Here's Looking at You: Public‐ Versus Elite‐Driven Models of Presidential Primary Elections

Colin Douglas Swearingen, Elizabeth Stiles and Kate Finneran

Social Science Quarterly, 2019, vol. 100, issue 5, 1777-1792

Abstract: Objective This study advances the presidential primary literature in two ways. First, since many studies in this literature advocate for more detailed theoretical development, we incorporate an interdisciplinary approach by utilizing social contagion theory from the field of sociology. Second, presidential primaries do not adequately explore what role the public plays during the invisible primary. We thus incorporate Google Trends data into presidential primary models to account for the relative amount of public attention for each presidential primary candidate. Methods We use fixed effects regression to determine the impact of public attention on a candidate's share of the contested primary vote (CPV). Results We find that increased public attention leads to higher levels of support for a candidate in the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary, and CPV. Conclusion These findings illustrate the extra‐voting role the public plays in presidential primary elections and helps us further distinguish how party elites, voters, and candidates uniquely determine the selection of our executive.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12671

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:socsci:v:100:y:2019:i:5:p:1777-1792

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-4941

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science Quarterly is currently edited by Robert L. Lineberry

More articles in Social Science Quarterly from Southwestern Social Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().