Targeted Issue Messages and Voting Behavior

Abstract

In today’s data-driven campaigns, presidential targeting strategies rely on detailed perceptions about the political leanings and policy positions of Americans to decide which registered voters to contact and which messages to emphasize in their outreach. However, identifying supporters and opponents of a candidate’s policy positions is far from foolproof. This reality results in some citizens encountering political message(s) on congruent issues, where their issue stance aligns with the messaging candidate, and others encountering incongruent issue message(s), where the candidate and message recipient do not share the same position. Examining official contact records from the 2012 presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney, I find evidence that Romney’s campaign had some success when targeting Democrats with congruent issues. Messaging Democrats with an issue where they and Romney share common ground is associated with decreased support for Obama, increased abstention, and increased support for Romney. Contacting Democrats with an incongruent message and contacting Republicans with either an incongruent or congruent issue message had minimal effects on the voting behavior of the recipient.

Do (Microtargeted) Deepfakes Have Real Effects on Political Attitudes?

“…In sum, concordant with Endres (2019), we found that partisans can be negatively affected by a microtargeted message regarding their own candidate. In contrast with Endres (2019) and Matthes and Marquart (2015), we find that a message meant to be incongruent with the opinions of the receiver can have a significant and substantial negative attitudinal effect.…”

“…Evidence of how PMT amplifies effects on political behavior is scarce. Endres (2019: 1) found that targeting Democratic voters on issues on which they hold similar positions with the Republican candidate “is associated with decreased support” for the Democratic candidate, and “increased abstention, and increased support for” the Republican candidate. Haenschen and Jennings (2019) found that microtargeted online ads could increase turnout conditionally under Millennial voters: only in competitive districts.…”

“…Both studies were conducted in a U.S. context. Decreasing support for the citizen’s “own” candidate and increasing support for the opponent, as demonstrated by Endres (2019), are arguably impressive in a polarized two-party context such as the United States (Abramowitz 2013; Webster and Abramowitz 2017). In a multiparty context, citizens are more likely to switch to parties within their “consideration set” rather than to a party outside of the consideration set or rather than abstaining altogether (Rekker and Rosema 2019).…”

Polls and Elections Accuracy and Bias in the 2020 U.S. General Election Polls

“…And, of course, election polling is further complicated by the reality that voters’ intentions and final decisions on whether or not to vote can change. Voters can even switch preferences at the last minute when they learn they disagree with a candidate on a wedge issue (Endres 2020; Endres and Panagopoulos 2019), like fracking, which Trump vigorously touted during visits to battleground states in the closing days of the campaign in 2020 (Grandoni 2020).…”

Using a Personality-Profiling Algorithm to Investigate Political Microtargeting: Assessing the Persuasion Effects of Personality-Tailored Ads on Social Media

“…Under certain conditions, PMTtechniques seem to mobilize young voters (Haenschen & Jennings, 2019). Moreover, targeting Democratic voters with a Republican issue-congruent message increases support for the Republican candidate (Endres, 2019). There is some literature on effects of opinion-congruity in a non-microtargeted political setting.…”