Page 93 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

86 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

leaders and not political issues. The 1988 Canadian election was unusual
in the degree to which a single issue dominated the campaign. The prim-
ing effect of the campaign was clear: as the weeks passed, the Canada–
United States Free Trade Agreement issue became increasingly important
to people’s voting choices. No such effect was detectable in either of the
two subsequent elections. In neither election did a single issue or set of
issues dominate the public agenda, and the issues that were uppermost in
voters’ minds (social spending and jobs) were not the sorts of issues that
are susceptible to priming. Instead, leadership became more salient over
the course of both campaigns, and media consumption clearly played a
role in priming leadership. As the campaign progressed and as media con-
sumption increased, relative evaluations of the leaders became more im-
portant to the vote.
Similarly, in the context of the 2002 German federal campaign, Schoen
(2004) observed that the governing and the opposition parties pursued
priming strategies. The opposition focused on economics and unemploy-
ment, while the governing parties emphasized candidates, the manage-
ment of the flood crisis along the Elbe, and the military intervention in
Iraq. The opposition parties were not able to strengthen the influence of
competence attributions in the field of economic policy because, with re-
spect to the three dimensions whose electoral influence increased in 2002,
the governing coalition was much more popular than the opposition. The
change in the importance of the criteria for decision making contributed
significantly to the electoral success of the red-green coalition. Thus, in
Germany, as in other Western democracies, issue management and prim-
ing strategies pay at the polls. In contrast, voting intentions regarding the
governing parties and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder became more person-
alized during 2002; as Schoen concluded, the red-green coalition and the
chancellor would not have won the German federal election in 2002 if
priming effects had not occurred.
Based on these studies, it is clear that priming may concern both par-
ticular issues and attributes of a candidate’s image. In attempting to prime
image, political campaigns have at least three strategies available to them
(Druckman et al., 2004): direct image priming, indirect image priming,
and priming image via issues. First, similar to issue priming, candidates
can directly emphasize the importance of images in evaluating candidates.
Mendelsohn (1994, 1996), drawing upon the 1988 Canadian Election
Study, argues that part of the reason for vote instability during election
campaigns is the media’s activity in priming the character of leaders, espe-
cially their trustworthiness. Although voters come to election campaigns
with an array of opinions on candidates, issues, and parties, because