Candidates in major political contests are commonly endorsed by other politicians, interest groups and celebrities. Prior to the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary, Barack Obama was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, a celebrity with a proven track record of influencing her fans’ commercial decisions. In this paper, we use geographic differences in subscriptions to O! – The Oprah Magazine and the sal...

Four studies investigated whether political allegiance and salience of outgroup membership contribute to the phenomenon of acceptance of false, stigmatizing information (smears) about political candidates. Studies 1-3 were conducted in the month prior to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election and together demonstrated that pre-standing opposition to John McCain or Barack Obama, as well as the situ...

On April 27, 2009, President Barack Obama addressed members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) gathered at its 146th annual meeting in Washington, D.C. In his speech, the president shared his plans to give science and technology a central role in the nation's future and an immediate place in America's economic renewal. He outlined steps he is taking to increase research spending, achieve...

We survey the evidence on whether racial attitudes negatively affected Barack Obama’s vote share in the 2008 presidential election. There is some evidence pointing toward this possibility. First, the increase in the Democratic vote share in the presidential election between 2004 and 2008 was relatively smaller in Appalachia and some Southern states. Second, there was a significantly smaller 200...

It was the popular media that first made the comparison between an Obama presidency and that of Franklin Roosevelt. The media did not wait until President Obama took office, but began the comparisons in earnest after the presidential election of 2008, perhaps most famously on Time Magazine’s November 24, 2008 cover depicting a photoshopped Barack Obama in a characteristic pose of the New Deal P...