Michael G. Hagen

Reasoning Chains: Causal Models of Policy Reasoning in Mass Publics

Citizens do not choose sides on issues like busing or abortion whimsically. They have reasons for their preferences – certainly they can give reasons for them. But how is this possible? Citizens as a rule pay little attention to politics, indeed take only a modest interest in it even during election campaigns when their interest in politics is at its height. And since they pay little attention to politics, it is hardly surprising that they know little about it. Many, in fact, are quite ignorant of basic facts of political life – such as the identity of the party that controls Congress or indeed the name of the congressman who represents them. Which, of course, raises a question of some interest: how do citizens figure out what they think about political issues, given how little they commonly know about them?

Dynamics of the 2000 republican primaries

The 2000 presidential primaries were among the liveliest in recent memory. This article is the authors first account of the changing fortunes of the candidates from the Iowa caucuses through Super Tuesday. It is based upon the nomination phase of the Annenberg 2000 Election Surveys, a collection of nearly 32,000 interviews conducted from November through March, nationwide and in special-purpose state and regional studies, on a broad range of political science and communications questions. The analysis of dynamics is facilitated by the surveys rolling cross-section design, in which the day of interview is itself a product of random selection. This account emphasizes the interplay between substantive and strategic contributions to the votes cast at different points in the campaign, between evaluations of the candidates as people and policymakers, on the one hand, and judgments about the candidates chances of winning a partys nomination and the general election, on the other. The pervasive influence of information is demonstrated. The knowledge voters managed to acquire through the campaign informed both kinds of considerations. The weight voters gave such considerations depends on the store of information they managed to accumulate about the candidates.

What Did the Leading Candidates Say, and Did It Matter?

The Annenberg 2000 study of the primaries found that voters learned the issue distinctions stressed by the candidates and that these distinctions influenced votes. The study also found that those in heavily contested primaries learned more than did voters in states with less contact with the candidates and their campaigns.