Communication and Midterm Elections

There are many ways to slice and dice election results—especially in midterm elections where all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are on the ballot, in addition to about a third of the US Senate, 36 of the 50 state governorships, 46 state legislatures, and numerous other state and local races. And while it is true that “the midterm election of 2014 was entirely in keeping with the partisan kaleidoscope that has characterized American national elections since 1980” (Shafer, Wagner, & Engle, 2014, p. 608), several important trends, headlines, and milestones were marked in 2014: Democrats suffered significant and humbling defeats; historically low turnout (especially among groups that tend to vote Democratic) propelled a sweeping Republican wave; billions of dollars were spent airing millions of ads; the battle over control of the Senate majority resulted in closely fought races in several states including Alaska, which experienced the most expensive race in US history on a per-vote basis; unprecedented amounts of “dark money” linked to outside groups were used to buy television advertisements; working-class White voters continued their decades-long defection from the Democratic Party; and Republicans devoted substantial time and resources to catch up with Democrats in the use of digital and social media. The goal of this chapter is to expound on these trends and describe what happened in 2014 in terms of media, messaging, and mobilization.

In the weeks leading up to the 2014 midterm elections, nationwide speculation and controversy swirled around voter identification laws. In fact, in 2014, a majority of states conducted their elections under laws that mandated a variety of methods for verifying the identity of persons attempting to vote (Underhill, 2014).

Campaign seasons, especially in midterm elections, are more than just about federal political candidates. As efforts to make progress in Congress meet with gridlock, and as significant efforts are mounted to alter state constitutions to advance political agendas, scholars of political communication need to focus attention on the campaign strategies employed in issue campaigns at the state level. This chapter outlines one of the 2014 battles on abortion, an issue of prominence on political agendas in states across the nation (Wyler, 2014). Tennessee Amendment 1 was an effort to rewrite the Tennessee Constitution to eliminate privacy protections for women on the issue of abortion. This case is striking in that, prior to the 2014 vote, Tennessee law provided the most protective privacy laws for women in the South. As abortion clinics closed in surrounding states, Tennessee remained a state where an abortion could be obtained without the same restrictions and obstacles faced in other states, causing pro-life forces to dub Tennessee an “abortion tourism” state (Wadhwani, 2014a). The outcome of this campaign is significant for the direction of women’s abortion rights in the South. Further, the framing strategies used in this campaign have implications for future communication efforts related to this issue. In particular, we found that both sides used frames that are typically used by the other side. We analyze the significance and possible implications of these “refraining” efforts and discuss the boundaries of such strategies going forward. This research examines the nature of campaign messages generated by the Yes-on-1 and No-on-One groups as they waged their battle over abortion rights in Tennessee.

At the height of the 2014 US midterm elections, the Pew Research Center published a report on polarization in the American public (Dimock, Doherty, Kiley, & Oates, 2014). In their report, they argued that ideological division and party antipathy between Democrats and Republicans is higher now than at any point in the past few decades. Though political science has long debated whether ideological polarization is on the rise (Abramowitz, 2010; Fiorina, Abrams, & Pope, 2011), Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes (2012) have demonstrated a rise in affective polarization, or the extent to which feeling (affect) toward candidates and political parties is separating such that people increasingly like their own party and dislike (or even hate) the opponent. A great deal of research has demonstrated the role of partisan media in fostering polarization (Feldman, Myers, Hmielowski, & Leiserowitz, 2014; Garrett et al., 2014; Levendusky, 2013; Stroud, 2010), and some have examined the effects of campaign communication on affective polarization (Iyengar et al., 2012; Warner & Greenwood, 2014; Warner & McKinney, 2013). However, as with much of political communication research, these studies have neglected midterm and down-ballot elections. This chapter offers a corrective to this by exploring the role of political communication in three hotly contested campaigns for the US Senate in the 2014 midterm elections. Residents of Iowa, North Carolina, and Georgia were surveyed to assess the relationships among political communication, political interest, political confidence, and affective polarization toward the candidates for US Senate.

Midterm elections have become increasingly important in the US election cycle not only because of the number of legislators and governors that are being selected for office but also because these elections serve as a litmus test for the parties and the sitting president. The 2014 midterms were no exception; they provided a wake-up call for the Democratic Party and multiple opportunities for both new and seasoned politicians to present themselves to the public. A major player in this political arena was, of course, the news media, which in any democracy is expected to inform the public of the political issues of the day and also hold politicians accountable.

When voters think of a political campaign, some may think “contest” or “competition,” while others may think “conflict.” Some voters may see these as interchangeable synonyms when thinking of electoral politics. For others, these may be dramatically different concepts, perhaps each related to campaigns and elections, but with varying connotations. If we think of these in the context of media coverage of campaigns, examples may quickly come to mind of news stories that have demonstrated these ideas. But how do news reports demonstrate the notion of contest, or conflict, in a campaign and with what possible effect on voters? These questions underlie the issues raised in this chapter on news coverage of the 2014 US Senate campaigns.

A multitude of studies have shown that national media coverage of Congress has declined over the past several decades (Farnsworth & Lichter, 2005; Kimball & Patterson, 1997; Lichter & Amundson, 1994). Local coverage of individual members of Congress is much more extensive than national coverage of the institution (Arnold, 2006), and as a result, press secretaries and communication directors working for individual members of Congress prioritize local media coverage over national coverage.

The number of people actively participating in online social networking is ever increasing. According to a Pew Research Center survey (Smith, 2014), 16 percent of registered voters follow political candidates, parties, or officials on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter; this has increased from 6 percent since 2010. Forty-one percent reported they follow political figures on social media so they could find out about political news before other people (Smith, 2014). Twitter, a microblogging site that allows users to post 140 characters or less, is becoming increasingly popular among the public as well as current officeholders and political candidates. In the 2012 Republican primaries, for example, all candidates seeking office were present on Twitter. Twitter use is not limited to the top of the ticket, however. Twitter was also widely employed by candidates vying for US Senate, US House, and governor in 2010 (e.g., Hanna, Sayre, Bode, Yang, & Shah, 2011; Parmelee & Bichard, 2012). Indeed, Twitter has become a vital communication tool for campaigns, politicians, political parties, protesters, and voters (Price, 2012; Vergeer, Hermans, & Sams, 2013).

In late Spring 2014, Joni Ernst was a relatively unknown name in Iowa (Rucker & Balz, 2014). Then she released a provocative ad that immediately went viral, propelling her to the top of the Republican primary and to an eventual victory in the Iowa Senate race. The “squeal” ad became the talk of cable news and was viewed nearly 4,000 times on YouTube in the first three days. The ad showed Ernst in a hog barn, boasting that her experiences “castrating hogs” on an Iowa farm prepared her to “cut pork” in Washington. After eschewing her conservative values, the ad concludes with the infamous line, “Let’s make ‘em squeal.” Of the ad, Philip Rucker and Dan Balz (2014) of the Washington Post wrote, “At a time when voters tune out many political messages, the ad was a vivid reminder of the enduring power of a single image” (para. 2).

On June 25, 2013, the Senate chamber of the Texas state capitol became the scene of a remarkable political showdown. For 13 hours, citizens at the capitol—along with over 100,000 viewers via a live web stream and thousands more on Twitter—watched and waited for the conclusion of a contentious filibuster of Senate Bill 5 (SB 5), which would impose numerous restrictions on abortion access and clinic facilities. Standing at the center of the filibuster showdown, state senator Wendy Davis became a national political celebrity literally overnight. Her pink running shoes, worn to withstand hours in which she could not relinquish the podium, quickly became an online meme.

Spending on televised political advertising or campaign spots topped $1 billion in the 2014 midterm elections, exceeding all previous midterm records (Kang & Gold, 2014). Although senatorial contests received most of the national media attention in these elections, the gubernatorial campaign in Florida was the most expensive (Olorunnipa, 2014). Most of the $150 million spent in Florida’s 2014 gubernatorial campaign was devoted to televised political advertising (Center for Public Integrity, 2014). Altogether, ad spending on behalf of Republican Rick Scott, the incumbent, totaled at least $73 million and ad spending on behalf of Democrat Charlie Crist, the challenger and former Republican governor, totaled more than $38 million (March, 2014).

Political advertising has a rich history. Some political advertisements have shown to be quite damaging toward candidates. For instance, George W. Bush’s “swift boat” ad during the 2004 campaign proved quite destructive to the Kerry campaign, ultimately damaging Kerry’s credibility as a veteran. However, advertisements are not always damaging. While political ads have shown a strong, rich history, the effects of political advertising have been somewhat mixed and inconclusive.

The geopolitical boundary has been an important topic for discourse in American politics. There are a significant number of studies about the effects of geopolitics in general elections (Yun, Jasperson, & Kaid, 2010; Yun, Opheim, & Hanks, 2014), but the area of research regarding midterm elections is very limited in its scope and target. Moreover, research in gubernatorial campaigns and elections and the practical campaign techniques has been less explored. There have been no general or consistent conclusions regarding the campaign dynamics in gubernatorial elections. Some studies argue that the process and effect of campaigns and electoral behaviors are the same in both presidential and gubernatorial elections (e.g., Peltzman, 1992), while other studies assert that gubernatorial elections are different from presidential elections and that voter preferences in governor’s races are more likely bound by political and socioeconomic conditions of the states they are in (Brown, 2010). A midterm election provides an optimal circumstance to observe gubernatorial campaigns since a presidential campaign does not overshadow lower and state levels of elections and campaigns (Vavreck, 2001). The current study observes the effective themes of gubernatorial campaigns across battleground and nonbattleground states during the 2014 midterm election.