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Chapter 3 How Does It All "Turnout"? Exposure to Attack Advertising, Campaign Interest, and Participation in American Presidential Elections Lynn Vavreck Introduction The keystone of American democracy is the political campaign-a critical link through which potential governors communicate with citizens about problems, solutions, and basic ideologies. Candidates sell their ideas, their histories, and even themselves while voters listen, evaluate, and eventually cast ballots. It is a system in symbiotic balance. Voters need information, but not too much (Popkin 1990), and candidates want to provide information , but only specific kinds. The balance, however, may be shifting. It appears that citizens have lost faith in government, and their participation in elections continues to decline. Voters seem to want something more from candidates-but what? In this chapter I explore whether and why Americans are tuning out presidential campaigns and, more importantly, if the campaigns themselves have anything to do with the phenomenon. Throughout our political history, citizens have lauded the clever wit of candidates. Who can resist smiling at Blaine's slogan highlighting Cleveland's illegitimate child during the 1884 campaign, "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?" To which Cleveland replied, once elected, "Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!" Invective and vituperative strategy routinely amuse voters and may even draw them into the process. The intemperance and revelry of campaigns were so burdensome that in 1860, perhaps the most important election in American history, Abraham Lincoln said very little about his ideas and policies for fear his words would be severely distorted by his opponents. Instead, he and the Republican Party organized "Wide Awakes"-torchlight parades in which young men 6' 4" and taller marched alongside rail-splitters' battalions in support of Lincoln (Boller 1996). Today, many people speculate that these types of campaigns (low 79 80 Campaign Reform on information and high on drama) can be blamed for repelling voters from the process (Alliance for Better Campaigns 1998; Center for Global Ethics 1998; League of Women Voters 1998; Taylor 1996). But the important 1860 election, with all of its attack and exceptional antics, still managed to attract 81.2 percent of eligible voters to the polls. Negativity has not always meant low participation levels. It is true that as campaigns have become more attack oriented from 1952 to 1996, campaign interest and electoral participation have also declined. Because of this correlation, many reformers and political observers suggest a causal relationship. They cry out that today's elections lack substance and that contemporary campaigns are nasty, mean-spirited , and shallow (Cain 1998; Johnson 1998; McAllister 1998). In a June 18, 1998, Washington Post article about campaign consultants, Frank Luntz, a well-known Republican political consultant, quipped, "I think the biggest problem in politics today is the lack of substance" (McAllister 1998). It appears that no one disputes that the delicate equilibrium between candidates and citizens appears to be disrupted-the debate is over the cause and the cure. There are those who explore the idea that the lack of "color"-the lack of torchlight parades and barbecues-has changed political campaigns from entertainment to pure instruction (Zaller 1998). These adherents argue that if campaigns were more entertaining, if voters could get something out of them other than information (such as social time with family and friends), more people would participate. Others contend that candidates have become more interested in attacking their opponents than in promoting themselves and that this negativity, for lack of a better word, has demobilized and disengaged the electorate (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995; Campaign Discourse Mapping Project 1996; Lau, Pomper, and Mazeika 1995; but see Finkel and Geer 1998 and Geer's chapter in this volume). Finally, some scholars view the declining trends among voters as part of a larger societal shift, a general weakening of trust in a variety of political and social institutions (Putnam 1995). The explanation for the disruption of the balance between candidates and voters, wherever its roots, is likely to be made up of elements from all three of these possibilities and still others. In addressing the downward participatory trends among voters, campaign reform has emerged as a potential panacea. Reformers argue that if voters are unhappy with American politics, then current campaign practices must be largely to blame (Alliance for Better Campaigns 1998; Project on Campaign Conduct 1998; Taylor 1996). These reformers suggest that if candidates would stop attacking one another, if we could remove money from the system, if reporters would be less cynical-ifjust one of [3.144...

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