Martin P. Wattenberg

Schematic Assessments of Presidential Candidates

This article applies theories of social cognition in an investigation of the dimensions of the assessments of candidates employed by voters in the United States. An empirical description of the publics cognitive representations of presidential candidates, derived from responses to open-ended questions in the American National Election Studies from 1952 to 1984, reveals that perceptions of candidates are generally focused on “personality” characteristics rather than on issue concerns or partisan group connections. Contrary to the implications of past research, higher education is found to be correlated with a greater likelihood of using personality categories rather than with making issue statements. While previous models have interpreted voting on the basis of candidate personality as indicative of superficial and idiosyncratic assessments, the data examined here indicate that they predominately reflect performance-relevant criteria such as competence, integrity, and reliability. In addition, both panel and aggregate time series data suggest that the categories that voters have used in the past influence how they will perceive future candidates, implying the application of schematic judgments. The reinterpretation presented here argues that these judgments reflect a rich cognitive representation of the candidates from which instrumental inferences are made.

Throwing the Rascals Out: Policy and Performance Evaluations of Presidential Candidates, 1952-1980

This article explores two dimensions of public evaluations of presidential candidates on the basis open-ended survey questions from 1952 to 1980. The first dimension looks at whether citizens evaluate candidates on the basis of policies, performance, or strictly candidate attributes; the second examines the time perspective of these assessments, that is, whether they are retrospective or prospective. It is found that incumbents have been judged primarily on the basis of retrospective performance, challengers on prospective policy, and candidates running in nonincumbent races on prospective performance. Throughout the period from 1952 to 1980 both policy and performance considerations have become increasingly related to the vote. Except for 1964, performance has outweighed policy as a predictor of the vote, with an emphasis on retrospective evaluations whenever a incumbent runs for reelection and on prospective assessments in nonincumbent races. The 1964 case provides the best example of a policy mandate, with the 1972 election also fitting the pattern to a lesser degree. The data for the 1980 election, however, fail to support the claim of a mandate for Reagans policy stands.

How Voting is Like Taking an Sat Test An Analysis of American Voter Rolloff

Millions of American voters fail to complete their ballots each election year. These voters present a puzzle: After having incurred the costs of going to the polls, why do they choose not to vote on some of the items on the ballot? This paper considers voter rolloff between presidential and House races in an effort to understand the reasons why some voters abstain selectively. We consider this question by analyzing House rolloff based on aggregate data from the 1990s and national survey data from the 1980s. The results indicate that voters skip House contests not because they are lacking in education or members of minority groups, but rather because they do not have enough information to cast a vote. This finding offers new insight into how rolloff voters approach a ballot: They treat voting as if it were a test, picking out the questions that they can answer.

The Decline of Political Partisanship in the United States: Negativity or Neutrality?

This article examines attitudes towards the two major political parties in the United States from 1952 to 1980, using national election study data from open-ended likes/dislikes questions. The major trend which is found is a shift toward neutral evaluations of the parties. A reinterpretation of party decline in the electorate is offered, in which the much-discussed alienation from parties is largely rejected as an explanation. Rather, it is argued that the link between parties and candidates has been substantially weakened over the years and hence that political parties have become increasingly meaningless to the electorate.

The Role of Vice Presidential Candidate Ratings in Presidential Voting Behavior

With the increased attention paid to vice presidential candidates in recent years, research is still scanty on the question of whether candidates for this office affect the presidential vote at all. In this article the author employs feeling thermometer data from 1968 to 1992 to isolate a small segment of the voters (typically about 10%) for whom vice presidential preferences do not coincide with presidential preferences. When voters prefer a presidential candidate of one party and a vice presidential candidate of the other party, the former preference dominates the decision-making process. Yet the frequency with which second slot preferences are consequential is sufficient to warrant serious attention. Multivariate analysis confirms that vice presidential candidates are a significant factor in voting behavior even after controlling for party, ideology, and likes and dislikes of the presidential candidates.

From Parties to Candidates: Examining the Role of the Media

This article examines the relationship between campaign media expenditures and the saliency of attitudes about parties and candidates in the electorate using data from the 1978 National Election Study and the Traugott/Goldenberg study of campaign managers. A negative relationship is found between media spending and party saliency. In contrast, a strong positive correlation is shown to exist between media expenditures and candidate saliency. These relationships are found to be accentuated when the party organizations in the congressional district are weak and where political action committees contribute a large proportion of the total campaign expenses. Martin P. Wattenberg is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. The author wishes to thank Michael Traugott and Edie Goldenberg for making the data from their 1978 survey of congressional campaign managers available for this analysis. They, of course, bear no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. Data from the 1958 and 1978 National Election Studies were provided by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 46:216-227 ?) 1982 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc. 0033-362X/82/0046-216/

How Will Term Limits Affect Legislative Work

2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.181 on Thu, 29 Sep 2016 05:51:07 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms PARTIES TO CANDIDATES: ROLE OF THE MEDIA 217 frequently stated in the literature (e.g., Sorauf, 1980: 255). Yet the evidence for such an important assertion has remained almost entirely impressionistic. The goal of this paper is to remedy this deficiency by describing the extent of the relationship and the conditions which

Partisan Turnout Bias in Midterm Legislative Elections

Though legislative term limits have been adopted in several states, in no state have they yet caused turnover. Data are therefore not available to evaluate the effects of term limits. What we can now do is to present informed speculation, supported where possible by data from other areas, about the effects of term limits. One purpose of such speculation is to give some guidance to voters. Another, scientific purpose, is to suggest hypotheses that can be tested in later years. Though for expository purposes we speak of the advantages of term limits, our primary purpose is the second—to provide testable propositions about the effects of term limits. Other papers in this volume also offer predictions about the effect of term limits; thus, for example, Cohen and Spitzer inquire into the intertemporal policy preferences of legislators subject to term limits, Gerber and Lupia examine the responsiveness of legislators to their constituents, and Reed and Schansberg explore the possible effects of term limits on partisan balance. Our focus in this paper is quite different—how will term limits affect the incentives of legislators to legislate.

Parties without partisans : political change in advanced industrial democracies

: Lower salience elections present greater opportunities for representational bias at the polls than do elections with higher levels of political interest. We hypothesize that turnout bias is most likely to occur during midterm congressional elections in which there are clear short-term forces that exploit the low turnout setting. The effects of these forces are more likely to be observable among registered nonvoters than citizens who are not registered to vote because registrants have access to the polls and are likely to have voted in previous presidential contests. Using midterm National Election Study data from 1978 to 1998, we find that registered nonvoters are frequently more Democratic than midterm election voters, particularly in 1994 and 1998. The historic 1994 congressional election seat losses for Democrats may be partially explained by the finding that voters going to the polls were clearly more conservative than registered nonvoters.