Forget public policy and promises for a better tomorrow. It may be more important for Republican candidates to seem competent and trustworthy, and for Democrats to seem intelligent and likeable.
This is according to a new study by Michael Lewis of the Olin Business School, an assistant professor of marketing.
Lewis argues that political candidates are increasingly running their campaigns from a marketing standpoint, referring to the current presidential race in which Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama of Illinois represents hope while Democratic presidential candidate Senate Hillary Clinton of New York represents experience.
“We’re seeing branding more and more, and we think a marketing-oriented approach might add a little bit of insight into how elections are determined,” said Lewis, who co-authored the study with JoAndrea Hoegg of the University of British Columbia. “The candidates listen to the people’s opinions and even run focus groups. It’s like marketing a brand of soap, and they want to see ideas from the perspective of the voters.”
Lewis said people who follow campaigns closely will notice that the candidates’ messages change over time.
“Behind the scenes, a lot of what they say is driven by marketing research,” he said.
Lewis and Hoegg based their research on 112 congressional elections in 2000 and 2002. They asked the participants to judge photos of candidates on seven personality traits and to identify the candidates as Republicans or Democrats. Psychologists refer to this as “thin-slicing,” making split-second judgments about a person.
The authors found that competence and trustworthiness were associated more with Republicans, while intelligence and likeability more with Democrats.
They also found that candidates received more votes in the actual elections when they matched these associations.
“That’s the way voters look at it,” said Lewis. “They have preconceived notions of what a Republican should be and what a Democrat should be and then they see how well the candidates fit those stereotypes.”
According to Lewis, elections do not feature liberal Republicans or conservative Democrats anymore, because they do not fit the stereotypes.
“It’s a tricky result,” he said. “It’s puzzling at first but when you step back and think about it, it makes sense.”
Lewis and Hoegg looked at other aspects of political campaigns and found that spending has little benefit for incumbent candidates but a large one for challengers.
“Incumbents already have high awareness and challengers get more bang for their buck,” said Lewis. “But it’s a zero-sum game, and there’s an incentive to overspend. The goal is just to win.”
The authors also looked at the effects of negative advertising and found that it hurts the incumbent and helps the challenger.
“By putting the challenger out there, even for negative advertising, it’s still doing advertising,” said Lewis. “Bullying also creates sympathy and makes the challenger more legitimate.”
The professors’ reasoning is that if the incumbent is spending time and money on attacks, the challenger has credibility. However, running negative ads benefits the challenger because he gets himself into the “choice set” of candidates through comparison.
Professor of government James Gibson published a related study in this week’s “American Political Science Review,” analyzing the effects of attack ads, policy talks and campaign contributions on voter perception in judicial elections.
“Since 2003, campaigns for judicial office have become dramatically more politicized,” said Gibson. “As a consequence, judges have started running attack ads.”
His results showed that policy talks and negative ads have little to no effect on perception while campaign contributions have a large negative effect.
“There’s a conflict of interest,” said Gibson. “People see a quid pro quo relationship between those who give and the candidates’ policies.”
In other words, voters think that candidates may modify their platforms to attract more contributions.
Lewis said that all this research has many practical applications for politicians and voters.
“It might suggest how to portray and select candidates, even based on appearance variables,” he said. “It also may help marketing campaigns devote resources more effectively.”
He added that voters-and students in particular-need to be aware that what candidates say may be carefully crafted statements by marketing strategists. Lewis cautioned, however, that all of these results are based on congressional elections and may not apply to presidential elections in which everyone is more aware of what is happening.
“You have to take a step back and realize what the marketing is surrounding the candidates,” said Lewis.