Over the past decade Brazil has become well known for its open embrace of new media technologies. In tandem, an increasing number of Brazilian candidates have begun to use web and social media sites as an integral part of their overall campaign efforts. The present study is the first effort at large-scale modeling of these relationships in an emerging Latin American democracy. To explore the relationship between using digital media in a candidate’s political campaign strategy and voter support, I built an original dataset of the 2010 elections for the lower house of the Brazilian Congress. I investigate factors such as a candidate’s use of web and social networking sites in conjunction with other traditional influences such as candidate gender, age, incumbency, party affiliation, coalition membership and campaign spending. I demonstrate that having a robust web presence and using social media, holding other factors constant, can be a significant contribution to the popularity of a candidate on election day in an open-list proportional representation electoral system such as that in Brazil. Additionally, I demonstrate how this digital media campaign tactic might be specifically beneficial to traditionally disadvantaged candidates in bridging the gap of their under-representation in Brazilian politics.

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A number of voices have emerged in U.S. political discourse questioning the legitimacy of American exceptionalism, suggesting we are in a "post-American world." Our research examines the effects that political messages that explicitly challenge American exceptionalism can have on U.S. public opinion. Drawing upon social identity theory, we find that explicit challenges to American exceptionalism significantly impact Americans' views toward their own nation, their willingness to denigrate foreign publics, and their broader foreign policy preferences.

This article examines how Donald Trump remade the modern jeremiad during his 2016 presidential campaign. We argue that Trump differed from recent oppositional candidates for the presidency in his invocation of American exceptionalism. Our findings show that unlike his predecessors: (1) Trump's use of the jeremiad was constrained by his limited conception of American exceptionalism; (2) Trump routinely portrayed the country as no longer exceptional; and (3) Trump offered a vision for restoring American exceptionalism, focusing primarily on "self-exceptionalism." We discuss how these findings contribute to our understanding of the modern jeremiad and examine how these dynamics may play out during Trump's reelection campaign. On July 17, 2016, the Republican National Committee (RNC) released the party's official campaign platform for the 2016 election. The document was unequivocal in establishing that the philosophical foundation of the Republican Party was centered on a single idea-American exceptionalism. Notably, the preamble of the platform began with this stand-alone statement: "We believe in American exceptionalism [full stop]" (RNC 2016, i). It then emphasized: "We believe that American exceptionalism-the notion that our ideas and principles as a nation give us a unique place of moral leadership in the worldrequires the United States to retake its natural position as leader of the free world" (41). Finally, it declared that the Republican Party "embraces American exceptionalism and