist 47: 541–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstein, Kenneth M. 2004. “What Did They See and When Did They See It?” In The Medium and the Message, ed. Goldstein, Kenneth M. and Strach, Patricia. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, Prentice-Hall, 27–42.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Kenneth M., and Freedman, Paul. 2002. “Campaign Advertising and Voter Turnout: New Evidence for a Stimulation Effect.” Journal of Politics 64: 721–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstein, Kenneth M., and Rivlin, Joel. 2005. Political Advertising in the 2002 Elections. <http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/tvadvertising/Political%20Advertising%20in%20the%202002%20Elections.htm>. (April 17, 2006)..+(April+17,+2006).>Google Scholar
Gronke, Paul. 2000. The Electorate, the Campaign, and the Office: A Unified Approach to Senate and House Elections. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groseclose, Timothy. 2001. “A Model of Candidate Location When One Candidate Has a Valence Advantage.” American Journal of Political Science 45: 862–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, Danny. 2005. “Candidate Quality through a Partisan Lens: A Theory of Trait Ownership.” American Journal of Political Science 49: 908–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ireland, Emilienne, and Nash, Phil Tajitsu. 2001. Winning Campaigns Online: Strategies for Candidates and Causes, 2nd ed. Bethesda, MD: Science Writers Press.Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, and Kinder, Donald R.. 1987. News That Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Shapiro, Robert Y.. 1994. “Issues, Candidate Image, and Priming: The Use of Private Polls in Kennedy's 1960 Presidential Campaign.” American Political Science Review 88: 527–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobson, Gary. 1992. The Politics of Congressional Elections, 3rd ed. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Gary. 2004. The Politics of Congressional Elections, 6th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.Google Scholar
Kahn, Kim Fridkin, and Kenney, Patrick J.. 1999. The Spectacle of U.S. Senate Campaigns. Princeton, NS: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, Kim Fridkin, and Kenney, Patrick J.. 2004. No Holds Barred: Negativity in U.S. Senate Campaigns. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Kern, Montague. 1989. 30-Second Politics: Political Advertising in the 80's. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R. 1986. “Presidential Character Revisited.” In Political Cognition: The 19th Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition, ed. Lau, Richard R. and Sears, David O.. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 233–55.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R. 1998. “Opinion and Actions in the Realm of Politics” In The Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. Gilbert, Daniel T., Fiske, Susan T. and Lindzey, Gardner. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 778–867.Google Scholar
Koch, Jeffrey. 2008. “Has the Importance of the Incumbency Advantage Diminished in House Elections?” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, August 31–September 2.Google Scholar
Latimer, Christopher P. 2007. “Utilizing the Internet as a Campaign Tool: The Relationship between Incumbency, Political Party Affiliation, Election Outcomes, and the Quality of Campaign Websites in the United States.” Journal of Information Technology and Politics 4: 81–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lau, Richard R., and Pomper, Gerald M.. 2004. Negative Campaigning: An Analysis of U.S. Senate Elections. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Lau, Richard R., and Redlawsk, David P.. 2006. How Voters Decide: Information Processing in Election Campaigns. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Yan. 2004. “Fragmentation of the Structure of Political Communication Research: Diversification or Isolation?” In Handbook of Political Communication Research, ed. Kaid, Lynda Lee. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 69–108.Google Scholar
Lipinski, Daniel. 2004. Congressional Communication: Content and Consequences. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupia, Arthur, and McCubbins, Mathew D.. 1998. The Democratic Dilemma. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Marcus, George E., Neuman, W. Russell, and MacKuen, Michael. 2000. Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mark, David. 2006. Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
McDermott, Rose, Fowler, James H., and Smirnov, Oleg. 2008. “On the Evolutionary Origin of Prospect Theory Preferences.” Journal of Politics 70: 335–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Joanne M., and Krosnick, Jon A.. 1996. “News Media Impact on the Ingredients of Presidential Evaluations.” In Political Persuasion and Attitude Change, ed. Mutz, Diana C., Sniderman, Paul M., and Brody, Richard A.. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 79–100.Google Scholar
Neuendorf, Kimberly A. 2002. The Content Analysis Guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Newman, Bruce I. 1999. Ed. Handbook of Political Marketing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Newman, Bruce I., and Perloff, Richard M.. 2004. “Political Marketing.” In Handbook of Political Communication Research, ed. Kaid, Lynda Lee. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 17–44.Google Scholar
Niemi, Richard G., and Weisberg, Herbert F.. 1993. Classics in Voting Behavior. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin I. 1978. Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections: Rational Man and Electoral Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Palmer, Jerry. 2004. “Source Strategies and Media Audiences.” Journal of Political Marketing 4: 57–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perloff, Richard M. 2002. “Political Campaign Persuasion and Its Discontents.” In The Persuasion Handbook, ed. Dillard, James Price, and Pfau, Michael. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Petrocik, John R. 1996. “Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study.” American Journal of Political Science 40: 825–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rahn, Wendy M., Aldrich, John H., Borgida, Eugene, and Sullivan, John L.. 1990. “A Social-Cognitive Model of Candidate Approval.” In Information and Democratic Processes, ed. Ferejohn, John and Kuklinki, James. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Riffe, Daniel, Lacy, Stephen, and Fico, Frederick G.. 1998. Analyzing Media Messages. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Riker, William H. 1996. The Strategy of Rhetoric, ed. Calvert, Randell L., Mueller, John, and Wilson, Rick. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, E. E. 1960. The Semi-sovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Sellers, Patrick. 1998. “Strategy and Background in Congressional Campaigns.” American Political Science Review 92: 159–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Semiatin, Richard. 2005. Campaigns in the 21st Century. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Shaw, Daron R. 1999. “The Effect of TV Ads and Candidate Appearances on Statewide Presidential Votes, 1988–96.” American Political Science Review 83: 345–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sides, John M. 2006. “The Origins of Campaign Agendas.” British Journal of Political Science 36: 407–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sigelman, Lee, and Buell, Emmett H. Jr. 2003. “You Take the High Road and I'll Take the Low Road? The Interplay of Attack Strategies and Tactics in Presidential Campaigns.” Journal of Politics 65: 518–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, Adam F. 2002. The Winning Message: Candidate Behavior, Campaign Discourse, and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skaperdas, Stergios, and Grofman, Bernard. 1995. “Modeling Negative Campaigning.” American Political Science Review 89: 49–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Southwell, Brian G., and Lee, Mira. 2004. “A Pitfall of New Media? User Controls Exacerbate Editing Effects on Memory.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 81: 643–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sniderman, Paul M., Brody, Richard A., and Tetlock, Philip E.. 1991. Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stromer-Galley, Jennifer, Howard, Philip N., Schneider, Steven M., and Foot, Kirsten A.. 2003. “The New Political Campaign Position: A Survey of Web Site Producers and Managers.” Presented at annual meeting of the International Communication Association, San Diego (May).Google Scholar
Sulkin, Tracy. 2001. “Explaining Campaign Intensity.” American Politics Research 29: 608–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sulkin, Tracy. 2005. Issue Politics in Congress. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sulkin, Tracy, and Evans, Jillian. 2006. “Dynamics of Diffusion: Aggregate Patterns in Congressional Campaign Agendas.” American Politics Research 34: 505–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomz, Michael, Wittenberg, Jason, and King, Gary. 1999. “Clarify.” Version 1.2.1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, June 1. <http://gking.harvard.edu/> (Accessed January 2009).+(Accessed+January+2009).>Google Scholar
Trent, Judith S., and Friedenberg, Robert V.. 2008. Political Campaign Communication. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Wason, Peter C. 1959. “The Processing of Positive and Negative Information.” The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 11: 92–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Public Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar