Page 85 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

78 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

terrorism and the economy, but not the war or education. These results
suggest that a president can exercise strategic and direct control over what
citizens think of him and what standards they use for evaluation.
The content of an advertising campaign may also help to create and
reinforce associations between the issues a candidate emphasizes and that
candidate. Claibourn (2008) conducted a study that relied on a national,
rolling, cross-sectional survey of Americans conducted from November
1999 through Election Day, 2000, combined with a data set for the presi-
dential advertising campaign from the Campaign Media Analysis Group.
This data set tracked television advertisements broadcast in the top 75
media markets, capturing information on what spots were aired, when,
and where. The four issues tracked by the survey (education, health care,
taxes, and Social Security) played a dominant role in the 2000 presidential
campaign agendas. In fact, these four issues were among the six most fre-
quently mentioned issues in both George W. Bush’s and Al Gore’s advertis-
ing campaigns. Claibourn (2008) found that the campaign appeared to
have done more to promote longer-term associations, rather than short-
term accessibility, between the candidates and the issues of Social Security
and taxes, though not in identical ways. For Gore, the most common effect
of his issue emphasis, among the issues studied, was largely neutral for
Democrats and negative for Republicans. Overall, his influence on the cri-
teria for evaluations was more likely to be selective, conditioned on parti-
san predispositions. For Bush, the more common pattern in response to
his advertising emphasis was to move the weight of issue priorities in a
positive direction for the electorate more broadly, though the degree of
responsiveness also varied by partisanship. This pattern is consistent with
the conventional wisdom that Bush won the air war and Gore ran a rela-
tively ineffective campaign.
Also, Boyle’s (2004) study focused on the influence of television adver-
tising on prime voters in their evaluations of candidates based on policy
issues. He provided content analysis of presidential political advertise-
ments, newspaper stories, network news stories, and a national survey
during the 1996 American presidential campaign, in which the incum-
bent, President Bill Clinton, faced challengers Bob Dole and Ross Perot.
The results indicated that the major party challenger, Dole, primed likely
voters through the issues chosen for his televised advertisements. The
Dole campaign was able to give voters reasons to like the candidate and to
dislike Clinton. Yet, for Clinton and Perot, the same influence was not
demonstrated. Interestingly, some evidence exists to support the conten-
tion that Clinton’s advertising influenced people to reduce their negative
evaluations of him. The analysis showed that the more Clinton’s