Michael M. Franz

Latino Phenotypic Discrimination Revisited: The Impact of Skin Color on Occupational Status *

Objective. We reexamine the issue of phenotypic discrimination against Mexicans in the U.S. labor market, originally studied by Telles and Murguia (1990) and later by Bohara and Davila (1992). We also seek to explain this topic with respect to the Puerto Rican and Cuban populations in the United States. Methods. Instead of using household income as a dependent variable, we use occupational ranking scores computed by Hauser and Warren (1996) in combination with data from the 1990 Latino National Political Survey (LNPS). The occupational rankings more accurately reflect the level of labor market discrimination faced by individuals. Furthermore, the use of the more recent LNPS allows us to update the work of previous scholars and extend the analysis to two previously unexamined Latino groups—Puerto Ricans and Cubans. Results. Our findings indicate that darker‐skinned Mexicans and Cubans face significantly lower occupational prestige scores than their lighter‐skinned counterparts even when controlling for factors that influence performance in the labor market. However, we find no conclusive evidence that skin‐color differences impact occupational prestige scores for Puerto Ricans. Conclusions. Using earlier data, some scholars found evidence for difference in labor market performance among Mexican Americans as a function of phenotypic variations among Mexican Americans. Today, dark‐skinned Mexican Americans and Cuban Americans continue to face higher levels of discrimination in the labor market, whereas dark‐skinned Puerto Ricans do not, which may indicate regional differences across the three groups that need to be controlled for.

Political Advertising and Persuasion in the 2004 and 2008 Presidential Elections

The 2008 presidential election was historic in many respects. The campaign included the first African American major-party candidate, and neither candidate was an incumbent president or vice president. In addition, one candidate took public funding and the other candidate did not. This latter disparity resulted in an imbalance of resources across the two campaigns, especially in the purchase of political advertising. But did that imbalance matter for who won? Did advertising move voters, and if so, by how much? This article examines patterns of presidential ad buys in 2008 and compares them with presidential ad buys in 2004. It also examines the impact of advertising on county-level vote returns in both years. The results demonstrate some important differences in advertising patterns across years, especially in terms of ad sponsorship and market-level advertising advantages. We also find significant and strong advertising persuasion effects in 2008.

Evaluating Measures of Campaign Tone

Much recent research has examined campaign tone—how positive or negative a campaign is—and its influence on a variety of political behaviors, including voter turnout. Yet there is little research testing the validity of these measures. Does the tone of candidate advertising, for example, reflect the tone of media coverage of a campaign? In this article, we evaluate several methods of assessing tone, focusing specifically on U.S. Senate races from 1998–2002. We find that several of the measures are closely related, and ones substantive findings are seldom altered by substituting one measure for another. Thus, theory and matters of practicality should guide ones choice of tone measures.

Separation by Television Program: Understanding the Targeting of Political Advertising in Presidential Elections

Although conventional wisdom suggests that imbalanced message flows are relatively rare in presidential campaigns, this view relies on the assumption that competing campaigns allocate their advertising similarly. In this research, we show that this assumption is false. We combine ad tracking data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project with a unique collection of survey data on the audience for various program genres. Examining advertising in the 2000, 2004, and 2008 U.S. presidential races, we find that the Republican and Democratic candidates distributed their advertising differently across different program genres, reaching different types of voters. A form of microtargeting has increasingly entered into the realm of political advertising buys. We find that who sees certain political ads is more nonrandom than scholars had previously thought, and we find that unbalanced message flows (a precondition for ad persuasion) are more prevalent than conventional wisdom has suggested.

Understanding the Effect of Political Advertising on Voter Turnout: A Response to Krasno and Green

Krasno and Green have argued that political advertising has no impact on voter turnout. We remain unconvinced by their evidence, given concerns about how they measure the advertising environment, how they measure advertising tone, their choice of modeling techniques and the generalizability of their findings. These differences aside, we strongly agree that political advertising does little to undermine voter participation.

Political Advertising in 2016: The Presidential Election as Outlier?

Abstract The 2016 presidential campaign broke the mold when it comes to patterns of political advertising. Using data from the Wesleyan Media Project, we show the race featured far less advertising than the previous cycle, a huge imbalance in the number of ads across candidates and one candidate who almost ignored discussions of policy. This departure from past patterns, however, was not replicated at the congressional level. We draw some lessons about advertising from the 2016 campaign, suggesting that its seeming lack of effectiveness may owe to the unusual nature of the presidential campaign with one unconventional candidate and the other using an unconventional message strategy, among other non-advertising related factors.

Interest Groups in Electoral Politics: 2012 in Context

Abstract This paper compares the levels of ad spending from outside groups and traditional party organizations across seven federal election cycles. The data show clearly that outside groups advertised at historic levels in 2012. Such intense efforts send two important signals to students of American campaign finance. The first involves a crisis in the system of limited donations to candidates and party committees moving forward. The second resurrects an old debate in political science about whether parties or candidates should be the center of our electoral process. The paper concludes with a consideration of possible reforms that might help restore parties and candidates to the center of issue debates in competitive federal elections.

The Citizens United Election? Or Same As It Ever Was?

In January 2010, the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC overturned long-standing regulations governing the role of unions and corporations in sponsoring pro-candidate advocacy. Many predicted a deleterious effect on the electoral process. In the aftermath of the midterm elections, a number of questions deserve consideration. Was the observed level of outside spending abnormally high in 2010? What can we say about the potential effect of outside spending on the outcomes of House and Senate races? Moreover, what has the decision done to the power of parties and, most especially, their ability to compete with special interests in backing federal candidates? This paper investigates these questions using data from the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracked political ads in 2010. The initial evidence suggests that while interest groups were aggressive players in the air war, their impact may not have been as negative or as large as initially predicted.

Sponsorship, Disclosure, and Donors Limiting the Impact of Outside Group Ads

This research examines how an attack ad’s sponsorship conditions its effectiveness. We use data from a survey experiment that exposed participants to a fictional campaign ad. Treatments varied the ad’s sponsor (candidate vs. group), the group’s donor base (small donor vs. large donors), and the format of the donor disclosure (news reports vs. disclaimers in the ads). We find that ads sponsored by unknown groups are more effective than candidate-sponsored ads, but disclosure of donors reduces the influence of group advertising, leveling the playing field such that candidate- and group-sponsored attacks become equally effective. Increased disclosure does not, however, advantage small-donor groups over large-donor groups.

The Long-Term and Geographically Constrained Effects of Campaign Advertising on Political Polarization and Sorting

Scholars agree that there has been an increase in polarization among political elites, though there continues to be debate on the extent to which polarization exists among the mass public. Still, there is general agreement that the American public has become more sorted over the past two decades, a time during which political ad volumes have increased and ads have become more negative. In this research, we explore whether there is a link between the two. We take advantage of variation in the volume and tone of political advertising across media markets to examine the link between advertising and three dependent variables: issue polarization, affective polarization, and sorting. We focus on the impact of both recent ad exposure and cumulative ad exposure across several election cycles. Ultimately, we find little impact of advertising on polarization or sorting, both overall and among subgroups of the population.