Early Primaries, Viability and Changing Preferences for Presidential Candidates
نویسنده
چکیده
Given the fluid context of primaries and observed swings in national polls, many Democratic voters likely switched candidate support over the course of the 2008 primary campaign. We examine how perceptions of early caucus and primary outcomes subsequently affected voter choice and candidate momentum. Although the 2008 calendar left many voters with a brief window to assess candidates, it nonetheless allowed a non–front-runner to benefit from momentum and win the Democratic nomination. This article employs a panel study of voters surveyed at two time points during the nomination contest to assess individual-level change in candidate support. Results from the earlier states sent signals about candidate viability to people who had not yet voted. We find that voters deciding after results were in from early states changed their perceptions of candidate viability and that this changed whom they intended to support. We conclude that momentum remains an important factor in presidential nominations.
منابع مشابه
More Bang for the Buck: Campaign Spending and Fundraising Success
Can candidates spend their way into financial success? We propose that the 2007 presidential money primary offers unprecedented leverage to evaluate spending’s influence since it allows for sharper controls of confounding factors. Our results demonstrate that greater candidate spending on fundraisingrelated efforts is associated with significant future financial benefits. We estimate that, prio...
متن کاملInformational Party Primaries and Strategic Ambiguity
While scholars have thoroughly explored the logic of two candidate electoral competition, much less has been accomplished in gaining an understanding of the role of party primaries. This paper presents an incomplete information model of primary and general elections and argues that party primaries do more than select party candidates. Party primaries serve an informational function. In an envir...
متن کاملPlease Do Not Cite or Quote without Permission of the Authors
The 2016 candidacy of Donald Trump has drawn considerable interest among social scientists. Long-standing interests in the role of authoritarianism, populism, race, and class as determinants of political preferences and behavior have resurfaced. In this paper, we rely upon a unique survey panel to explore changing support for Republican presidential candidates over the primary season, test comp...
متن کاملMeasuring the Consequences of Delegate Selection Rules in Presidential Nominations
In this paper, we formalize existing normative criteria used to judge presidential selection contests by modeling the translation of citizen votes in primaries and caucuses into delegates to the national party conventions. We use a statistical model that enables us to separate the form of electoral responsiveness in presidential selection systems, as well as the degree of bias toward each of th...
متن کاملExperimental Approaches to Vote-counting Theory in Nominating Choice
Professor William H. Riker's essay on "Voting and the Summation of Preferences" (this REVIEW, Vol. 55, December 1961, pp. 900-11) is a most useful contribution. It needs to be supplemented by some comment on the applicability of this material in the field of nominating choice; also on the applicability of experimental approaches to ascertain the frequency with which the problems that concern Ri...
متن کامل