<i>Polls and Elections</i>: Still Part of the Conversation: Iowa and New Hampshire's Say within the Invisible Primary

Christenson, Dino P.; Smidt, Corwin D.

doi:10.1111/j.1741-5705.2012.03994.x

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 28 publications

(56 reference statements)

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“…Reiterating this point, Donovan and Hunsaker () find that candidates who experience an increase in media attention likewise see their vote share rise. Conversely, Christenson and Smidt () argue that causality runs in the opposite direction: the media will cover candidates as their poll standing increases in the early primary states.…”

Section: Literature Review: Examining Presidential Nomination Battlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Here's Looking at You: Public‐ Versus Elite‐Driven Models of Presidential Primary Elections

Swearingen

Stiles

Finneran

2019

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective This study advances the presidential primary literature in two ways. First, since many studies in this literature advocate for more detailed theoretical development, we incorporate an interdisciplinary approach by utilizing social contagion theory from the field of sociology. Second, presidential primaries do not adequately explore what role the public plays during the invisible primary. We thus incorporate Google Trends data into presidential primary models to account for the relative amount of public attention for each presidential primary candidate. Methods We use fixed effects regression to determine the impact of public attention on a candidate's share of the contested primary vote (CPV). Results We find that increased public attention leads to higher levels of support for a candidate in the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary, and CPV. Conclusion These findings illustrate the extra‐voting role the public plays in presidential primary elections and helps us further distinguish how party elites, voters, and candidates uniquely determine the selection of our executive.

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Section: Literature Review: Examining Presidential Nomination Battlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Here's Looking at You: Public‐ Versus Elite‐Driven Models of Presidential Primary Elections

Swearingen

Stiles

Finneran

2019

Social Science Quarterly

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“…As these contests became more routinized, a number of scholars attempted to forecast the results of the presidential primary season by utilizing factors such as polling, fi nancial resources, and elite support (Adkins and Dowdle 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2005Mayer 1996 ; Steger 2000 ; see Steger 2008 for a comparison of the forecasts generated by the diff erent models). Momentum from performing well in early primaries was also found to play an important role in determining nomination outcomes (Bartels 1988 ), though there is some controversy about the precise eff ect of particular contests (Adkins and Dowdle 2001a ;Christenson and Smidt 2012 ;Hull 2008 ).At first glance, current events appear to have altered this equilibrium in at least two important ways. First, super PACs, a relatively new type of political committee that arose from the Speechnow v FEC and Citizens United v FEC court decisions in 2010, should alter the impact of traditional sources of campaign fi nance (Dwyre and Braz 2015 ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Forecasting Presidential Nominations in 2016: #WePredictedClintonANDTrump

Dowdle

Adkins

Sebold

et al. 2016

APSC

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A number of scholars successfully modeled and predicted presidential nomination outcomes from 1996-2008. However, dramatic changes occurred in subsequent years that would seem to make replicating these results challenging at best. Building on those earlier studies, we utilize a series of OLS models that included measures of preprimary resources and early campaign successes or failures to forecast that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would win the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations in 2016. This outcome suggests that some fundamental factors governing nomination outcomes have not changed despite the conventional wisdom. N umerous models forecast general election outcomes by employing a variety of economic and political measures to make accurate predictions about whether the party in control of the White House will retain or lose the presidency (for an overview see Campbell 2012 ). In many ways forecasting presidential nominations presents a more challenging task. Important individual-level cues such as partisanship or systemic-level factors such as economic growth or the popularity of the incumbent are helpful in understanding why a voter might choose Bill Clinton over George W. Bush in 1992. Unfortunately, they are not useful in explaining why the same individual picked Paul Tsongas over Bill Clinton or Tom Harkin nine months earlier in the New Hampshire primary (Steger, Dowdle, and Adkins 2012 ).While the McGovern-Fraser reform movement of the early 1970s created a new system of presidential nominations designed to increase the role of voters in picking party nominees, a period of stability in the nomination process of both parties' emerged by the end of the 1980s (Barilleaux and Adkins 1993 ). As these contests became more routinized, a number of scholars attempted to forecast the results of the presidential primary season by utilizing factors such as polling, fi nancial resources, and elite support (Adkins and Dowdle 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2005Mayer 1996 ; Steger 2000 ; see Steger 2008 for a comparison of the forecasts generated by the diff erent models). Momentum from performing well in early primaries was also found to play an important role in determining nomination outcomes (Bartels 1988 ), though there is some controversy about the precise eff ect of particular contests (Adkins and Dowdle 2001a ;Christenson and Smidt 2012 ;Hull 2008 ).At first glance, current events appear to have altered this equilibrium in at least two important ways. First, super PACs, a relatively new type of political committee that arose from the Speechnow v FEC and Citizens United v FEC court decisions in 2010, should alter the impact of traditional sources of campaign fi nance (Dwyre and Braz 2015 ). Second, the Republican elite has arguably fragmented in recent years, which should aff ect elite support on the process (Steger 2015 ). Since traditional forecasting models encountered diffi culty predicting the 2004 Democratic nomination correctly (Steger 2008 ), these new factors should make predicting recent...

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“…However, there are many exceptions. Both Christenson and Smidt (2012) and Vliegenthart and Van Aelst (2010) report inter-party/candidate differences, which do not fit the bandwagon theory. Likewise, Bartels (1988), Patterson (1993), and Sides and Vavreck (2014) find that the effect of poll ratings on party coverage has more to do with the position of a party in the horse race, than whether a particular poll rises or falls with respect to the previous poll.…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The literature on the influence of polls on party coverage is still limited. Previous studies have mostly looked at US presidential campaigns and primaries, but there are also studies on multiparty systems such as the Netherlands and Germany (Box-Steffensmeier et al, 2009;Christenson and Smidt, 2012;Jandura and Petersen, 2009;Vliegenthart and Van Aelst, 2010). These studies tend to build their hypotheses on a bandwagon thesis in news selection.…”

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confidence: 99%

All in the game: Effects of opinion polls on party coverage in the 2013 German election campaign

Stolwijk

Schuck

2019

Journalism

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Opinion polls form an important part of modern election coverage but might also shape amount and tone of other subsequent coverage about political parties. We propose to use and elaborate on Patterson's generic storylines to help account for different findings in prior research, by pointing to the importance of race context. A manual content analysis (N = 3755) of the 2013 German Bundestag election campaign is used to empirically test our framework, using a multilevel model that separates effects of 36 polls on coverage of five different parties in 11 different outlets. Results show that the amount of party coverage for the front runner party increased after drops in its ratings, and the challenger party received more negative coverage after increases in its poll ratings. Media coverage did not follow a bandwagon trend but played an independent and counteracting role within the election campaign.

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Polls and Elections: Still Part of the Conversation: Iowa and New Hampshire's Say within the Invisible Primary

Cited by 9 publications

References 28 publications

Here's Looking at You: Public‐ Versus Elite‐Driven Models of Presidential Primary Elections

Here's Looking at You: Public‐ Versus Elite‐Driven Models of Presidential Primary Elections

Forecasting Presidential Nominations in 2016: #WePredictedClintonANDTrump

All in the game: Effects of opinion polls on party coverage in the 2013 German election campaign

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