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Strategic Importance Of Voters

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Strategical importance of voters who receive direct candidate information
Voters with a direct link have three important traits that candidates need to know in the mechanism of political campaigns. First, they are politically motivated. Studies found the more interest in politics SNS users have, the more likely they are to have a tie to candidates on SNSs (Karlsen, 2015; Macafee, 2013). Duggan and Smith (2006) showed that, in the U.S., while 53% of politically engaged users are likely to follow candidates, only 21% of those with lower levels of political engagement are likely to do so. In addition, those with higher political interest are more likely to engage in real world politics such as voting (Bode, Vraga, Borah, & Shah, 2014; Gil de Zúñiga, …show more content…

Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet (1968) posited that political campaigns could activate latent partisanship (activation), mobilize core party supporters (reinforcement), and persuade non-supporters (conversion). However, scholars have shown that political campaigns mainly serve activation and reinforcement rather than convert non-supporters (Finkel, 1993; Gelman & King, 1993; Iyengar & Petrocik, 2001; Kramer, 1970). This suggests it is strategically more viable to activate and reinforce voters’ (latent) existing attitudes toward parties and candidates by giving information congenial to their political and social preferences through a direct conduit between …show more content…

At this attribute level, studies have shown the news media can transfer attribute salience of an object (i.e., issue and candidate) as well as object salience to the public (Coleman & Banning, 2006; Hester & Gibson, 2003; Kim, Han, Choi, & Kim, 2012; Kim & McCombs, 2007; Lopez-Escobar, Llamas, McCombs, & Lennon, 1998; McCombs, Llamas, Lopez-Escobar, & Rey, 1997; McCombs, Lopez-Escobar, & Llamas, 2000; Golan & Wanta, 2001). The issue level of agenda-setting is about “attention to an object,” while this level is about “comprehension of its attributes” (McCombs, 2004, p. 78). By stressing aspects of an issue or a candidate, the news media can affect the ways in which people think about the issue or the candidate (Ghanem, 1997). The news media have the power to inform people not only what issues are important but also “how to think about” issues/candidates (McCombs, 2004, p.

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The general perception of voters is that they are ill-informed and ill-equipped to vote on complex measures. Nonetheless, Ethan Rarick argues that voters generally act rationally and that they “rely on cues such as endorsements from people or organizations they trust to make their decisions.” (143). By providing more information and resources to voters, more constituents will be able to vote wisely and

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In the Huffington Post article “Why Partisan Voting Makes Accountability Impossible”, Todd Phillips analyzes how social groups and political ideology heightens the response we have toward the candidate that represents our political party. Phillips states that social groups will vote for a candidate because of their loyalty to the political party, and not because of their issue advocacy. This loyalty is emphasized due their attachment to their social group. During times of an election, politicians will have different policies and stances on issues that can be seen as being more liberal or more conservative. However, this does not deter partisans from voting for their a candidate, since their loyalty lies within their attachment to their political

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In fact, Matthews argues, it is the other way around. The more someone grants you favors, the more they invest in you, which was the case of third party candidate Ross Perot. Perot asked his supporters a simple favor; to get him on the ballot in all 50 states. Soon enough, Perot supporters started showing up in shopping malls and public places, working to get him more support. Matthews says that they did this for a simple reason- once they started doing Perot favors to get him on the ballot; people became gradually more and more invested in him.

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One strength of a political party is that they are “essential institutions for the operation of the American government” (Barker, 2016, p. 1, para. 1). One of the functions of the political party is to be the middle person between citizens and “their elected government” (Barker, 2016, p. 4, para. 2) so that the people can feel as if their voices will be heard and the issues will be resolved. Although political parties should be for the people, one of the weaknesses is that “many believe that the major parties do not do an adequate job of

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Political efficacy is described as, “Faith and trust in government and the belief that one can understand and influence political affairs” (Mutz and reeves). The dearth of political efficacy is reflected in the mobilization numbers of the 2014 senate races. According to the Pew Research Center, only 38% of the voting-eligible population in states with senate elections turned out (Desilver & Van Kessel, 2015). Pew finds that it was the lowest turnout since 1990 even though $1.1 billion was spent, 25% more than the 2010 election (Desilver & Van Kessel, 2015). To be clear, the two numbers do not necessarily indicate causation, and there could be several other factors attributed.

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Today’s political arena is so tremendous that few voters can fully understand it. Policies of jobs, foreign relations and gay marriage are great factors that forge party lines and get out the vote. However, when forced to choose, voters must make sense of their vote by using very limited information and tangles of misperceptions guided by politically biased newscasts . With so many factors beyond comprehension often voters are hindered due to a limited number of sources to receive unbiased information from (Lenz, 2012) .

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(1) Voters can be ignorant about how government works, but still understand their interests on a basic level. They are capable of knowing what they need and want from government policies, but how they can achieve what they need is usually where voters get mixed up. This is especially true for voters who believe misinformation from the political party they identify with. To combat this, politicians shouldn’t be allowed to spread false information about how policies will work. Independent, mixed party committees should evaluate new policies and agree upon key points to condense the policy to that is digestible for voters who have little understanding of government and economic processes.

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In presidential elections, campaigns play a major role in bringing in the viewer’s attention and hopefully lead them to vote for the particular candidate. Almost all campaigns include forms of persuasion: ethos, used to show a level of authority and title, logos, used to demonstrate a capacity of knowledge, and also pathos, used to target the viewer’s emotions. Aside from these methods of persuasion, ad-makers also utilize visual and audio aspects to trigger the audience’s likeliness of voting for a candidate. Therefore, in this paper I argue how the use of cues and advertisements in primary elections could greatly contribute to a candidate’s position in presidential elections. The examples include Bill Clinton’s

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The speaker offering little insight on his assertion pushed Ashley to do her own research and decide whether or not she agreed with the key note speaker. Uninspired by the answers the speaker gave me, I decided to take his advice and analyze the works of other researchers in the field to draw my own conclusions. First, I remembered from my political psychology class that we had discussed The American Voter; the book the speaker had asked me to research. In class, we discussed how the average American votes, utilizing The Funnel Model of Voting. The book discusses how most people vote based on six attitudinal dimensions.

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According to Baran (2012) mass communication can be defined as “the process of creating shared meaning between the mass media and their audiences.” This essay aims to discuss the degree to which we are shaped by our interaction with the media. In order to achieve the aforementioned aim of this essay I will focus on the following: limited-effects theory, two-step flow theory, attitude change theory and agenda setting. The limited effects theory sets out that media influence is based on individual and social characteristics.

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