Courting the Swing Voter

Schill, Dan; Kirk, Rita

doi:10.1177/0002764213506204

Cited by 20 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Based on our results, these stylebased features are not as important for undecided voters as they are for decided voters. This account is consistent with the findings of Schill and Kirk (2014) that undecided voters respond most to content-rich rhetorical strategies, and the findings of Vecchione et al (2013); Sweeney and Gruber (1984) that decided voters tend to selectively attend to information in a message based on prior attitudes. The account is also in line with experiments conducted by Adams et al (2011), which find that affiliated voters do not adjust their positions in response to a party's actual policy statements, but rather do adjust their positions based on their subjective perceptions of the party.…”

Section: Linguistic Feature Differencessupporting

confidence: 87%

“…In particular, studies show that a priori decided voters simply ignore certain information in order to maintain this consistency (Sweeney and Gruber, 1984;Vecchione et al, 2013;Kosmidis, 2014). In contrast, an undecided voter is asked to make a decision on an issue for which previously received information was somehow unconvincing; and Kosmidis (2014), Kosmidis and Xezonakis (2010), and Schill and Kirk (2014) show that, as a result, these voters are likely to rely heavily on information conveyed in a new message.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Persuasion of the Undecided: Language vs. the Listener

Longpre¹,

Durmus²,

Cardie³

2019

Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Argument Mining

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This paper examines the factors that govern persuasion for a priori UNDECIDED versus DECIDED audience members in the context of on-line debates. We separately study two types of influences: linguistic factors-features of the language of the debate itself; and audience factors-features of an audience member encoding demographic information, prior beliefs, and debate platform behavior. In a study of users of a popular debate platform, we find first that different combinations of linguistic features are critical for predicting persuasion outcomes for UNDECIDED versus DECIDED members of the audience. We additionally find that audience factors have more influence on predicting the side (PRO/CON) that persuaded UNDECIDED users than for DECIDED users that flip their stance to the opposing side. Our results emphasize the importance of considering the undecided and decided audiences separately when studying linguistic factors of persuasion.

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Section: Linguistic Feature Differencessupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Persuasion of the Undecided: Language vs. the Listener

Longpre¹,

Durmus²,

Cardie³

2019

Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Argument Mining

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“…as also shown in the academic literature, the results were again mixed. 72 Researchers do not agree on whether televised debates can influence perceptions of leader competence. While Benoit et al found no statistically significant effects in their meta-analysis, Schill and Kirk argued that the debates do influence perceptions of competence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Just a Show? Effects of Televised Debates on Political Attitudes and Preferences in Slovakia

Baboš

Világi

2018

East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures

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The popularity of televised political debates is growing, attracting millions of viewers. However, evidence that such debates can shift voters’ attitudes is mixed and the impact on voters’ preference is also mixed. In addition, the evidence comes mostly from presidential elections in the United States and almost exclusively from established democracies. A call for comparative research in new democracies has been made several times. Our research answers the call and contributes to this debate by comparing two experimental studies based on first-order national elections and second-order European Parliament elections in Slovakia. To our knowledge, this is the first time such a study has been performed in a post-communist EU country. We employed a pre-test/post-test experimental design in a controlled environment with participants randomly assigned to both groups. The results show that debate exposure has a stronger effect on opinions about candidates’ leadership skills, credibility, and economic competence if the candidates were previously unknown. Familiarity with the candidates and pre-existing preferences also function as a block to preference change. Almost all of our findings are in line with previous research originating from Western contexts. Therefore, we conclude that the causal mechanism linking debate exposure to voters’ preference and attitudes in the post-communist context is similar to that in Western countries with long-term democratic traditions.

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“…While party identification is likely to operate as a filter in debate reception, individuals may also update their political preferences based on new information, including in ways that go against motivated reasoning (Redlawsk et al, 2010). One possible major source of a candidate preference change is the perceived performance of these candidates in terms of their statements on concrete policy issues , Maier and Faas, 2011, Maurer, 2016, McKinnon et al, 1993, Schill and Kirk, 2014. If viewers disagree with or are not convinced by how a candidate positions herself or himself regarding core issues like law and order or migration, this may sway them towards the other candidate.…”

Section: Theoretical Assumptions and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

What matters for keeping or losing support in televised debates

König

Waldvogel²

2021

European Journal of Communication

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What leads citizens to change their candidate preferences during televised debates? The present paper addresses this question with real-time response and panel survey data from respondents recruited in the run-up to the 2017 German national election. Probing the importance of party identity and performance perceptions formed during the debate, the analysis more closely examines several core determinants than has previously been done with real-time response data. The findings suggest, first, that only a strong or very strong party identity is an effective barrier to candidate preference change. Second, beyond party identity, ratings of candidates’ issue-specific statements on policy issues show a very strong effect, albeit regardless of personal issue importance. Third, this influence of candidate ratings does not seem to be mediated through changes in valence perceptions. Rather, viewers seem to form a general impression of the candidates which cannot be reduced to performance perceptions regarding policy issues.

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Courting the Swing Voter

Cited by 20 publications

References 28 publications

Persuasion of the Undecided: Language vs. the Listener

Persuasion of the Undecided: Language vs. the Listener

Just a Show? Effects of Televised Debates on Political Attitudes and Preferences in Slovakia

What matters for keeping or losing support in televised debates

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