Candidates' Personality and the Outcome of U.S. Presidential Elections

Candidates' Personality and the Outcome of U.S. Presidential Elections PDF Author: Andreas Graefe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The five-factor personality model is used to calculate personality scores of U.S. presidential candidates, based on how voters rated the candidates on 69 trait adjectives. These scores are then used to predict the election results from 1972 to 2012. In ten of the eleven elections, the candidate with the higher score won the election. A simple linear regression of the final vote shares on the personality scores provided forecasts that were competitive with those from eight established political economy models. Perceptions of candidates' personalities predict well because they incorporate much information about the electoral context, such as the state of the economy and candidates' issue-handling competence. When controlling for such factors, however, the remaining influence of personality on the election result is small and rarely decides elections.

Candidates' Personality and the Outcome of U.S. Presidential Elections

Candidates' Personality and the Outcome of U.S. Presidential Elections PDF Author: Andreas Graefe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The five-factor personality model is used to calculate personality scores of U.S. presidential candidates, based on how voters rated the candidates on 69 trait adjectives. These scores are then used to predict the election results from 1972 to 2012. In ten of the eleven elections, the candidate with the higher score won the election. A simple linear regression of the final vote shares on the personality scores provided forecasts that were competitive with those from eight established political economy models. Perceptions of candidates' personalities predict well because they incorporate much information about the electoral context, such as the state of the economy and candidates' issue-handling competence. When controlling for such factors, however, the remaining influence of personality on the election result is small and rarely decides elections.

Candidate Character Traits in Presidential Elections

Candidate Character Traits in Presidential Elections PDF Author: David B. Holian
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317668383
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Voter perceptions of the personal traits of presidential candidates are widely regarded to be important influences on the vote. Media pundits frequently explain the outcome of presidential elections in terms of the personal appeal of the candidates. Despite the emphasis on presidential character traits in the media, the scholarly investigation in this area is limited. In this book, David Holian and Charles Prysby set out to examine the effect that trait perceptions have on the vote, how these perceptions are shaped by other attitudes and evaluations, and what types of voters are most likely to cast a ballot on the basis of the character traits of the presidential candidates. Using the American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys, the authors find that traits do have a very substantial effect on the vote, that different candidates have advantages on different traits, and that the opinions expressed by media pundits about how the candidates are viewed by the voters are often simplistic, and sometimes quite mistaken. Character traits are important to voters, but we need a better and more complete understanding of how and why these factors influence voters. An essential read which provides a clear and original argument to all those interested in furthering their understanding of the importance of candidate character traits for the quality of American elections and democracy.

Personality Wins (2024 Edition)

Personality Wins (2024 Edition) PDF Author: Merrick Rosenberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781959554042
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Ever since 1789, Americans have engaged in the time-honored tradition of judging presidential candidates by their personalities. While it may sound unwise to pick the leader of the free world based on personality traits rather than platforms, policies, and ideology, that is exactly what will happen in the 2024 election. In this exploration of U.S. presidential elections, personality expert Merrick Rosenberg and co-author Richard Ellis reveal the pattern behind who takes the White House and why. You will discover the unique characteristics of Eagles (Donald Trump and Franklin D. Roosevelt), Parrots (Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan), Doves (Dwight D. Eisenhower and Jimmy Carter), and Owls (George H.W. Bush and Richard Nixon). You will find that almost nothing stops certain personalities from winning elections. Personality Wins shows how America's national personality contest worked before 1932 and how it has changed in the era of radio, TV, and digital media. Through unforgettable and often unbelievable stories from the last twenty-three elections, Rosenberg and Ellis show how personality shapes the vote-and how it will determine the outcome of 2024. Merrick has put together an excellent guide to understanding politics and human nature as well, which I will be eagerly sharing with my media and politics students." - Jon-Christopher Bua, White House Correspondent, Talk Media News and Adjunct Professor, The Catholic University of America

Leaders' Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Elections

Leaders' Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Elections PDF Author: Anthony King
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191522996
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The conventional wisdom purveyed by the press and television and accepted as true by most politicians is that elections throughout the democratic world are personal clashes between individual presidential candidates and party leaders. Almost everyone assumes that election outcomes are frequently determined by the major candidates' personal characteristics. In the United States, Al Gore in 2000 came over as aloof and arrogant­­and failed to win his expected victory. In Great Britain, Tony Blair in 2001 came across as dynamic and personable­­and won a second term. So personal charisma appears to yield electoral success. This study by eminent scholars on both sides of the Atlantic suggests that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Survey research conducted in recent decades indicates that relatively few voters are swayed by candidates1 personal characteristics. Far more important are voters' longstanding party loyalties, their views on issues, and their judgments of how well or badly presidents and parties have performed­­or will perform­­in office. The votes of even the few electors who are swayed by candidates' personalities usually cancel each other out. As a result, election outcomes are seldom decided by individual candidates' personal images. Occasionally, but not often. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton owed their election victories more to economics than to charm. At the end of World War II, the charismatic Winston Churchill lost the 1945 British general election; the colorless Clement Attlee won. Chancellor Helmut Kohl remained in power in Germany for a generation-but was never personally popular. Russian voters reckoned that Boris Yeltsin could not hold his drink- but nevertheless elected him. The implications of the authors' analyses are profound. They suggest that modern democratic politics is not nearly as candidate-centered and personality-oriented as is often supposed. They also suggest that parties' policies and their performance in office usually count for far more than the men and women they choose as their leaders. Not least, the authors suggest that the efforts of political consultants, advertising agencies, and spin doctors are often misdirected.

Who Will Be the Next President?

Who Will Be the Next President? PDF Author: Alexander S. Belenky
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319446967
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book addresses the peculiarities of the current presidential election system not yet addressed in other publications. It argues that any rules for electing a President that may have a chance to replace the current ones should provide an equal representation of states as equal members of the Union, and of the nation as a whole. This book analyzes the National Popular Vote plan and shows that this plan may violate the Supreme Court decisions on the equality of votes cast in statewide popular elections held to choose state electors. That is, the National Popular Vote plan may violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The book proposes a new election system in which the will of the states and the will of the nation as a whole are determined by direct popular elections for President and Vice President in the 50 states and in D.C. This system a) would elect President a candidate who is the choice of both the nation as a whole and of the states as equal members of the Union, b) would let the current system elect a President only if the nation as a whole and the states as equal members of the Union fail to agree on a common candidate, and c) would encourage the candidates to campaign nationwide. The second edition has been updated to include a proposal on how to make established non-major party presidential candidates and independent candidates welcome participants in national televised presidential debates with the major-party candidates.

The Psychological Assessment of Presidential Candidates

The Psychological Assessment of Presidential Candidates PDF Author: Stanley A Renshon
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814769438
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
Debate on public issues--and where candidates stand on them-- have traditionally represented the focal point of presidential campaigns. In recent decades, however, rather than asking where candidates stand on the issues, the public increasingly wants to know who they are. The issue of character has thus come to dominate presidential elections. While there is increasing public awareness that the psychology, judgment, and leadership qualities of presidential candidates count, the basis on which these judgments should made remains unclear. Does it matter that Gary Hart changed his name or had an affair? Should Ed Muskie's loss of composure while defending his wife during a campaign speech, or Thomas Eagleton's hospitalization for depression, have counted against them? Looking back over the past 25 years, Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychoanalyst, provides the first comprehensive accounting of how character has become an increasingly important issue in a presidential campaign. He traces two related but distinctive approaches to the issue of presidential character and psychology. The first concerns the mental health of our candidates and presidents. Are they emotionally and personally stable? Is their temperament suitable for the presidency? The second concerns character. Is the candidate honest? Does he possess the necessary judgment and motivation to deal with the tremendous responsibilities and pressures of the office? Drawing on his clinical and political science training, Renshon has devised a theory which will allow the public to better evaluate presidential candidates. Why are honesty, integrity, and personal ideals so important in judging candidates? Is personal and political ambition necessarily a bad trait? Do extra-marital affairs really matter? Finally, and most importantly, how can the public tell whether a candidate's leadership will be enhanced or impeded by aspects of his personality?With this sweeping volume, Stanley Renshon has provided us with the most comprehensive account to date of how the public judges, and should judge, our future presidents.

The Power of Personality

The Power of Personality PDF Author: Mary Catherine Slosar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
More and more, elections around the world seem to be won or lost on the basis of the candidates' personal qualities rather than their policies. Despite its prevalence in new and established democracies alike, we still know very little about what explains such candidate-centered voting. This study moves our understanding of this issue by examining variation in candidate-centered voting across individuals and electoral contexts in recent presidential elections in the United States, Brazil, and Mexico. I argue that candidate-centered voting is largely an information problem. At the individual level, I focus on the conditioning role of political sophistication, arguing that voters with higher levels of political sophistication engage in less candidate-centered voting due their increased capacity to manage the more cognitively demanding types of information related to policy and performance. Moving beyond the individual level, I consider how candidate-centered voting may vary across electoral contexts as well. In particular, I consider how the institutionalization and structure of political competition shape the cognitive demands on voters, making it more or less difficult for voters to evaluate candidates on bases other than their personalities. To test these arguments, I estimate models of voters' electoral utilities and vote choices using electoral survey data from the U.S. (2008), Brazil (2002), and Mexico (2000 and 2006). Overall, the empirical analysis supports my individual-level argument regarding political sophistication's conditioning role. As political sophistication increases, the dominance of candidate considerations in voters' electoral decisions tends to decrease. Likewise, comparisons in the level of candidate-centered voting across the elections under study suggest that certain aspects of the institutionalization and structure of political competition may help explain contextual variation in candidate-centered voting.

Code Blue in the White House

Code Blue in the White House PDF Author: Dr Jay Sordean Omd
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781537155661
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the Republican and Democratic Partys' candidates. But worldwide, everyone is asking the question, "What's going on in the American election for President?" They wonder "Is the Presidency dying or just degenerating?" NPR's Rachel Martin states in a September 2, 2016 podcast program on character of the candidates that many Americans say that these are the worst candidates they have ever had to choose from. On the other hand, is this election cycle in the U.S. really different from previous ones? Everyone around the world agrees that this one has been unique if not frankly bizarre. The Republican party in large part hates its candidate, Donald Trump. He is "outside the box" when the Republicans fashion themselves as "inside the box," traditional, conservative. Hillary Clinton is more inside the box than Donald Trump is. And Hillary Clinton is less well defined as a candidate than either Trump, Sanders, or Cruz were. Whoever the candidates are, one thing is for sure, all candidates have had to sell themselves to the American voter to get elected. Just what methods do they use? How do their personality traits influence and determine who will and will not vote for them? In a very fresh approach, Dr. Jay looks at this "selling to the voter" in a new way, unlike any of the political pundits we see on television day in and day out. This book may help you, the voter, see through the smoke screens and sales manipulations to better understand what you are being sold and how they are doing it. This book provides a fresh, new approach to feel more comfortable when you hear and see the candidates speaking. It helps you how to decipher the hidden agendas and unspoken symbolism inherent in their calculated rhetoric. Or even in their authentic, off the cuff declarations. From preying on your fear-based unconscious survival brain, to appealing to your desires for hope and freedom that are in your higher brain centers, CODE BLUE IN THE WHITE HOUSE guides you with humor and logic on just how politicians are selling to you. Will you buy what they have to say hook, line and sinker? Or will you dissect their speeches to get to the bottom line -- what is their true agenda? What do they personally want to get out of becoming the President of the United States. And how will their election change the course of your life for the next 4 years or 40 years? Is Donald Trump just interested in the chance to bankrupt another business, U.S.A. Inc.? Is Hillary just wanting to get in to refashion the system for the people or for the 1% at the top? Are either of them in it for you or mostly in it for their own egos? You decide, but at least do it using a rationale approach as much as possible. CODE BLUE IN THE WHITE HOUSE is a blueprint you can follow to really understand how they are selling to you and what they want you to believe in order to be a loyal supporter, campaign contributor, and voter. That is, if your vote is really going to count or whether the voting machines will be fixed again so someone else really decides the election.

The Timeline of Presidential Elections

The Timeline of Presidential Elections PDF Author: Robert S. Erikson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226922162
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
In presidential elections, do voters cast their ballots for the candidates whose platform and positions best match their own? Or is the race for president of the United States come down largely to who runs the most effective campaign? It’s a question those who study elections have been considering for years with no clear resolution. In The Timeline of Presidential Elections, Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien reveal for the first time how both factors come into play. Erikson and Wlezien have amassed data from close to two thousand national polls covering every presidential election from 1952 to 2008, allowing them to see how outcomes take shape over the course of an election year. Polls from the beginning of the year, they show, have virtually no predictive power. By mid-April, when the candidates have been identified and matched in pollsters’ trial heats, preferences have come into focus—and predicted the winner in eleven of the fifteen elections. But a similar process of forming favorites takes place in the last six months, during which voters’ intentions change only gradually, with particular events—including presidential debates—rarely resulting in dramatic change. Ultimately, Erikson and Wlezien show that it is through campaigns that voters are made aware of—or not made aware of—fundamental factors like candidates’ policy positions that determine which ticket will get their votes. In other words, fundamentals matter, but only because of campaigns. Timely and compelling, this book will force us to rethink our assumptions about presidential elections.

Candidate Character Traits in Presidential Elections

Candidate Character Traits in Presidential Elections PDF Author: David B. Holian
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317668375
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Voter perceptions of the personal traits of presidential candidates are widely regarded to be important influences on the vote. Media pundits frequently explain the outcome of presidential elections in terms of the personal appeal of the candidates. Despite the emphasis on presidential character traits in the media, the scholarly investigation in this area is limited. In this book, David Holian and Charles Prysby set out to examine the effect that trait perceptions have on the vote, how these perceptions are shaped by other attitudes and evaluations, and what types of voters are most likely to cast a ballot on the basis of the character traits of the presidential candidates. Using the American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys, the authors find that traits do have a very substantial effect on the vote, that different candidates have advantages on different traits, and that the opinions expressed by media pundits about how the candidates are viewed by the voters are often simplistic, and sometimes quite mistaken. Character traits are important to voters, but we need a better and more complete understanding of how and why these factors influence voters. An essential read which provides a clear and original argument to all those interested in furthering their understanding of the importance of candidate character traits for the quality of American elections and democracy.