Let Me Tell You a Little Bit about Myself: Biographical Appeals in Congressional General Election Campaign Advertising

Abstract

Political campaigns discuss the personal dimensions of their candidates with great frequency, but scholars of campaign message strategy have not addressed why and how campaigns do so. This project focuses on the use of biographical appeals in campaign advertisements. Employing a dataset of candidate-sponsored campaign advertisements in the 2004 House and Senate general election, we argue that campaigns use these appeals in an effort to develop and enhance the credibility and likeability of their candidate in the face of voter skepticism about politicians and political messages. We find that campaigns employ more appeals on biography than on any substantive issue and highlight certain aspects of their biographies, like family values, more than others. We also find that challenging campaigns are more likely to discuss their candidates biography, but, surprisingly, that open seat campaigns are not. Our results demonstrate the importance of personal-based appeals to campaign strategy and that campaigns balance these personal and substantive concerns in developing their appeals to voters.

Right-wing populism and safe identities

“…When you look at Varadkar, contradictions are apparent: yes, he represents a new, progressive politics in the fact that he is a political leader who has "come-out" as gay. However, this image does not fit with the traditional "family values" trope, often utilised by right-wing politicians who play on this aspect of their identity as a mechanism to engender electoral support (Arbour & McGowen, 2017).…”

Building Support Through the Personalization of Twitter Messages in a Permanent Campaign

“…Since its launch in 2007, Twitter has become a popular and easy way for politicians to directly communicate with constituents (Munger et al, 2016). Research to this point has found that Twitter is used by political elites to express partisan and ideological positions, share relevant policy information (Ballard et al, 2022(Ballard et al, , 2023Lee & Shin, 2012), and highlight personal stories (Arbour & McGowen, 2017;Lee & Oh, 2013;McGregor, 2018). The wide-ranging content broadcast by candidates and campaigns reflects their sensitivity to the varied types of information voters seek (Lipsitz et al, 2005).…”