Racial Cues in Campaign News: The Effects of Candidate Strategies on Group Activation and Political Attentiveness among African Americans

Abstract

Decades of scholarship in the field of electoral behavior have established that the chief influence of campaigns is to reinforce or activate latent predispositions so that voters behave consistently with their underlying interests (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954; Campbell et al. 1960; Finkel 1993; Gelman and King 1993; Klapper 1960; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944; Patterson and McClure 1976; Petrocik 1996; Zaller 1992). Little attention, however, has been devoted to identifying the specific process by which activation occurs. In particular, we have yet to identify specific catalysts, in the swirling confusion of campaign communication, for activating latent preferences.

This research would not have been possible without the efforts of several graduate research assistants including Dmitri Williams, Lara Rusch, Matthew Beckmann, and Dara Faris.