Political Knowledge and Term Limits. This book-length project studies the relationship between the type of campaign waged by congressional candidates and the information received by voters. We survey congressional candidates to assess the amount of money spent on communications, the issues stressed in the campaign, the amount of negative advertising utilized, and the overall competitiveness of the campaign. We match the campaigns with exit poll data from the district. This matching allows us to study in a non-experimental setting the effects that different kinds of campaigns have on the issue priorities of voters.
Preliminary results suggest that negative advertising has a deleterious effect on voter information.
This project is an extension of research published in Political Parties and the Maintenance of Liberal Democracy . I will continue to gather and code the issue stances of presidential candidates and congressional leaders during the 2000 campaign season. I will compare the issue stances of candidates and party leaders to assess the possibility of forming governing coalitions. The issue stances will also be coded by policy type. The project looks at the influence that political consultants wield in direct democracy campaigns.