Page 260 - Culture Society and the Media

250 POLITICAL EFFECTS

Table 2: Percentages of electors voting for the Democratic Presidential candidate by
newspaper endorsement and by party identification, 1956–72

Source: Robinson (1974) d Humphrey vs. Nixon
a Stevenson vs. Eisenhower e McGovern vs. Nixon
b Kennedy vs. Nixon f Less than 10 respondents
c Johnson vs. Goldwater g Perceived newspaper endorsement, White voters only

A key column for each group of respondents is the one labelled ‘difference,
Democratic-Republican’. This records for each election year the excess of
Democratic voters coming from readers of Democratic papers over readers of
Republican papers. For example, in 1956, 84 per cent of the Democrats reading a
paper endorsing the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, voted for him; 73
per cent of the Democrats reading a paper endorsing the Republican candidate,
Dwight Eisenhower, voted Democratic. Thus, the difference in the rates of
support for Stevenson between Democrats reading Democratic and Republican
newspapers was 11 per cent.
It can be seen that out of fifteen comparisons, the differential of support for
the Democratic candidate among readers of Democratic papers exceeded that for
readers of Republican papers in nine cases (that is, wherever a plus sign appears
in the difference column). Over all cases the average differential was 9 per cent.
Among Independents, the differential was typically much higher—averaging 20
per cent across five elections, suggesting that they were especially likely to vote
in line with their newspaper endorsements.
Perhaps two conclusions may be drawn from this evidence: first, that people
are more open to influence when exposed to a fairly consistent point of view on a