Conservative Political Communication: How Right-Wing Media and Messaging (Re)Made American Politics by Sharon E Jarvis

Author:Sharon E Jarvis [Jarvis, Sharon E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351187220
Goodreads: 55783967
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Priming Partisan and Gender Identities

In America’s predominantly two-party system, women voters are also partisan voters and must grapple with their gender and partisan identities when voting. In turn, candidates need to tap into these identities in their appeals to Republican women. Candidates can do so by emphasizing a “shared characteristic” between themselves and Republican women voters and that “should help the group become a frame of reference for members’ political attitudes and behaviors” (Paolino, 1995, p. 297). Republican men can prompt a party connection, whereas Republican women can create a dual connection because they share gender and party affiliation with Republican women voters. Candidates can create these connections via agenda setting and priming. Candidates can focus on certain topics that are more important to Republican women and thus set their agendas. Once the agenda is set, these topics can become primed in women’s minds, and women will “give those issues more weight when making their vote decisions” (Schaffner, 2005, p. 805). This chapter explores how Republican men and women tried to prime these shared characteristics and influence women’s vote formation processes.

Partisan identity is a strong predictor of vote choice. In recent midterm and presidential election years, for example, over 90% of partisans voted for their respective party in House races (“Exit polls,” 2014, 2016). One key way Republican candidates can prime their shared partisanship with Republican voters is by discussing certain political issues. Political issue ownership suggests that the public perceives partisans to be more capable in handling certain issues, and thus these issues have become deeply associated with what it means to identify as and run as a Republican or Democrat (Petrocik, 1996). This ownership has intensified over time because “issues increasingly get defined along a left-right ideological continuum because parties are becoming increasingly structured that way” (Jochim & Jones, 2013, p. 361). Surveys show that the public perceives Republicans as owning issues such as the economy, immigration, national security, international affairs, and crime/law and order, whereas Democrats are perceived as owning education, healthcare, the environment, reproductive rights, and social welfare (Petrocik, 1996; Pew, 2014). Candidates reinforce voters’ perceptions and emphasize party-owned issues in their communication (Benoit & Hansen, 2002, 2004; Meeks, 2016; Petrocik, 1996; Petrocik, Benoit, & Hansen, 2003). This emphasis can be electorally beneficial. Benoit (2007) analyzed presidential TV spots from 1952 to 2004 and found that Democratic and Republican winners stressed party-owned issues more than Democratic and Republican losers. Therefore, if Republican men and women candidates are trying to (1) prime women’s partisan identities and (2) tap into the positive association between Republicans and owned issues, they should discuss their party’s owned issues. In turn, I predict candidates will discuss Republican-owned issues more than Democrat-owned issues (H1).

Alternately, candidates can prime Republican women’s gender identity via identity politics. Put simply, identity politics asserts that political allegiances can be formed based on some demographic similarity (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, or religion; see Plutzer & Zipp, 1996). Identity politics is similar to Pomper’s (1975) “dependent voter,” who casts their vote based on demographic identification with a candidate.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.