Campaign Appeals and Legislative Action

Sulkin, Tracy

doi:10.1017/s0022381609090902

Cited by 47 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…As reported above, the manipulations we made were generally not drastic, but constituted substantial movement on the scale, and each one of them had definitive policy implications by moving the participants across the coalition divide on issues that would be implemented or revoked at the coming term of government (yes, politicians keep most of their promises! [21], [22]). It is unlikely that the low level of corrections resulted from our use of a continuous response profile, as we observed similar results in a previous study of morality with a discrete numerical scale [17].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How the Polls Can Be Both Spot On and Dead Wrong: Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions

et al. 2013

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Political candidates often believe they must focus their campaign efforts on a small number of swing voters open for ideological change. Based on the wisdom of opinion polls, this might seem like a good idea. But do most voters really hold their political attitudes so firmly that they are unreceptive to persuasion? We tested this premise during the most recent general election in Sweden, in which a left- and a right-wing coalition were locked in a close race. We asked our participants to state their voter intention, and presented them with a political survey of wedge issues between the two coalitions. Using a sleight-of-hand we then altered their replies to place them in the opposite political camp, and invited them to reason about their attitudes on the manipulated issues. Finally, we summarized their survey score, and asked for their voter intention again. The results showed that no more than 22% of the manipulated replies were detected, and that a full 92% of the participants accepted and endorsed our altered political survey score. Furthermore, the final voter intention question indicated that as many as 48% (±9.2%) were willing to consider a left-right coalition shift. This can be contrasted with the established polls tracking the Swedish election, which registered maximally 10% voters open for a swing. Our results indicate that political attitudes and partisan divisions can be far more flexible than what is assumed by the polls, and that people can reason about the factual issues of the campaign with considerable openness to change.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How the Polls Can Be Both Spot On and Dead Wrong: Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions

et al. 2013

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“…Sulkin 2005Sulkin , 2009 incumbent; that is, when party popularity is low. When a party loses popular support, its owned issues represent its remaining issue advantages, forcing it to compete on a relatively narrow set of owned issues.…”

Section: A Contextual Theory Of How Par Ty Issue Reputations Influencmentioning

confidence: 99%

Party Reputations and Policy Priorities: How Issue Ownership Shapes Executive and Legislative Agendas

Green¹,

Jennings²

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Election-oriented elites are expected to emphasize issues on which their party possesses 'issue ownership' during campaigns. This article extends those theories to the content of executive and legislative agendas. Arguing that executives have incentives to pursue their party's owned issues in the legislature, it theorizes three conditions under which these incentives are constrained: when governments are responsive to issues prioritized by the public, when a party has a stronger electoral mandate and under divided government. The theory is tested using time-series analyses of policy agendas of US congressional statutes and State of the Union addresses and UK acts of Parliament and the Queen's Speech . The results offer support for the theory, and are particularly strong for the US State of the Union address, providing insights into institutional differences. The implications provide reassurance concerning the conditions under which governments focus attention only on their partisan issue priorities.Keywords: issue ownership; saliency theory; agenda setting; legislative priorities An extensive literature predicts the issue agendas of parties and candidates during election campaigns. Election-oriented elites attempt to emphasize issues on which their party has 'issue ownership' 1 and avoid issues on which another party has an advantage. Parties are not wholly free to achieve this 'selective emphasis'.2 The issue agenda of an election campaign is a matter of competition between rivals, as well as the wider campaign context of media attention, policy events, and what voters already care most about and decide upon. But insofar as a party's owned issues (the issue associations voters hold about different political parties and their reputation for trust and competence) overlap with their partisan priorities -those issues on which elites, members and activists care most about 3 -a party that achieves its goal of winning office should try to pursue the party's owned issues in the legislature. A governing period is precisely the time when Petrocik 4 expects a party to demonstrate its ownership of issues via legislative attention and commitment.* School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester (email: jane.green@manchester.ac.uk); Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Southampton (email: w.j.jennings@soton.ac.uk). The data on US policy agendas were originally collected by Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, with the support of National Science Foundation grant numbers SBR 9320922 and 0111611, distributed through the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. The data on UK policy agendas were collected by Peter John, Will Jennings and Shaun Bevan with the support of ESRC research award RES-062-23-0872. Data on issue competence were collected by Jane Green and Will Jennings with the support of ESRC research award RES-000-22-4616. We thank Shaun Bevan for advice on model specification and Frank Baumgartner for valuable comments on an earlier version of this article. T...

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“…They found significant patterns of congruence in countries with a range of institutional structures. Sulkin (2009) investigated U.S. Congressional candidates' emphases of different issues during election campaigns and found that politicians' campaign appeals were followed by relevant legislative activity once in office.…”

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confidence: 99%

Citizens’ Evaluations of the Fulfillment of Election Pledges: Evidence from Ireland

Thomson

2011

The Journal of Politics

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The linkage between what parties promise during election campaigns and what governments deliver afterward is central to democratic theory. Research on this linkage concludes that there is a higher level of congruence between campaign promises and government actions than suggested by the conventional wisdom. This study is the first to describe and explain citizens' evaluations of the fulfillment of election pledges in a way that is comparable with political scientists' evaluations. The explanation of variation in citizens' evaluations combines an objective factor, namely actual policy performance, and subjective factors, namely party identification, information resources, trust in political parties, and personal experience. The explanation is tested with panel data containing a unique set of questions on public opinion in Ireland. Actual policy performance is the most important factor affecting citizens' evaluations. However, subjective factors often cause citizens' evaluations to be more negative than actual policy performance suggests they should be.

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Campaign Appeals and Legislative Action

Cited by 47 publications

References 30 publications

How the Polls Can Be Both Spot On and Dead Wrong: Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions

How the Polls Can Be Both Spot On and Dead Wrong: Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions

Party Reputations and Policy Priorities: How Issue Ownership Shapes Executive and Legislative Agendas

Citizens’ Evaluations of the Fulfillment of Election Pledges: Evidence from Ireland

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