The Spectacle of U.S. Senate Campaigns

Part One

UNDERSTANDING AND MEASURING CAMPAIGNS

One

The Nature of Political Campaigns

IN THE FALL of 1990, most Americans watched intently and anxiously as George Bush prepared to send the nation to war in the Persian Gulf. The citizens of Minnesota, however, were treated to a political respite in the form of an engaging senatorial campaign between incumbent Republican Rudy Boschwitz and challenger Paul Wellstone. When the campaign began, Boschwitz, first elected in 1978, was well known, well liked, well heeled, and well respected by Minnesotans. By the end of the campaign, Minnesota voters had decided to retire Boschwitz from the U.S. Senate. The turn of events leading to Boschwitz’s defeat illustrates the importance of campaigns and how the actions and reactions among the candidates, the media, and the voters determine electoral fortunes.

In mid-September, the senatorial campaign in Minnesota resembled a typical election involving a popular incumbent with plenty of resources facing an unknown challenger. The first polls taken after Wellstone won the Democratic primary on September 11 revealed that Boschwitz led by approximately 20 points. Wellstone had expended his resources to win the primary, and media coverage of the campaign was sparse because press attention was focused on the state’s highly competitive gubernatorial campaign.

Boschwitz’s first communication with voters, even before he knew who his opponent would be, was a set of ads reminding voters of his family’s escape from Nazi Germany, his experience in the Senate, and his service to Minnesota. After the primary, Boschwitz launched a second round of ads that was aimed at telling voters about his positive personal traits, how he is warm [and] sympathetic, especially on issues such as child care (Alger, 1996). The ads were uniformly positive and there were no mentions of Wellstone.

Wellstone, in the meantime, was laboring in virtual obscurity. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, the largest circulating paper in the state, mentioned Wellstone’s name in only thirty-eight paragraphs in the entire month of September, including articles describing his victory in the primary election. Wellstone’s response was to produce a set of unconventional and critical commercials stressing the size of Boschwitz’s campaign war chest (i.e., Boschwitz spent $6.2 million compared to Wellstone’s $1.3 million), his links to large money contributors, his unwillingness to debate the issues, and his voting record on issues such as welfare and the environment. The ads were full of negative messages, but they were presented in a breezy, light-hearted way (Alger, 1996: 81).

For example, Wellstone’s Faces advertisement began with a picture of Boschwitz and a Wellstone voice-over saying, You’ll be seeing this face on TV a lot. It belongs to Sen. Rudy Boschwitz who’s got 6 million dollars to spend on commercials. A picture of Wellstone is then shown with Wellstone saying, This is a face you won’t be seeing as much on TV. It’s my face. I’m Paul Wellstone, and unlike Mr. Boschwitz, I didn’t take money from out-of-state special interests. As the picture of Boschwitz reappears, Wellstone says, So when you get tired of seeing this face, just imagine the face of someone [Boschwitz’s face TRANSFORMING into Wellstone’s face] who is better prepared and in a better position to represent your interests. Wellstone then adds, Not to mention, better looking (Alger, 1996). The immediate impact of these unusual and effective ads was to frustrate Boschwitz, stimulate voter interest in Wellstone’s campaign, and, most important, attract much-needed media attention.

In fact, as early as October 4, the Star Tribune ran an article on the first page of the Metro/State section that claimed one of Wellstone’s ads was the zaniest TV ad of Minnesota’s political season. On October 11, a headline on the first page of the Star Tribune's Metro/State section heralded TV Ads Generating Recognition, Respect for Paul Wellstone. The article went on to quote extensively from the advertisement and noted that the commercials are getting so much attention that some of the top Boschwitz aides are upset. The ads became known as must see ads for both journalists and citizens alike. Local television stations replayed some of the commercials during their broadcasts, and national news programs commented on Wellstone’s unusual approach to political advertising.

Polls began to detect a narrowing of the race. A poll reported in mid-October showed Wellstone had closed the lead to 15 points. Then, in dramatic fashion, a poll reported on the front page of the Star Tribune on October 24 that Boschwitz’s lead had narrowed to only 3 points. By this time, the media, although still monitoring a negative, competitive, and sordid gubernatorial campaign, began focusing much more attention on the senatorial contest.¹ In the first fifteen days of October, Wellstone’s coverage in the Star Tribune nearly tripled over that of the entire month of September. And, in the last ten days of the campaign, media attention in the paper tripled once again, with nearly three hundred paragraphs devoted to Wellstone and his come from behind campaign. Wellstone’s finances improved dramatically with the positive and prevalent media reports. He raised $400,000 in the last week of October, allowing him to run his now popular ads more frequently.

Boschwitz responded by running a series of five attack ads during the final two weeks of the campaign. In these ads Boschwitz characterized Wellstone as a big-spending liberal. The harsh characterization of Wellstone seemed to work. A poll reported in the Star Tribune on the Sunday before the election showed Boschwitz had regained the lead by 9 points.

Nevertheless, concerned about the volatility of the polls, Boschwitz blitzed the airwaves with negative advertisements during the final weekend of the campaign. In addition, he attempted a negative and bizarre communication aimed at Jewish voters during this same period. A letter was sent to them stressing that Wellstone, although Jewish, was married to a non-Jew and had raised his children as non-Jews. On Sunday, November 4, and Monday the 5th, a series of criticisms aimed both at the letter and at Boschwitz’s final advertising blitz appeared in local newspapers. Even the respected Walter Mondale, who had played a minor role during the campaign, criticized Boschwitz’s tactics in an article appearing in the Star Tribune the day before the election. The former vice-president accused Boschwitz of a relentless, brutal, heavily financed, and in my judgment, untruthful television assault unheard of in Minnesota history. The next day Wellstone garnered 50 percent of the vote, defeating Boschwitz by two percentage points.

Although it was more dramatic than most, this race illustrates the complex interactions among candidates, the media, and the voters. During the course of the campaign, it appears that Wellstone’s and Boschwitz’s actions influenced the media’s presentation of the campaign and voters’ preferences. In addition, the candidates modified their initial strategies based on polling reports and patterns of press coverage. In the end, most people close to the campaign believed that the combination of the candidates’ messages and the news media’s portrayal of the race had a profound impact on the final vote tally (Alger, 1996).

This example raises questions about the nature and dynamics of political campaigns. What type of candidate messages captivate the interest of typically jaded reporters and normally distracted citizens? What political conditions conspire to lead candidates to attack their opponents? How does the media coverage of the race motivate candidates to alter their campaign strategies? How do the media present the content of the candidates’ messages to potential voters? Do the media focus on issues, or candidate traits, or polling numbers? What role does competition play in shaping the content of candidates’ messages and the substance of campaign coverage? How do voters react to a stream of negative messages from candidates?

Our goal in this book is to increase the public’s understanding of political campaigns by examining the population of U.S. Senate races contested between 1988 and 1992. Senate elections present an optimal setting for the study of campaigns because they provide impressive variance in campaign strategy, campaign spending, media coverage, and voter reactions (Abramowitz and Segal, 1992; Franklin, 1991; Krasno, 1994; Westlye, 1991). Unlike House races, which are usually low-key affairs, and presidential races, which are often hard-fought contests, campaigns for the U.S. Senate vary considerably in their competitiveness.

In our explorations, we examined the details of the candidates’ strategies and messages, the content, tone, and bias of the media coverage, and the attitudes and behaviors of potential voters. We discovered that competition is the driving force in American electoral politics. More than anything else, competition shapes, conditions, and colors the behavior of candidates, the reporting of the press, and the citizens’ evaluations of competing candidates. Without competition, campaigns are nothing more than self-aggrandizing exercises by incumbents. Their communications with voters are well-rehearsed scripts recounting their successes as legislators. There is little, if any, discussion of public policy. In addition, when competition is scarce, the media look to other political campaigns and events to report to voters. The press simply ignores noncompetitive campaigns. There are few headlines, virtually no front-page articles, and precious little actual reporting about these low-key campaigns. The ultimate losers in these noncompetitive settings are the voters. Citizens witnessing these campaigns are presented with almost no political information, debate, and discussion on which to evaluate candidates before Election Day.

Competitive elections, in contrast, are characterized by political debates, critiques, and discourse over the issues facing the nation and the leadership qualities of those candidates seeking office. Voters are presented with numerous reasons to vote for one candidate over another. These reasons are plentiful in the candidates’ advertisements as well as in the local press. Candidates talk about contemporary issues, they take stands on the issues, and they present comparisons with their opponents. The news media dedicate significantly more resources to the coverage of close races. In competitive campaigns, reporters and editors evaluate the candidates’ stands on the issues, they critique politicians’ careers, and they analyze their political ads.

Most importantly, voters respond to their political environment. The data and analyses presented in this book clearly demonstrate that campaigns matter. The activities of the candidates and the media make campaigns more or less competitive. Voters’ attitudes about politicians are not fixed and beyond the control of candidates. Polls change in response to the events of campaigns. While campaigns for noncompetitive seats may be largely symbolic, voters observing competitive campaigns listen and respond to the rhetoric of the candidates and the reporting by the local press. We show that voters are not fools. In competitive contests, citizens are knowledgeable about the candidates and understand the central themes of the campaigns. Even more impressively, individuals adjust their decision rules depending on the closeness of the contests. As campaigns become more competitive, voters respond by relying more heavily on sophisticated criteria, such as ideology and issues, when evaluating the opposing candidates.

In the end, we feel confident concluding that competitive campaigns are an essential element of American democracy. They enliven and enrich people’s political life. They empower voters with information to make choices about their representatives.

The Importance of Campaigns

In the United States, elections are the cornerstone of our representative democracy. Through elections, voters determine who is to hold political power and for how long. For the better part of two centuries, norms, practice, and tradition have dictated that political campaigns precede elections in the United States.² Campaigns enrich the political process in several important ways. They provide a formal period of time when political parties and politicians introduce themselves to potential voters. During campaigns, competing candidates and the political parties they represent have the opportunity to discuss matters of public policy for a sustained period of time. Campaigns also afford candidates an occasion to highlight their personal qualifications for office, such as their leadership ability, integrity, competence, and compassion. Candidates disseminate their messages to large numbers of voters by distributing campaign brochures, delivering speeches, airing advertisements on television and radio, and orchestrating fund-raisers and political rallies. This concentrated and sometimes intense political campaigning has the potential to provide voters with the information necessary to make informed decisions at the ballot box.

Beyond simply introducing candidates to voters, campaigns provide an avenue for widespread political discussion. No other forum produces political discourse that is as readily accessible to millions of American citizens as political campaigns. An extensive and ongoing political dialogue is often regarded as a key component of a healthy and functioning democracy. As John Stuart Mill (1951: 27) explains in his essay On Liberty: There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without comment to bring out their meaning. In today’s political campaigns, the commentary employed by candidates to animate factual discussion is pervasive, presented in deftly designed pamphlets, cleverly crafted commercials, and carefully worded speeches. In addition, local and national news media outlets routinely present the facts of the matter concerning the campaign in newspaper and magazine articles, during televised news programs, and on the radio.

More broadly still, in his work Considerations on Representative Government, Mill (1991: 321) argues that political discussion enlivens a sense of political community among a disparate citizenry.

It is by political discussion that the manual labourer, whose employment is a routine, and whose way of life brings him in contact with no variety of impressions, circumstances, or ideas, is taught that remote causes, and events which take place far off, have a most sensible effect even on his personal interests; and it is from political discussion, and collective political action, that one whose daily occupations concentrate his interests in a small circle round himself, learns to feel for and with his fellow citizens, and becomes consciously a member of a greater community.

To be sure, empirical research has demonstrated that the style and tone of political discussion during campaigns affect the likelihood that citizens will participate in their political community by voting. If candidates present interesting ideas that pertain directly to topics that are salient to people’s lives, then turnout increases (Ragsdale and Rusk, 1995; Caldeira, Patterson, and Markko, 1985). On the other hand, if the outcome of the election is virtually certain, with little engaging discussion between competing candidates, or worse, if the political discussion is harsh, strident, and unduly negative, then voter participation tends to decline (Ansolabehere and Iyengar, 1995; Filer et al., 1993).

Scholars have also demonstrated that campaigns directly influence the amount and type of political discussion in the United States (Kinder and Sanders, 1996; Zaller, 1992; Page, 1978). Recently, for example, Kinder and Sanders (1996) have shown how presidential campaigns can generate or discourage discussion of racial issues in America, easily the most complicated, emotional, poignant, and divisive issue in our nation’s history. Kinder and Sanders explain that the 1988 presidential campaign made clear the links between race and crime generating a national discussion by candidates Bush and Dukakis explicitly on crime, and implicitly on race. In 1992, in contrast, there was virtually no debate on these issues. Instead, the attention of the candidates and the media focused squarely on the economy, drifting occasionally toward health care and welfare reform. Kinder and Sanders note that politicians can use campaigns to generate a political dialogue on important policy matters, if they so choose. They are cautiously hopeful that campaigns can provide a forum for producing solutions to even the most intractable problems. They conclude that democratic politics could be the place where we learn a language of mutual respect and begin to work out our differences (Kinder and Sanders, 1996: 289).

Finally, campaigns provide connections between citizens and their government, forming the foundations of a representative democracy. James Madison (1964: 119-120) theorized in Federalist 49 about the tightly woven links between members of the legislature and the represented. He wrote: The members of the legislative department, on the other hand, are numerous. They are distributed and dwell among the people at large. Their connections of blood, of friendship, and of acquaintance, embrace a great proportion of the most influential part of the society. The nature of their public trust implies a personal weight with the people, and that they are more immediately the confidential guardians of their rights and liberties.

Two hundred years later, Richard Fenno has marshaled evidence wholeheartedly reaffirming Madison’s thoughts. Fenno (1996, 1978) has followed closely the members of the legislative department, representatives and senators, in their political environments and has seen firsthand the important role campaigns play when it comes to connecting the representatives with the represented. He summarizes (1996: 74-75):

Campaigns help to establish, maintain, and test the connections between politicians and citizens—connections that constitute the very core of a representational relationship. It is through a campaign that a candidate is introduced to the electorate. It is through a campaign that a candidate locates and builds a constituency. It is through the interpretation of a campaign that the winning candidate derives some of the impulses, interests, and instructions that shape his or her subsequent behavior as a legislator. It is through a campaign that a legislator explains his or her legislative activity to the citizenry. And it is through a campaign that a legislator’s contract is renewed or rejected. In all these ways, campaigns connect politicians and citizens and make possible the accountability of politicians to citizens that representative government requires. In short, no campaigns, no connections; no connections, no accountability; no accountability, no representative government.

Campaigns are the heart and soul of a representative democracy. One is not possible without the other. To explore the nature of campaigns is to broaden our understanding of how representative democracies function and prosper. In a world currently enamored with new and emerging democracies, it is important to examine the role of campaigns in the most enduring representative democracy in the world.

The Nature of Campaigns

Campaigns are a dynamic process where the actions of the candidates, the news media, and the public are indelibly linked. As figure 1.1 indicates, we believe that voters’ preferences, measured early in the campaign, are the primary catalyst affecting candidate strategies and media coverage at the outset of campaigns. These early polls reflect the relative experience, qualifications, and appeal of the candidates competing in the general election.³ Furthermore, these polls provide politicians, reporters, editors, and voters with a clear indication of the likely competitiveness of the fall campaign. We argue that early poll results set in motion a series of interactions among candidates, campaign managers, editors, and reporters that inform and shape the attitudes of voters. The interplay of these forces forges a dynamic reciprocal process where poll results, candidate strategies, and media coverage are causally interdependent.

Figure 1.1 The dynamics of political campaigns.

The culmination of the interplay among the candidates, the media, and the polls determines the intensity of the campaign. As the intensity of the campaign changes, so do the quality and quantity of information presented by the candidates and the media. Furthermore, the intensity of the race affects the amount of attention citizens devote to the campaign. By influencing the quality of the political dialogue and people’s interest, the intensity of the campaign affects how people make decisions at the ballot box. We turn now to a detailed discussion of the causal interplay among candidates, journalists, and citizens.

Understanding the Candidates' Choice of Campaign Strategy

At the outset of a campaign, candidates, in concert with their campaign managers and political advisers, develop a campaign strategy to ensure their election. Scholars have spent a great deal of time discussing the merits of various strategies for presidential candidates. One classic strategy for candidates is to appear ambiguous on matters of public policy. Shepsle (1972) provides theoretical reasons for such a strategy. He contends that candidates will actually increase their chances of victory if their positions on issues are unclear. His so-called lottery theory argues that candidates have little to gain by offering voters clear positions on issues. Unambiguous issue positions inevitably draw considerable criticism from elements of the media, politicians, interest groups, and opponents. Most important, clearly articulated positions on issues may resonate with only a minority of voters, thereby sending the majority of voters to seek refuge with the opponent.

Although ambiguity on the issues is a popular strategy for many candidates, there is a competing perspective that warns against too much obfuscation. Research and common sense suggest that voters are unlikely to support a candidate whom they know nothing about (Endow and Hinich, 1981; Bartels, 1986). Nevertheless, since taking a clear position carries the risk of alienating voters with alternative views, candidates need to choose an optimal position on the issues.

The most obvious position for candidates to take is one that mirrors the beliefs of most voters—the celebrated median voter position (Downs, 1957). However, locating the median voter is easier said than done, even in the era of modern polling techniques. Public opinion may be evenly split on an issue (Page and Shapiro, 1992), or voters may not know where they stand on a particular issue, or worse for candidates, voters may change their position over time (Converse, 1964; Markus and Converse, 1979; Zaller, 1992). Consequently, some scholars believe that candidates should take positions on issues that will generate support from specific party or group-based coalitions (Rabinowitz and MacDonald, 1989; Page, 1978). This argument is based on the premise that candidates are likely to form winning coalitions among like-minded groups holding similar positions on matters of public policy.

Page (1978) has articulated another strategy for candidates to employ when constructing their messages for voters. In his emphasis allocation theory, Page reasons that candidates need to develop issue priorities around topics with widespread consensus among voters (e.g., clean air and water, an educated society, a growing economy), while purposely avoiding specific positions on issues. He too argues that clear position taking will potentially irritate large segments of the electorate. In addition, the articulation of specific issue stands is too costly for candidates in terms of time and resources. The budgeting of time and resources is important for candidates because money, media coverage, and especially voter attention are at a premium during campaigns.

Explaining Candidate Strategies: The Impact of Competition

Scholars have moved us a long way toward understanding why candidates pursue specific strategies in presidential elections. However, in developing these explanations, scholars have typically assumed that elections are competitive. This assumption is empirically correct in presidential campaigns. Even in the most lopsided presidential elections in this century (i.e., Johnson’s defeat of Goldwater in 1964 and Nixon’s drubbing of McGovern in 1972), a 10 percent swing by the electorate would have made the race too close to call. Hubert Humphrey’s dramatic comeback in 1968 or Reagan’s late surge in 1980 are reminders that presidential elections are not over until the ballots are counted. This is not always the case in nonpresidential elections. As discussed above, competition in Senate elections varies significantly. Additional theorizing is needed to account for the development of candidate strategies under differing conditions of competition.

We propose that candidates weigh the results of early polls carefully when developing a campaign strategy. If polls indicate that the outcome is uncertain, then candidates need to create strategies that appeal directly to groups of constituents that have been traditionally supportive of the candidates or the candidates’ party. In highly competitive campaigns, candidates may even broaden their appeals to include swing voters in the hopes of generating support from as many potential voters as possible. In contrast, when one candidate is leading by a large margin in early polls, then it makes less sense for candidates to develop strategies that focus attention on specific groups. Rather, candidates who are ahead generate messages that appeal broadly to the entire electoral constituency. And, candidates who are hopelessly behind focus attention on generating positive name recognition among prospective voters. An example from two senatorial elections illustrates the point.

In Nebraska, the health of the state’s agricultural economy dominates the political scene. The 1988 senatorial election between incumbent David Kames and former governor Robert Kerrey was no exception: the campaign was fundamentally about farm policy. Both candidates discussed agricultural issues at length and argued their respective views at small-town picnics, in 30-second political advertisements, in press conferences, and at the state fair.

Two years later as the winter wheat was being planted across Kansas, the largest wheat-producing state in the nation, Senator Nancy Kassebaum was seeking a third term in the U.S. Senate. However, agricultural concerns were barely mentioned during Kassebaum’s campaign. Instead, the main theme of the senator’s reelection campaign was Kassebaum: A Voice You Can Trust. Her campaign was virtually devoid of any issue discussion, including farm policy. Her opponent, Dick Williams, tried to engage Kassebaum in a policy debate, but ironically not on the subject of agriculture.

The differences in campaign themes for these candidates are best understood by looking at the level of competition in these two contests. The election in Nebraska was much anticipated by Democrats and Republicans alike. An appointed and potentially vulnerable senator was pitted against a popular ex-governor. Resources were plentiful, press coverage was abundant, and, most important, preelection polls showed a horse race. Only 10 points separated the two candidates in September. Not to talk about agriculture would have been a strange strategy indeed. Such a strategy would not have gone unnoticed by the opponent, the press, financial contributors, much less by anxious farmers.

But in Kansas the political setting was different. Nancy Kassebaum, Alf Landon’s daughter, had always been popular across the state. Her opponent, Dick Williams, was without resources or campaign skills borne of experience. Williams had actually lost his party’s primary, placing second. In a strange turn of events, the winner of the Democratic primary withdrew from the general election campaign and Williams became the Democratic nominee. Early polls revealed that Williams trailed Kassebaum by as many as 70 points. In fact, in the last poll before the election, Williams was behind by an amazing 72 points. Kassebaum, with her lead secure, avoided the potentially controversial and contentious subject of farm policy. The slogan Kassebaum: A voice you can trust was based on her experience, her personality, and was inherently believable.

To be sure, scholars of nonpresidential elections have noted that the closeness of the race may be related to the strategies candidates decide to pursue. Westlye (1991) considered such a relationship when he found that the press reported more issue and ideological discussion in intense Senate campaigns compared to low-key campaigns. Kingdon (1968), examining local and statewide campaigns in Wisconsin in 1962 and 1964, found that candidates offer more specific issue positions in competitive contests than in noncompetitive ones. Goldenberg and Traugott (1984) detected a similar pattern when talking to campaign managers in House elections.⁴ Yet, there has been little, if any, discussion about why this relationship exists. What are the characteristics of close races that motivated Kames and Kerrey to discuss agricultural policy? What pressures were lacking in Kassebaum’s contest that allowed her to avoid talking about policies that affect wheat farmers?

One answer is that in highly competitive campaigns the number of interested and engaged activists (e.g., interest groups and financial contributors) increases because supporters of both candidates view victory as achievable. As the number of activists increases, so will the number of issues placed on the campaign agenda. Candidates will feel a greater need to address these distinct policy concerns in order to maximize their support at the polls as well as their financial contributions. Consequently, to appeal to these various constituencies, candidates in competitive races will address more issues and take clearer positions on issues than their counterparts in less competitive races.

Robert Dahl (1956: 132) noted the link between competitive elections and pressures brought by various interests in his classic work, A Preface to Democratic Theory'. Elections and political competition do not make for government by majorities in any very significant way, but they vastly increase the size, number, and variety of minorities whose preferences must be taken into account by leaders in making public choices.

Today, competing interests that become energized by highly competitive elections are directly represented by political action committees, or PACS, the electoral arm of an organized interest (Herrnson, 1995: 104). PACS capture the attention of nearly all politicians because of their ability to distribute money and provide additional campaign services (e.g., polling, campaign ads, issue research, strategic advice) to candidates. In many respects, PACS now perform many of the activities that were traditionally taken on by the political parties (Herrnson, 1995). In close races, PAC assistance may be crucial and instrumental for eventual victory; thus, candidates often reach out to various PACS representing a wide variety of potentially competing interests (e.g., business, labor, ideological). In contrast, when races are not competitive, candidates can be more selective, relying only on PACS with whom they have had established relationships over the years. In competitive races, then, candidates are much more likely to spend considerable time emphasizing issues that appeal to a wide range of interest groups, compared to the narrow set of topics that they may discuss in a low-key contest where neither the media nor the voters are paying close attention.

A second reason competition encourages more issue discussion is that competitive candidates often feel compelled to comment on the issue positions of opponents. Skilled and articulate opponents often force a debate on certain issues and demand responses on questions of public policy. If politicians fail to respond, opponents may accuse candidates of avoiding issues either in advertisements or via the local press. The end result is that the campaign becomes a forum for a wider and more detailed discussion of the issues. On the other hand, if a candidate is leading by a wide margin in the polls, then there is little reason to engage in a dialogue with the opponent on the issues, especially if the issues are controversial.

The pressures to discuss issues in competitive elections are so prevalent that the amount of issue discussion will actually supplant candidates’ presentations of noncontroversial topics, such as their own experience and personality traits. Candidates enjoy cultivating a favorable personal image, and voters are skilled at assessing the personal characteristics of candidates since they make similar judgments in their everyday life. For voters, evaluating candidates on personal traits is a useful and efficient decision rule that enables them to manage the complexities of politics more easily (Kinder, 1986; Page, 1978; Popkin, 1991).

Although emphasizing personal traits tends to enhance candidates’ standings with voters, candidates in close