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Disclaimer. Don't rely on these old notes in lieu of reading the literature, but they can jog your memory. As a grad student long ago, my peers and I collaborated to write and exchange summaries of political science research. I posted them to a wiki-style website. "Wikisum" is now dead but archived here. I cannot vouch for these notes' accuracy, nor can I say who wrote them.
Johnston, Hagen, and Jamieson. 2001. Dynamics of the 2000 presidential campaign: Evidence from the Annenberg Survey.. APSA conference.
The Annenberg studies of the 2000 presidential campaign show that our current theories of campaigns are somewhat lacking. Largely an exploratory paper with some preliminary conclusions.
The Annenberg survey took daily random samples from July through November. Smoothing the data (Fig 1) make it possible to investigate the moments in the campaign where things changed. Obviously, there were daily spikes and drops in Gore's support, but, when smoothed, 7 shifts appear to have been permanent (expressed in terms of Gore's support):
The authors use advanced stats to differentiate variables with a time-series (longitudinal) effect from those with only a cross-sectional effect.
The authors speculate that, of the 7 shifts in Gore's support, shifts 4, 6, and 7 suggest that the media matter. Something in the media or in political ads must have triggered that shift, perhaps by first triggering the changes in Gore's (and Bush's) perceived character qualities.
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Johnston, Richard (author) • Hagen, Michael (author) • Jamieson, Kathleen Hall (author) • American Politics • Voting • Partisanship • Public Opinion • Media Effects • Decision Making
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