Travis N. Ridout

THE POLITICS OF PARTICIPATION: Mobilization and Turnout over Time

Recent studies have argued that mobilization is not only an important determinant of individual participation, but that it can explain the mystery of declining voter turnout in the United States over the past 40 years. We identify and evaluate three possible ways in which mobilization might have affected levels of turnout over time: (a) aggregate rates of mobilization may have declined, (b) the effectiveness of mobilization contacts may have declined, and (c) the targeting of mobilization may have changed. The first two theories have been well articulated in the literature; the third has not. We find no evidence of a decline in mobilizing activity, nor do we find that mobilizing techniques have become less effective. Although we find that campaigns are more likely to target habitual voters in recent years, this pattern of behavior can only explain a small amount of the overall decline in turnout.

Free Advertising How the Media Amplify Campaign Messages

The impact of political ads paid for by candidates is amplified because of the free media coverage they receive. Yet how frequently does that occur? And are certain types of ads more likely to be covered? To answer these questions, we performed a content analysis of news coverage in ten U.S. Senate campaigns in 2004. We find that ad amplification is quite common and that negative and comparative ads are much more likely to receive media attention than positive ads. This has implications for how scholars measure ad exposure and for understanding why Americans dislike negative advertising.

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.

Negative, Angry, and Ubiquitous: Political Advertising in 2012

Abstract Record amounts of money went to purchase television advertising during the 2012 election cycle, resulting in unprecedented volumes of advertising. This increase was due in part to the ease with which outside groups, such as super PACs, were able to raise and spend advertising dollars in the current, post-Citizens United, regulatory regime. Advertising in 2012 was also extremely negative, especially at the presidential level, and frequently evoked the emotion of anger. Yet whether 2012 marks the high point for spending on advertising – and whether the negativity will abate in the next presidential election – remain open questions.

Local Television and Newspaper Coverage of Political Advertising

How often do the news media cover the advertising of political candidates? And how do the characteristics of the news outlet, the media market, the race, and the advertisements themselves influence the extent to which this ad amplification takes place? Examining Senate and gubernatorial campaign coverage by several newspapers and local television stations in five midwestern states in 2006, we find that coverage of advertising is quite extensive, most of it is low quality, and its volume depends both on the size of the market and the tone of the spots aired. Surprisingly, however, television stations were not more likely than newspapers to cover advertising, though television does appear to be more sensitive to negative advertising, consistent with our theory.

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.

Does the Media Agenda Reflect the Candidates'Agenda?

This article examines whether the issue agendas of political candidates are reflected in the coverage of the news media. In their coverage of political issues during a campaign, do the media follow the lead of the candidates, or do they chart their own course? The context for our investigation is five U.S. Senate races in 2002. Using television advertising to track the candidate agenda and using content analyses of both local newspapers and local television news broadcasts, we find that the degree of candidate-media issue convergence varies depending on both the state and the medium examined (television or newspapers).