Campaign dynamics of cognitive accessibility of political judgments: measuring the impact of campaigns and campaign events using response latencies in two German rolling cross section studies

Jochen Mayerl () and Thorsten Faas ()
Additional contact information
Jochen Mayerl: University of Kaiserslautern
Thorsten Faas: University of Mainz

Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, 2018, vol. 52, issue 4, No 7, 1575-1592

Abstract: Abstract Do campaigns matter? Based on two rolling cross-section computer-assisted telephone surveys conducted in the run-up to the 2009 and 2013 German Federal Election, we test whether we can detect campaign effects on the accessibility of voters’ judgments: how do response latencies of political judgments evolve over the course of campaigns? The study uses response latencies, i.e. the standardized time it takes respondents to answer a survey question, as a proxy measurement of cognitive accessibility of political judgments. If campaigns do help voters to make up their minds, we should be able to observe changes at the implicit level of response latencies. Do people answer questions about their voting behavior and political attitudes faster as Election Day comes closer? Our results suggest that attitudes towards candidates and voting intentions become more cognitively accessible during campaigns whereas the accessibility of party identification is conditional on the contextual features of campaigns. In addition we find specific short-term effects of TV debates.

Keywords: Election campaign; Attitude accessibility; Paradata; Rolling cross-section survey; Voting intention; Party identification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11135-017-0536-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:qualqt:v:52:y:2018:i:4:d:10.1007_s11135-017-0536-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11135-017-0536-1

Access Statistics for this article

Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology is currently edited by Vittorio Capecchi

More articles in Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().