Political Polemics in Battleground States Confuse Voters, Study Says

OhioNewsBureau

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: As the race for president winding down, you would think that spending more money on more political advertisements with only a couple weeks left would be what the 2008 presidential campaigns would want to do, but a just released study by the nation's largest university shows that heavy advertising by both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates may actually make voters in battleground states like Ohio more confused about which candidate to vote for.

With $4 million spent in Ohio between Sept. 29 and Oct. 4 -- $2.2 million by Obama and $1.7 million by McCain -- and more to come, as Democratic candidate Sen. Barack ObamaBarack Obama tries to break the tie in the Buckeye State with his rival Republican Sen. John McCainJohn McCain, researchers from The Ohio State University, located in Columbus, argue that being exposed to opposing messages from rival candidate campaigns make voters more ambivalent about which one to support.

For states like Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all battleground states this year that could make or break one candidate over the other if each candidate wins the same states that President BushPresident Bush and Sen. John KerryJohn Kerry won in 2004, the study, that appeared in the Oct. issue of the journal Political Psychology and was co-authored by LukeKeele, an assistant professor of political science at Ohio State University and Jennifer Wolak, assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, demonstrated.

“In battleground states especially, both candidates will invest a lot of money in television commercials. So people in these states are getting a lot of competing messages from both candidates and that translates into voters in these states wrestling with conflicting ideas,” said Keele. "But if you live in a state that is not competitive, you’re probably seeing one-sided messages from a single candidate or few messages at all, so you’re less likely to be ambivalent. So the state in which you live can influence your decisions.”

The study was based on survey responses from the 2000 edition of the American National Election Study, a nationally representative survey of voters that examined the race between George Bush and Al GoreAl Gore, as well as U.S. House of Representatives’ races. The survey, which is performed every two years by the University of Michigan, included face-to-face interviews with more than 1,800 people.

Study results showed that the total volume of candidate ads in a state had no effect on ambivalence levels among residents, but that ambivalence levels were higher in states where there was a high number of Democratic ads and a high number of Republican ads running at the same time. “Competition in presidential ad spending promotes ambivalence,” Keele said. “People are continually hit with conflicting messages.” But the researcher's results also showed that it’s not just the advertising that can promote ambivalence among voters and can become confused whenever they consistently hear conflicting messages about the candidates.

For example, people living in states with a balance between Democrats and Republicans were more uncertain about presidential candidates than were those in states where one political party dominated. Keele and Wolak said this type of environment leads to greater discussion of issues and candidates and even greater exposure to opposing viewpoints.

Discussing politics with people who favored the same presidential candidate decreased ambivalence for many voters, the report noted. In contrast, people were more ambivalent when they discussed politics with others who favored the opposing candidate. These ambivalent voters, Keele said, were more likely to internalize competing arguments from their colleagues and friends, affecting their confidence in candidates overall.

“If you live in a place where everyone thinks the same way in partisan terms, the chance that you’re going to question your ideas is quite a bit lower," he said, adding, "If all your neighbors have John McCain signs and everyone you talk to is moving in the same direction in terms of a candidate, you are probably not going to waver too much if you were on the edge in the beginning.”

But the study also found that the dynamics between political ads and ambivalence was different in races for the U.S. House of Representatives than it was for the presidential race. Personal characteristics such as party identification and education are still very influential in predicting ambivalence. Moreover, those with college degrees were more likely to be ambivalent than those with only a high school education due to an individual’s level of political knowledge.

“Those with higher education tend to watch debates, they read the newspaper, and they hear more of the competing sides. Then there are others who are tuning out politics by not watching the news or paying attention to TV commercials, and there is just very little awareness of competing viewpoints. So since there is very little awareness, they’re less ambivalent,” said Keele. Partisanship, as one might suspect, helps voters focus when compared to independents whose party affiliations may swing from election to election. This factor was much more important in explaining ambivalence than whether a person lived in a battleground state or not, the study said.

“A lot of partisans have made up their mind by the time the conventions are over, if not before,” Keele said. “But there are some people out there who will be more affected by events, by television commercials, by neighbors, and by campaign strategies. And they are the ones who are more likely to remain undecided longer.”

The facial expressions of this year’s presidential candidates could play an important role in helping voters make choices, according to an Ohio State University researcher.

Another study with OSU ties shows that characteristics of a person’s face affect how we draw conclusions about a person. Aleix Martinez, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Ohio State University College of Engineering, found that the vertical distance between the eyes, nose and mouth of a person is correlated with the perception of expressions of anger and sadness — even if that person is not actually displaying any emotion at all, according to information disseminated by OSU media professionals. Researchers previously believed that human emotions were shown by underlying facial muscle motion, not by simply the position of the facial features.

Martinez said his research showed that the closer the vertical distance is between the center of a person’s eyes and the center of that person’s mouth, the more likely it is that the individual will be perceived as being angry — even if they are not. And as that same vertical distance grows, the more likely it is that the person appears to be sad. “If we understand the overgeneralization, we should be able to put that aside and consider other factors that come into play," said Martinez, in the study that will be published in the Journal of Vision.

Using two photos to illustrate his point, Martinez shows how the vertical distance between the eyes, nose and mouth of a person may affect our perception of that individual’s emotion. One photos shows someone who appears to be angry because his facial features are closer together, while another shows a person who appears to be sad because his features are farther apart.

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