Do Campaigns Matter? by Thomas M. Holbrook

Author:Thomas M. Holbrook [Holbrook, Thomas M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Political Science, Research, General
ISBN: 9780803973459
Google: P003qK5Cb8wC
Goodreads: 1224258
Publisher: SAGE
Published: 1996-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.3. Net Tone of Front-Page New York Times Campaign Coverage, 1984-1992

Table 4.2The Impact of Nominating Conventions on the Daily Tone of Front-Page New York Times Coverage of the Campaign, 1984-1992 (OLS Results)

NOTE: Standard errors are in parentheses.

*p < .10. **p < .05.

The correspondence between the occurrence of conventions and the change in press tone goes a long way toward explaining the source of convention bumps: Candidates are able to use the convention to generate a positive message that results in an increase in public support. However, although the changes in the tone of press coverage during the convention period might help explain the existence of conventions bumps, they are of only marginal use in explaining variation in the magnitude of the convention bump across conventions. To some extent the differences in tone of coverage do correspond with the differences in the size of the convention bump. For instance, in 1992 the Democrats received substantially better coverage during their convention than the Republicans did one month later, and they also received a substantially large postconvention electoral bump (+13.6 points versus +4.4 points). The picture becomes a bit murkier, however, when looking at the other years. For example, the 1984 Republican convention saw a favorable increase in press coverage nearly equal to that of the 1992 Democratic convention, but the convention bump for the 1984 Republican convention (+2.5) is smaller than any of the other five conventions listed in Table 4.1. In general, there is only a weak relationship between the change in the tone of press coverage and the magnitude of the convention bump. This does not mean that press tone is not related to convention bumps, only that the differences in the magnitude of convention bumps is not easily explained by the magnitude of the changes in the tone of press coverage during the convention period.

Part of the explanation of the modest relationship between press tone and the magnitude of the convention bump lies in the fact that there are limits on the ability of information, no matter how positive or negative, to have an effect on aggregate opinion. In particular, there are certain points during a campaign when information is likely to have a greater effect. Based on the hypotheses developed in Chapter 3, campaign information is expected to have a greater effect on public opinion when information is scarce and when public opinion is significantly out of equilibrium. In the next section, an effort is made to ascertain the role of these two factors in determining the effect of conventions on public opinion.

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