Arceneaux, Kevin. "Do Campaigns Help Voters Learn? A Cross-National Analysis". British Journal of Political Science, Vol.36, No.1 (2006): 159-173.
- Scholars in the 1940s and 1950s concluded that campaigns did not have any noticeable effect on voter behavior, and that by the times campaigns started most voters had already made their decision (160).
- Newer research has challenged this view, demonstrating that campaigns do have an effect on voter decision-making, even if essential political views are not changed. Evidence shows that campaigns highlight certain issues and ignore others, thereby solidifying voter choices and influencing the election (160-161).
- Research by Drs. Stevenson and Vavreck indicates that campaigns do have some effects on election outcomes across countries, as the importance of economic performance in elections increases along with the length of campaigns, implying that longer campaigns influence the types of information that voters make decisions based on (162, 165, 171).
- Less educated voters and those who are politically apathetic are more likely to be influenced by campaigns, since they have smaller stores of political knowledge to compare campaign messaging to (162).
- This theory is contradicted by research in this paper, which does not detect statistically significant differences in electoral attitudes between educated and uneducated voters (167).
- Economics is more likely to play a factor in competitive elections if there is a majority government in power, with that government attracting all the praise of blame for the economic condition. Minority or coalition governments divide up responsibility, making blame harder to dole out in elections (162, 168).
- The methodology of the study is explained on page 164.
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