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Living in a Battleground

Presidential Campaigns and Fundamental Predictors of Vote Choice

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, mcclurg{at}siu.edu

Thomas M. Holbrook

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, holbroot{at}uwm.edu

Little evidence links the strategic decisions of campaigns to individual-level voting behavior. Yet for campaigns to matter in the way that experts argue, exposure to campaigns must also matter, so there should be observable differences in the structure of vote choice between battleground and nonbattleground states. Combining presidential campaign data with the Senate Election Study, the authors show that intense campaigning can activate factors such as race, ideology, partisanship, and presidential approval. The authors find that the campaigns affected different variables in 1988 than in 1992, which they hypothesize is the consequence of campaign messages.

Key Words: presidential campaigns • vote choice • battleground states • campaign effects

This version was published on September 1, 2009

Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 3, 495-506 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1065912908319575


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