Page 87 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

80 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

changes in voters’ awareness of problems, but it also had consequences for
voting intentions. Large parties rarely profited from the intensification of
reporting on a given topic. In particular, the Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) lost voting shares in response to news coverage of the topic of en-
ergy supply, and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) did the same following
coverage of environmental protection issues. Conversely, the small parties
seem to have gained voting share following coverage of topical problems.
The Free Democratic Party (FDP) profited from coverage of educational
policy, and the Greens benefited from coverage of the health care system.
Moreover, the losses or gains experienced by the large parties as a result of
the choice of topical problems for the most part favored or disadvantaged
the other large party. By contrast, the smaller parties’ losses and gains were
more likely to be spread among all the other parties.
Carmines and Stimson (1980) distinguish between “hard” and “easy”
political issues. Easy issues have three basic features: They are symbolic
rather than technical, they are more likely to deal with policy ends than
means, and they have been on the political agenda for quite some time. In
addition, they are issues on which parties and candidates have staked out
relatively unambiguous and conflicting positions. In short, an easy issue is
“so ingrained over a long period that it structures voters’ ‘gut responses’ to
candidates and political parties” (Carmines & Stimson, 1980, p.78). Easy
issues do not require discussion to influence the election, whereas compli-
cated or hard issues do. Hard issues are not likely to influence the electoral
response unless they are controversial and extensively discussed or unless
they are politicized in the specific situation.
Kelleher and Wolak (2006) combined public opinion data from 1981 to
2000 on American presidents’ approval ratings with content analyses of
presidential news coverage to see how media attention affects the way is-
sues are weighted in connection with presidential approval. They expected
to find that the issues citizens understand best are more likely to be primed
than complex considerations. They defined two components of presiden-
tial approval as “easy” issues, using criteria that even less politically in-
volved citizens rely on in evaluating the president: economic evaluations
and character assessments. Two other issues, domestic policy preferences
and foreign policy assessments, represented “hard” issues that the re-
searchers considered to be less familiar and less likely to be primed in the
aggregate. Kelleher and Wolak (2006) established that news stories about
the economy and presidential character were more likely to be primed in
assessments of presidential popularity, while policy matters, both domes-
tic and international, were less likely to be emphasized in presidential
evaluations in response to heightened media attention. Rather than