Election and Priming - 2
Parties, Candidates, and Policy Issues in the 2000 Presidential Election:
Being primed or muted by Media and Interpersonal Communication
The central question in voting theory has been what determines the vote (Berelson,
Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954; Downs, 1957; Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960;
Fiorina, 1978). One of the dominant theoretical frameworks to the study of voting is social-
psychological approach where electoral outcomes are attributed to voters’ attitudes toward
parties, candidates, and policy issues (see Niemi & Weisberg, 1993 for more details). Since the
classic study in this tradition, The American Voter (Campbell et al, 1960), the three variables,
partisanship, candidate perception, and issue position, have been demonstrated as crucial
individual level determinants of the vote (Markus & Converse, 1979; Bartles, 1987; Rahn,
1993). Moreover, drawing comparisons across elections, current research reveals how the
electoral importance of these three factors has changed at an aggregate level (Keeter, 1987;
Wattenberg, 1991, 1996). It is generally agreed that candidate images became increasingly
important to electoral outcomes (Keeter, 1987; Wattenberg, 1991) whereas the role of party
identification in determining the vote choice relatively diminished during past decades
(Wattenberg, 1996).
Although the traditional model of voting behavior points to the importance of the
psychological factors at an individual level, it fails to explain whether and how the importance
of the vote determinants varies depending on other factors during the course of an election
campaign. For instance, the traditional view tells us that republicans are likely to vote for
republican candidate, but not in which conditions republicans are more likely or less likely to
do so. Delli Carpini & Keeter (1996) provide one answer to this question by showing that
politically knowledgeable people are more likely to vote based on their issue position.
However, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the role that media play in altering
Convention