Dialogue in American Political Campaigns? An Examination of Issue Convergence in Candidate Television Advertising

Abstract

The theory of issue ownership holds that competing candidates should avoid discussing many of the same issues during a campaign. In contrast, theories of democracy suggest that competitive elections are the mechanism by which the public can hold politicians accountable. To determine the extent to which each theory depicts current campaigns, we develop a new measure of "issue convergence" and test whether or not issue convergence increases as the competitiveness of the race increases. Using new data based upon television advertising aired in U.S. Senate campaigns from 1998 through 2002, we find that issue engagement or dialogue occurs more frequently than indicated by previous research. We also find that issue engagement increases with the competitiveness of the race but that issue engagement decreases as the gap in financial resources between candidates increases.

Issue Engagement in Election Campaigns The Impact of Electoral Incentives and Organizational Constraints

“…The definition of issue engagement is quite minimalist (Sigelman and Buell 2004;Kaplan et al 2006): it is enough for two parties to talk about the same issue during a certain period of time, for instance in the campaign preceding an election. The term thus refers to whether two parties talk about the same topic (see also Lipsitz 2013).…”

Campaign rhetoric and the hide-and-seek game

“…According to Simon, a dialogue can be expected on an issue only if (i) it has overriding salience, (ii) mass media forces dialogue, or (iii) candidates behave "irrationally" for whatever reason. Kaplan et al (2006) introduces uncertainty about voter preferences over candidates' positions and obtains dialogue in Simon's model in a mixed strategy equilibrium. In our model, the between-candidate uncertainty performs a similar role as candidate uncertainty about voter preferences in Kaplan et al (2006) and leads to fruitful debate in equilibrium.…”

“…This creates the main tension that we study in the paper: Good candidates try to reveal information through focality and the bad ones trying to avoid focality. The analysis borrows its basic idea from the literature on issue choice in campaign rhetoric (Simon 2002;Kaplan et al 2006;Egorov 2012): More information is revealed about an issue if the two candidates discuss both sides of the issue rather than if only one candidate presents his side of the issue. In this paper, we study the candidate's decision to focus on one of two decidedly aggregate issues: Matters pertaining to one's own suitability for office vs. those pertaining to the rival's quality.…”

“…Emphasizing that "the level of dialogue approximates the quality of the campaign", he goes on to observe that the "decision to dialogue can be construed as a strategic choice". This strategic choice is formally modelled by Simon (2002), Kaplan et al (2006) and Egorov (2012) where they assume that voters learn more about issues over which candidates choose to engage in a dialogue. Simon (2002) and Kaplan et al (2006) also estimate the extent of dialogue over different issues in several empirical and laboratory settings.…”

“…This strategic choice is formally modelled by Simon (2002), Kaplan et al (2006) and Egorov (2012) where they assume that voters learn more about issues over which candidates choose to engage in a dialogue. Simon (2002) and Kaplan et al (2006) also estimate the extent of dialogue over different issues in several empirical and laboratory settings. In the current paper, we extend the logic of issue choice to the specific case of positive vs. negative campaign themes.…”