The 2000 Presidential Election and the Foundations of Party Politics

Abstract

The 2000 Presidential Election presumptive victor to fighting for his political life. In the third phase, he called up memories of the New Deal and succeeded in persuading a critical bloc of voters that George W. Bush was a threat to the Social Security system. In the byplay, however, Gore ignored the robust economy, which should have carried him to a comfortable victory. Still, his playing the New Deal card enabled him to win the popular vote. But he lost the Electoral College and, with it, the election. The divergence between the popular vote and the Electoral vote is another theme of this book. In one sense, this takes us to the foundations of party politics and the origins of the republic. In another sense, it takes us to the frontier of political communication, in particular to the gap between parts of the television broadcast day. Al Gore won the popular vote by, at the end of the campaign, winning the battle for network news. George W. Bush won the Electoral College by, also at the end, winning the battle of the ads. These assertions are possible because by 2000, presidential elections had become a natural experiment on a continental scale. The New Deal-Social Security message that was critical to Gore's recovery was most effective where it did him the least good, in states he could not win and in states he could not lose. In closely fought states, states that were pivotal in the Electoral College, his message was blunted by the sheer weight of pro-Bush advertising. In short, communication is critical in determining whether and if so how the economy, candidate traits, and issues function in a campaign. Sometimes the communication is directly by a candidate or a closely connected surrogate in intensely covered moments such as conventions or debates. Sometimes the channel is advertising or the news. It matters a lot if ads and news reinforce each other or work at odds. Failure to communicate can be as critical as active attempts at priming or moving opinion. Saying such things aligns us with research in the tradition of communication studies that emphasizes contingency and the power of rhetoric. But much of that research is supposition, anecdote, or not strictly relevant to an aggregate phenomenon such as an election. The body of research on the other side, attuned more to "necessary"-as opposed to contingent-features of elections seems more robust, more thought through. But much of that research seems oddly antipolitical, ironically so, because most of it is by political scientists. Our view is that many of the propositions about recurring features of elections require

How Quickly We Forget: The Duration of Persuasion Effects From Mass Communication

“…In one study, Johnston, Hagen, and Jamieson (2004) aggregate advertisements by blocks as short as five days, a procedure that implies, but does not prove, substantial decay of effects. But in another study, Huber and Arceneaux (2007) aggregate advertisements over a 30-day period, and in still another, Franz and Ridout (2010) aggregate ads in blocks of one, two, and multiple months.…”

“…In their study of the 2000 election, Johnston, Hagen, and Jamieson (2004) found that that Bush's come-from-behind win over Gore was due to a slim advertising advantage in battleground states during the last week. Here we seek to corroborate that finding.…”

Selective Exposure to Campaign Communication: The Role of Anticipated Agreement and Issue Public Membership

“…Revisionist accounts, while acknowledging that most citizens fall short of the democratic ideal, still presume some minimal level of exposure to political information. The question of just how much exposure occurs is relevant to a wide range of scholarship exploring everything from the impact of campaigns on voters' level of knowledge about the candidates (see, for example, Craig, Kane, and Gainous 2005;Druckman 2005) to the effects of campaign messages on voter preference (Hillygus and Jackman 2003;Johnston, Hagen, and Jamieson 2004). In general, the question of individual variability in exposure to information is fundamental to political communication research.…”

Finding the Cost of Campaign Advertising

“…And CMAG estimates only the cost of the television airtime; the estimates do not include the cost of producing an ad to be aired. has used CMAG data extensively in his work on the effects of campaigns in presidential elections (Johnston et al 2004;Hagen and Johnston 2007). We decided to pool our experience and expand the CSED study protocol to collect station records from all the high-level competitive races in the Philadelphia media market in 2006.…”

“…Academic studies of campaign effects have deployed CMAG data on the incidence of campaign ads to characterize the advertising to which the electorate has been exposed (Freedman and Goldstein 1999;Goldstein and Freedman 2000, 2002b, 2002aFreedman et al 2004;Johnston et al 2004;Brader 2005Brader , 2006Hagen and Johnston 2007;Franz et al 2007) and to investigate campaign strategy (Goldstein and Strach 2003). CMAG also produces estimates of the cost of ads, which can be aggregated to produce estimates of the total amount spent on television airtime in and across races.…”