Candidate Character Traits in Presidential Elections

Holian, David B.; Prysby, Charles L.

doi:10.4324/9781315769080-1

Cited by 14 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Other scholars, however, view leadership and competence as separate, albeit related, character traits (Campbell 1983;Funk 1996b;Glass 1985;Goren 2002;Kinder 1986;Miller, Wattenberg, and Malanchuk 1986). We agree based on our analysis of elections prior to 2016 (Holian and Prysby 2015). Furthermore, the distinction between leadership and competence was especially important in 2016, as we shall see.…”

Section: Studying Candidate Character Traitssupporting

confidence: 68%

“…Several scholars have done exactly that, including an influential attempt to conceptualize candidate character traits by Kinder (1986), who analyzed a large number of character traits and found that they could be reduced to four basic dimensions: leadership, competence, integrity, and empathy. These four character dimensions have been accepted as the appropriate conceptualization by several researchers (Goren 2002;McCann 1990;Miller and Shanks 1996;Pierce 1993), and our own research supports this conceptualization (Holian and Prysby 2015). There are divergent views, but such discrepancies are often simply a case of combining two separate dimensions, such as leadership and competence, into one dimension that captures both traits (e.g., Funk 1999;Greene 2001).…”

Section: Studying Candidate Character Traitssupporting

confidence: 66%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Polls and Elections: Did Character Count? Candidate Traits and the 2016 Presidential Vote

Holian¹,

Prysby²

2020

Pres Stud Q

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The 2016 presidential election featured two candidates whose personal qualities Americans held in exceptionally low regard. Voters perceived Hillary Clinton to be knowledgeable, but dishonest. Assessments of Donald Trump were historically poor across the board. Because both candidates suffered from voter perceptions of their weak character, campaign attacks and media coverage combined to elevate character to a leading campaign issue. Yet our analysis of American National Election Studies data indicates that while voters were influenced by their perceptions of candidate character, only a small number of votes were changed by these perceptions. This is because candidate traits are more strongly determined by party identification than ever before, and because increasing party polarization has led to there being fewer genuinely persuadable voters than in past elections.

show abstract

Section: Studying Candidate Character Traitssupporting

confidence: 68%

Section: Studying Candidate Character Traitssupporting

confidence: 66%

Polls and Elections: Did Character Count? Candidate Traits and the 2016 Presidential Vote

Holian¹,

Prysby²

2020

Pres Stud Q

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Moreover, Clinton presided over the lowest black unemployment rate in American history (Mayer ). Conversely, a substantial number of whites viewed Clinton as untrustworthy and as less relatable than other politicians (Holian and Prysby , ; Cohen ). Given this, it is not surprising that Abrajano and Burnett () find that both Obama and Clinton have higher approval ratings among blacks as compared to whites.…”

Section: Clinton and Obama Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, one of the major explanations for why blacks and whites would view Obama and Clinton as being different is due to how they perceive the political disposition of the candidates (Holian and Prysby , ). Given that both candidates we examine in this study are Democrats, we informally controlled for partisanship in our selection of cases.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An area that has received less attention is that of perceptions of black presidential candidates’ traits relative to their white counterparts. In addition to perceived policy preferences and ideology, it is possible that different perspectives of the strengths and weaknesses of black and white candidates’ personal qualities could be driving differences in support among black and white respondents (Holian and Prysby , ; Brewer et al ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Traiting Places: Race and the Evaluation of Black and White Presidential Candidates

Stout¹,

Le²

2017

Pres Stud Q

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While there are a number of studies that explore perceptions of black politicians' strengths and weaknesses relative to white politicians, most of these studies use hypothetical black candidates and focus on white respondents' attitudes. We explore whether research on attitudes about black candidate attributes in controlled settings hold for real-world presidential candidates. Moreover, we assess whether black and white respondents view co-racial politicians' relative strengths differently. We use the 1992-2012 American National Election Study to test our research questions. We find that blacks consistently view Democratic presidential candidates' traits more positively than whites. However, the racial gap in perceptions of presidential candidate traits is greatest for Obama relative to Clinton. Moreover, we demonstrate that the greater racial divide in perceptions of Obama's traits is in part driven by whites who view blacks as a group negatively.

show abstract

Campaigning by Human Branding: Associating with American Presidents

Collins

2020

Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Human branding has become an essential issue in political marketing. It is exemplified in the election of American Presidents. This paper examines the American experience to suggest a typology of human branding that may apply in both presidential and other political systems. It examines examples of presidential human brands from George Washington on but, given significant changes to electoral procedures, concentrates on first-time successful presidential candidates since 1901. The fourfold typology offers an interrelated set of ideal types that will augment the analysis of human branding. It is applied to presidents when they take up office rather than after serving. The typology draws on the source of primary brand association and relation to the core political system of each politician.

show abstract

Candidate Character Traits in Presidential Elections

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Polls and Elections: Did Character Count? Candidate Traits and the 2016 Presidential Vote

Polls and Elections: Did Character Count? Candidate Traits and the 2016 Presidential Vote

Traiting Places: Race and the Evaluation of Black and White Presidential Candidates

Campaigning by Human Branding: Associating with American Presidents

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About