Etch-a-Sketching: Evaluating the Post-Primary Rhetorical Moderation Hypothesis

被引:19
作者
Acree, Brice D. L. [1 ]
Gross, Justin H. [2 ]
Smith, Noah A. [3 ]
Sim, Yanchuan [4 ]
Boydstun, Amber E. [5 ]
机构
[1] Ohio State Univ, Polit Sci & Translat Data Analyt, Columbus, OH 43210 USA
[2] Univ Massachusetts, 200 Hicks Way,Thompson Hall 320, Amherst, MA 01003 USA
[3] Univ Washington, Comp Sci & Engn, Seattle, WA 98195 USA
[4] Inst Infocomm Res, Singapore, Singapore
[5] Univ Calif Davis, Davis, CA 95616 USA
基金
美国国家科学基金会;
关键词
political communication; ideology; presidential campaigning; text analysis; IDEOLOGY; POSITIONS; PRIMARIES; WORDS;
D O I
10.1177/1532673X18800017
中图分类号
D0 [政治学、政治理论];
学科分类号
0302 ; 030201 ;
摘要
Candidates have incentives to present themselves as strong partisans in primary elections, and then move "toward the center" upon advancing to the general election. Yet, candidates also face incentives not to flip-flop on their policy positions. These competing incentives suggest that candidates might use rhetoric to seem more partisan in the primary and more moderate in the general, even if their policy positions remain fixed. We test this idea by measuring ideological moderation in presidential campaign language. Using a supervised two-stage text analysis model, we find evidence that presidential candidates in 2008 and 2012 use more ideologically extreme language during primary campaigns, and then moderate their tone when shifting to the general election, with troubling implications for representation and accountability.
引用
收藏
页码:99 / 131
页数:33
相关论文
共 31 条
[21]  
Laver M, 2003, AM POLIT SCI REV, V97, P311
[22]   Scaling Policy Preferences from Coded Political Texts [J].
Lowe, Will ;
Benoit, Kenneth ;
Mikhaylov, Slava ;
Laver, Michael .
LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 2011, 36 (01) :123-155
[23]   Informational party primaries and strategic ambiguity [J].
Meirowitz, A .
JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS, 2005, 17 (01) :107-136
[24]   Fightin' Words: Lexical Feature Selection and Evaluation for Identifying the Content of Political Conflict [J].
Monroe, Burt L. ;
Colaresi, Michael P. ;
Quinn, Kevin M. .
POLITICAL ANALYSIS, 2008, 16 (04) :372-403
[25]   Introduction to the Special Issue: The Statistical Analysis of Political Text [J].
Monroe, Burt L. ;
Schrodt, Philip A. .
POLITICAL ANALYSIS, 2008, 16 (04) :351-355
[26]   Policy goals, public rhetoric, and political attitudes [J].
Nelson, TE .
JOURNAL OF POLITICS, 2004, 66 (02) :581-605
[27]  
Powell G. B., 2000, ELECTIONS INSTRUMENT, V1
[28]  
Sim Y., 2013, P 2013 C EMP METH NA
[29]   A scaling model for estimating time-series party positions from texts [J].
Slapin, Jonathan B. ;
Proksch, Sven-Oliver .
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, 2008, 52 (03) :705-722
[30]  
Tomz M., 2010, CANDIDATE REPO UNPUB