Strategy and Background in Congressional Campaigns

Sellers, Patrick J.

doi:10.2307/2585935

Cited by 117 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…While some studies find that candidates' behavior is shaped by the issues that are salient at election time, sometimes regardless of their ownership (see Aldrich and Griffin, 2003;Damore, 2004), others report strong evidence that issue ownership is an important dimension of electoral campaigns and party behavior, especially in the United States (Ansolabehere and Iyengar, 1994;Hayes, 2005;Petrocik et al, 2003;Sellers, 1998;Simon, 2002). The latter studies show that parties actively compete to acquire and defend their issue ownership.…”

Section: The Role Of Issue Ownership In Party and Voter Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Issue salience, issue ownership, and issue-based vote choice

2008

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Section: The Role Of Issue Ownership In Party and Voter Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Issue salience, issue ownership, and issue-based vote choice

2008

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“…These scores enable us to explore variation in issue ownership-that is, which candidates engaged in more or less ownership (cf. Dolan 2005;Sellers 1998;Sides 2006;Sulkin and Evans 2006). 18 These endorsements nearly always came from issue-oriented groups, with the only notable exception being newspapers.…”

Section: Web Site Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections

Druckman¹,

2009

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E lectoral campaigns are a defining feature of democratic polities. Yet scholarship on electoral campaigns, particularly on the content of campaign communications, remains disjointed. The field has not changed very much since Riker's (1996, 4) description over a decade ago: "we have very little knowledge about the rhetorical content of campaigns, which is, however, their principal feature . . . the fact remains that we know very little about what to say in campaigns-but this is what both political scientists and candidates want to know." Shortcomings are particularly acute in the United States for nonpresidential campaigns. "From reading our literature," notes Perloff (2002, 621), "you would assume that the only campaigns in America are for the presidency."In what follows, we advance research on campaigns, focusing on communication in U.S. congressional campaigns. We begin by offering a framework for studying campaign communication that integrates and extends prior work. The analysis focuses on the extent to which candidates take risks or play it safe in their campaign strategies. We test expectations from the framework James N. Druckman is Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, 601 University Place, Evanston, IL 60208 (druckman@ northwestern.edu).Martin J. Kifer is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Survey Research Center, High Point University, 833 Montlieu Avenue, High Point, NC 27262 (mkifer@highpoint.edu).Michael Parkin is Assistant Professor of Politics, Oberlin College, 10 N. Professor Street, Oberlin, OH 44074 (Michael. Parkin@oberlin.edu).We thank Nora Paul and Brian Southwell for critical guidance in constructing our original coding framework, Gary Jacobson for providing candidate background data, and the dozens of individuals who assisted in data collection. We also thank Lonna Atkeson, Amber Wichowsky, and many others for providing advice. We owe a special debt of gratitude to the APSR's reviewers and editors for insightful guidance that fundamentally shaped all aspects of the paper. Support for this research was provided by the University of Minnesota McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, Northwestern University's AT&T Research Scholar Fund, and, for the survey of website designers, the National Science Foundation (SES-0822819 and SES-0822819). Authors' names are listed in alphabetical order.with new data based on candidate Web sites over time, which offer an unmediated, holistic, and representative portrait of campaigns. The view from these data significantly differs from that of previous studies that rely on advertising and newspaper stories to study candidate behavior. Our efforts provide researchers with a foundation for moving toward a more complete understanding of congressional campaigns. CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN RHETORICAL STRATEGYIn many ways, the literature on congressional campaigns is progressive and wide-ranging. Scholars devote considerable attention to distinct topics, such as go...

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“…Yet studies of Congressional primaries (Peterson and Djupe 2005) and general election campaigns (Tinkham and Weaver-Lariscy 1995;Weaver-Lariscy and Tinkham 1996;Fox 1997;Kahn and Kenney 1999;Lau and Pomper 2001;Bratcher 2001;Benoit 2007) have found that incumbents are less negative. This effect may be especially strong when the race is highly competitive (Sellers 1998;Theilmann and Wilhite 1998).…”

Section: Determinants Of Negativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

What (or Who) Makes Campaigns Negative?

Grossmann¹

2012

ARP

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Previous work on negative political advertising focuses on candidate characteristics and electoral circumstances; it reveals inconsistencies in the effects of party, incumbency, gender, and competitiveness. I argue that one important set of variables has been excluded: the consulting firms who produce candidate advertising may influence negativity. I explain variation in attack ads and negativity across campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002 and 2004, finding that particular consulting firms run more negative campaigns, regardless of electoral circumstances. Idiosyncratic preferences of campaign consultants thus influence the character of campaigns.

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Strategy and Background in Congressional Campaigns

Cited by 117 publications

References 17 publications

Issue salience, issue ownership, and issue-based vote choice

Issue salience, issue ownership, and issue-based vote choice

Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections

What (or Who) Makes Campaigns Negative?

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