Americans most often think about government in terms of its ability to grapple with issues of redistribution and race. However, the September 11 terrorist attacks led to a massive increase in media attention to foreign affairs, which caused people to think about the government in terms of defense and foreign policy. We demonstrate that such changes in issue salience alter the policy preferences that political trust shapes. Specifically, we show that trust did not affect attitudes about the race‐targeted programs in 2004 as it usually does, but instead affected a range of foreign policy and national defense preferences. By merging survey data gathered from 1980 through 2004 with data from media content analyses, we show that, more generally, trust's effects on defense and racial policy preferences, respectively, increase as the media focus more attention in these areas and decrease when that attention ebbs.

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Can voters be persuaded to support a candidate based on a candidate’s rhetoric instead of a candidate’s issue positions? Combining theoretical insights on voter decision-making drawn from valence theories of candidate position-taking with insights from theories of rhetoric and persuasion, the authors argue that candidate rhetorical tone can sway voters to a candidate’s side. Using DICTION 5.0, the tone of candidate speech in U.S. presidential elections is examined from 1976-2012. Candidates who present themselves using language that draws on themes of commonality, activity, and realism are more likely to win a citizen’s vote in elections. Rhetorical tone can sway voters, but only those moderate voters who are distant from both candidates. Rhetorical tone is unlikely to have an effect on voters who perceive high ideological agreement with the rhetorically-disadvantaged candidate.

A BSTRACT What role did race and gender play in vote choice for US president in 2008?With an African-American Democratic presidential nominee and a female Republican vice presidential nominee, were the black-white racial gap and the gender gap different in 2008 than in previous years? We find that the racial gap between black and white voters was larger in 2008 than it was in three of the four previous presidential elections, but not significantly larger than the gap in 1996 when white Democrat Bill Clinton won reelection. This gap is still present after we include control variables. On the other hand, the apparent gender gap whereby women are more likely than men to support Democratic candidates goes away once we include controls. Other factors -namely Iraq retrospections, ideological voting, and partisan identification -played a role as large or larger in citizen vote choice as did race or gender in the 2008 general election. Even though a voter's race was a key predictor in 2008 and even though there may be a widening racial gap, it is important not to overstate the role of race relative to other well-known predictors of the vote.Did US voters in the 2008 general election for president divide along racial and gender lines, and were those divides larger in 2008 than in recent US presidential elections? 1 Even after controlling for predictors of the vote such as partisanship, did a voter's race or gender have an effect on vote choice? Were race and gender more important than other predictors, such as retrospective voting and partisanship, in influencing citizen vote choice? Because the 2008 election was the first to have an African-American major-party nominee and a female Republican vice presidential nominee, the desire to vote for a candidate who shares one's race or gender may have led more African Americans (and fewer whites or other minorities) to vote Democratic and more women (and fewer men) to vote Republican in 2008 than in years past. Thus, in 2008 there was the potential for a greater racial gap and a smaller gender gap relative to previous elections in which white males were nominated by both major parties.

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