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Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2009

JAMES N. DRUCKMAN ,
MARTIN J. KIFER  and
MICHAEL PARKIN
JAMES N. DRUCKMAN*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
MARTIN J. KIFER*
Affiliation:
High Point University
MICHAEL PARKIN*
Affiliation:
Oberlin College
*
James N. Druckman is Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University, 601 University Place, Evanston, IL 60208 ([email protected]).
Martin J. Kifer is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Survey Research Center, High Point University, 833 Montlieu Avenue, High Point, NC 27262 ([email protected]).
Michael Parkin is Assistant Professor of Politics, Oberlin College, 10 N. Professor Street, Oberlin, OH 44074 ([email protected]).
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Abstract

Electoral campaigns are the foundation of democratic governance; yet scholarship on the content of campaign communications remains underdeveloped. In this paper, we advance research on U.S. congressional campaigns by integrating and extending extant theories of campaign communication. We test the resulting predictions with a novel dataset based on candidate Web sites over three election cycles. Unlike television advertisements or newspaper coverage, Web sites provide an unmediated, holistic, and representative portrait of campaigns. We find that incumbents and challengers differ across a broad range of behavior that reflects varying attitudes toward risk, that incumbents’ strategies depend on the competitiveness of the race, and that candidates link negative campaigning to other aspects of their rhetorical strategies. Our efforts provide researchers with a basis for moving toward a more complete understanding of congressional campaigns.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 103 , Issue 3 , August 2009 , pp. 343 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2009

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