Candidate Reputations and Issue Agendas

Abstract

How do campaigns decide what issues to emphasize for voters? According to most studies, campaigns rely on factors outside of their control-issue salience, party issue ownership, and district ideology. In this article, I argue that campaign messages are designed primarily based on the candidate. I examine the issue content of campaign advertisements from U.S. House and Senate campaigns from 2000 to 2004 and develop a measure that determines if candidates have developed a reputation on a particular issue.When candidates have developed such a reputation, their campaign is more likely to highlight that issue to voters than campaigns whose candidate has not developed such a reputation. This relationship is consistent across most issues and across two different measures of a campaign's issue agenda.

Gender themes in state legislative candidates’ websites

“…A common strategy for candidates is to capture or own issues important to voters. Since voters are unlikely to change their policy positions during a campaign, candidates are advised to frame their campaigns around issues on which they are seen as competent (Arbour, 2013;Petrocik, 1996;Riker, 1983). For example, if voters care about agriculture and a candidate is a farmer, then that candidate could appeal to voters and be the "agriculture candidate."…”

Let Me Tell You a Little Bit about Myself: Biographical Appeals in Congressional General Election Campaign Advertising

“…One line of research follows the theoretical prediction of the Downsian median voter theorem that campaigns will converge to create a dialogue on the same issues (Kaplan, Park, and Ridout ; Sigelman and Buell ; Simon ; Spiliotes and Vavreck ). Other works have found that the issue agendas of campaigns are influenced by local issue priorities (Sulkin and Evans ), the national issue agenda (Ansolabehere and Iyengar ; Brasher ), and a candidate's personal reputation (Arbour ). There has been substantial focus on whether campaigns follow the prediction of issue ownership theory (Petrocik ) that campaigns are more likely to highlight the issues owned by their party…”

“…An extensive literature has developed to demonstrate the importance of candidate biography in campaign rhetoric (Arbour ; Sellers ; Shyles ). Campaigns discuss their candidate's past (broadly defined to include not just biography, but also private sector experience or their record in elected office) in the vast majority of advertisements.…”

“…Campaigns discuss their candidate's past (broadly defined to include not just biography, but also private sector experience or their record in elected office) in the vast majority of advertisements. In addition, campaigns are more likely to focus on issues when their candidate has developed a reputation among voters on that issue (Arbour ). This article will further that line of research by examining what type of biographical appeals are most prevalent, the types of candidates most likely to employ them, and the placement of these appeals in an advertisement.…”

“…Credibility is a necessary and sufficient condition to getting voters to listen to a candidate's issue stands and policy priorities (cf. Arbour ; Popkin , 65). Focusing on a candidate's family, personal background, or résumé provides a method to develop and enhance a candidate's credibility to the point where they can discuss their issue stands.…”