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Campaign Advertising and Candidate Strategy Alvarez, R. Michael Roberts, Reginald Uploaded 00-00-0000 Keywords Campaigns television advertising campaign strategy negative advertising voter learning senate elections gubernatorialelections Abstract Here we present a series of preliminary analyses of data collected during the final eight weeks of two state-wide campaigns in California during 1994: the races for governor and Senate. These campaigns were hard-fought in that year, and provide an interesting laboratory in which to study intense campaigns over time, and to compare the advertising strategies between races. We first begin by presenting data from the television advertisements of these two races. Our database of television advertisements from the last eight weeks of these races gives us an unique opportunity to understand and to examine the strategies used by each campaign as they tried to get their messages through to the electorate. Then we turn to the politically relevant question --- did these advertisements matter? Did the messages the candidates send through their television advertisements influence the electorate? To answer these questions we use two sets of polling data from this election to see if these television advertisements effectively got the messages of each candidate across to the intended audience. We conclude with a discussion of our results, and with an agenda for future research.

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Do Voters Learn from Presidential Election Campaigns? Alvarez, R. Michael Glasgow, Garrett Uploaded 10-27-1997 Keywords random effects panel models content analysis presidential election campaigns voter decisionmaking voter learning Abstract We present a model of voter campaign learning which is based on Bayesian learning models. This model assumes voters are imperfectly informed and that they incorporate new information into their existing perceptions about candidate issue positions in a systematic manner. Additional information made available to voters about candidate issue positions during the course of a political campaign will lead voters to have more precise perceptions of the issue positions of the candidates involved. We use panel survey data from the 1976 and 1980 presidental elections, combined with content analyses of the media during these same elections. Our primary analysis is conducted using random effects panel models. We find that during each of these campaigns many voters became better informed about the positions of candidates on many issues and that these changes in voter information are directly related to the information flow during each presidential campaign.

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Why Study Only Presidential Campaigns? Statewide Races as a Laboratory for Campaign Analysis Alvarez, R. Michael Uploaded 06-19-1997 Keywords presidential campaigns statewide campaigns campaign dynamics voter learning study design case studies Abstract Political campaigns play a central role in democratic politics since they are an important source of contact between citizens and voters. But the literature has been quite pessimistic about whether political campaigns can influence the preferences and behavior of voters. In this paper I argue that one of the primary reasons for this pessimism stems from the consistent and lasting focus on presidential campaigns. While presidential campaigns are an important aspect of the American political process, they make poor laboratories for the study of campaigns. Instead I argue that statewide political campaigns provide a much better laboratory for the study of campaigns. The paper presents a series of empirical analyses of statewide campaigns and concludes with a discussion of different designs for the study of statewide campaigns.