Understanding receptivity to presidential campaigns: Voter decision-making in Election 2000

Recent research has challenged the conventional wisdom in political science that campaigns do not matter, but this literature has yet to develop a theoretical framework that explains the mechanisms by which campaign efforts influence voter behavior. Are all voters equally likely to change their vote choice in response to campaign efforts? Are some campaign activities more effective than others? My dissertation helps bridge the gap between recent empirical campaign research and theoretical work on political persuasion and opinion change. I argue that the key to advancing our understanding of campaign effects is to recognize that voters are not tabulae rasae. Voters bring prior beliefs, affiliations, and interests with them to the context of the campaign and these characteristics influence their reactions to the campaign. Thus, some individuals may be more receptive than others---a consideration ignored in research looking for a single "campaign effect". More specifically, I argue that the extent to which an individual is receptive to a presidential campaign depends on three factors: (1) stored political information, (2) long-term partisan predispositions, and (3) existing vote intentions. I test this hypothesis with a unique and extensive panel data set of 29,000 respondents collected by Knowledge Networks during the 2000 presidential election. I use a dynamic methodology to explore individual-level changes in vote preference and turnout intention in response to campaign events and activities. My dissertation is structured as three self-contained essays focused on voter decision-making in the 2000 presidential election, each evaluating voter receptivity to different campaign efforts. Taken together, these essays offer considerable texture to the campaign effects literature by identifying the individuals for whom the campaigns have the largest impact. Generally, I find the individuals most likely to change their vote intentions during a presidential campaign include undecided voters, Independents, mismatched partisans (i.e., supporting the opposing party candidate), 3rd party supporters, and intended nonvoters. Identifying the characteristics of the individuals who are up for grabs in a presidential election not only has practical political implications, but also offers theoretical insights about the mechanisms of political persuasion in the context of American presidential campaigns.