2012 presidential election research paper

However, the contest had its own unique features, not least of which was the re-election of a black president. In addition, for the first time in American history, neither the presidential nor vice presidential candidate of the major political parties was a white Protestant. Given the changes in American demography, this party line-up will become more common in the future. Two results from the presidential election surprised me. First, given the constant media emphasis on the closeness of the election, it was surprising that the result was not particularly tight.

National Party Division and Divisive State Primaries in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1948–2012

With the final stretch of the presidential election now here, some central research-oriented questions that are traditionally asked about campaigns are coming to the fore. The following are seven outstanding questions, each accompanied by a reading list of research-oriented articles or resources that can help inform coverage click on the questions below to navigate to the relevant section :. American Political Science Association, Voters reward or punish incumbent party candidates based on the state of the economy.

The electorate focuses particularly on economic change, not the level of the economy per se, and pays more attention to late-arriving change more than earlier change. On these points there is a good amount of scholarly agreement…. There is less agreement, however, on what specific indicators matter to voters… [I]n , we see substantial divergence between perceived business conditions and leading economic indicators, on the one hand, and income growth, on the other.

In , the first two variables neared historical lows while income growth was middling. In , the pattern is flipped, as income growth is at a historical low and business conditions and leading economic indicators are middling. There is no simple way to separate the total effects of structural forces like the economy and the total effect of the campaign itself.

Likewise, it seems clear that the trend in performance matters more than the absolute level — otherwise, Franklin D. Roosevelt would not have been re-elected easily with an unemployment rate well into the double digits although rapidly declining in Princeton University Press, It is possible that campaign learning is necessary in order to generate the regularity of success the forecasting models enjoy.

And it is also possible that the candidates have something to do with this learning. The Journal of Politics , , Vol. Divided government itself apparently makes no difference. The presidential office is viewed as the command post of the economy, irrespective of whether the president actually has sufficient control of Congress to implement his or her economic plan.

The president is simply regarded as the CEO of the public economy…. Voters find it easy to praise or blame a candidate who is currently president and now completing the economic mandate of his or her first term. They look at the record. American Political Science Review , , Other things being equal, higher unemployment increases the vote shares of Democratic candidates.

The effect is greatest when Republicans are the incumbent party, but Democrats benefit from unemployment even when they are in control. When unemployment is high or rising, Democratic candidates can successfully convince voters that they are the party best able to solve the problem.

Experimental studies confirm that citizens have a great deal of difficulty making meaningful judgments about two competing messages and assertions of fact, as in a debate setting…. However, some scholars think that, when asked about the influence of debates, citizens are predisposed to assign them outsized significance — they conform to ideas of rational deliberation — and to downplay the power of negative ads and other such opinion-shaping communications.

Washington Monthly , September Indeed, scholars who have looked most carefully at the data have found that, when it comes to shifting enough votes to decide the outcome of the election, presidential debates have rarely, if ever, mattered. The Atlantic , Augugst Everyone expected the college-debate whiz John Kerry to outperform the aphasic-seeming George W.

For John McCain, the world financial crisis, plus his selection of Sarah Palin, was bringing his campaign down around him before he even stepped on a stage with Barack Obama….

The Atlantic , September But those mazes are built on top of some of the most basic ideas about the nature of the republic, about the right of free speech, the sources of power and corruption, and the relationships of citizens to the state and to one another. That foundation is shifting now, to a degree not seen since Watergate, and perhaps not in more than a century, with effects that even the most-experienced politicians are just coming to appreciate.

I put this question to Andrew Therriault, a post-doctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University and an expert on campaign effects…. Congressional Research Service, July Previously, such advertising would generally have had to be financed through voluntary contributions raised by PACs affiliated with unions or corporations. Political Communication , , Vol. 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 , , and U.

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. Wesleyan Media Project, September By comparison, Romney and his allies aired roughly 18, ads on broadcast and national cable television during that same time period.

The Journal of Politics , April , Vol. These groups are presumed to have distinct sets of interests and to respond to messages centered on those interests, but our results provide a cautionary tale…. In contrast to previous research, we find little evidence that citizens are mobilized by or learn from presidential advertisements, but strong evidence that they are persuaded by them.

We also consider the causal mechanisms that facilitate persuasion and investigate whether some individuals are more susceptible to persuasion than others. Huffington Post , February In mid-term elections turnout was higher than , turnout was higher than and turnout was higher than In presidential elections, turnout was higher than , turnout was higher than and turnout was higher than It is a trend than almost certainly will not continue in the election of Let us count the ways: 1.

Because the increases in the decade were election specific and aberrational. American Politics Research , , Vol. Our analysis reveals that the McCain-Palin ticket campaigned in a way that was quite different from the Obama-Biden ticket. They also stayed away from counties that showed vote swings from to or population growth. On the other hand, the performance of the Kerry-Edwards ticket in was a very weak predictor of where Obama-Biden campaigned in Their efforts to target peripheral, rather than base constituencies, have significant implications for our understanding of presidential campaign strategy.

Public Opinion Quarterly , , Vol. To what extend did this form of campaigning actually affect the presidential vote? This article examines the county-level presidential vote in in eleven battleground states. The findings show that those counties in which the Obama campaign had established field offices during the general election saw a disproportionate increase in the Democratic vote share.

Furthermore, this field office-induced vote increase was large enough to flip three battleground states from Republican to Democratic. Political Behavior , , Vol. Our findings suggest that it does. The more one party dominated the campaign, the greater the proportion of its supporters who went to the polls.

Our findings thus confirm previous research that emphasizes the mobilizing effects of campaigning on partisans…. An important implication is that things parties and candidates can control — the time, energy, and money they invest in speaking to voters and encouraging them to participate — matter to mobilization…. Our results also indicate that low turnout tends to validate the status quo because elections of this type significantly advantage the party of the incumbent president.

Indeed, in highly Democratic electorates, high turnout may actually help the Republicans, who benefit from weak partisans defecting from their Democratic attachments. In addition to these partisan effects, we find that high turnout also has a significant anti-incumbency effect. Nature , Sept. Studies generally conclude that such requirements do curb turnout, but context is everything: the types of voting requirements, including specific types of ID; their varying implementation; the percentage of traditionally vulnerable voting groups, such as African-Americans, in a given state or county; and whether claims over voter ID effects are estimated for registered voters or eligible voters.

For each candidate, we identified the most prominent themes in the coverage leading up to the Iowa primary. We found between four and seven narratives, depending on the candidate.

We then measured how often that narrative was asserted or refuted in news stories during the primary season itself. The impact of the press coverage may be greater in battleground states, where the survey data shows people are paying closer attention to candidate news….

What effect, if any, these meta-narratives ultimately had on public opinion remained difficult to determine. Senate contests nearly years ago with statewide electorates voting for different political parties in presidential and U. Senate races just out of instances, or Due in part to a lingering Democratic stronghold in state politics in the South, it has been nearly twice as likely for a Republican presidential nominee to win a state alongside a Democratic senate candidate instances, However, this November could see as many as six states vote a Republican into the U.

Senate with Barack Obama still victorious at the top of the ticket. Public Choice , We found that this effect is even larger when turnout surges in presidential elections. One the other hand, the analysis shows that this electoral bonus declines when turnout is reduced in the following midterm election. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that incumbent support is somewhat lower when candidates trail a weak presidential coattail.

Electoral Studies , , Vol. The results show that, contrary to earlier findings and trends, the unique impact of presidential coattails in open seat races did not decline. Political Analysis , This null finding underscores my claim that the existing coattail literature deserves greater scrutiny. We welcome feedback. Please contact us here. Republish This Article. Seven big questions about the presidential election: Research roundup by John Wihbey, Journalist's Resource September 27,

Presidential Elections on Twitter - An Analysis. of How the US has attracted research into their characteristics and recent work. revealed. The presidential election in the U.S. was particularly rich in both its for this essay from the following sites: The Pew Research Center.

With the final stretch of the presidential election now here, some central research-oriented questions that are traditionally asked about campaigns are coming to the fore. The following are seven outstanding questions, each accompanied by a reading list of research-oriented articles or resources that can help inform coverage click on the questions below to navigate to the relevant section :. American Political Science Association, Voters reward or punish incumbent party candidates based on the state of the economy. The electorate focuses particularly on economic change, not the level of the economy per se, and pays more attention to late-arriving change more than earlier change.

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