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Many studies document positive relationships between political information and campaign participation, but none investigates the relationship between information and interelection change in campaign participation. While studies of 'floating voters' document negative relationships between information and floating, the author notes that activists are better informed than voters and investigates the relationship between knowledge and change in participation, comparing the process among voters and activists. The author shows low-information citizens enter and exit the electorate, while high-information citizens enter and exit the activist pool. The author concludes with an optimistic assessment of democratic change based on the theory that well-informed activists influence floating voters. Keywords: floating voters; democratic change; political information; citizen capacity; political knowledge; interelection change; longitudinal change; campaign activities

How consequential is residence in a presidential battleground state for how people engage in politics? I explore the effects of battleground strategies for campaign exposure, voter interest, political discussion, learning, and participation in the presidential campaign. I also consider the sources of battleground influence, including the campaign efforts of presidential candidates and particular partisan nature of battleground states. Using survey data from the 1992, 1996, and 2000 National Election Studies in conjunction with measures of state campaign context, I find that the effects of battleground environments are limited. Neither levels of campaign interest nor rates of political discussion are affected by presidential campaign intensity. While television advertising promotes learning and participation, battleground influence on the intention to vote reflects the partisan environment of a state rather than advertising or events sponsored by the presidential candidates.

This article explores the impact of cognitive style, as measured by need to evaluate and need for cognition, on information acquisition during the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign. Using data from the 2000 National Election Study I show that both constructs are related to measures of candidate information, i.e., correct ideological placement, correct policy placement, and number of candidate articulations; but that need to evaluate has a much stronger and more consistent effect than does need for cognition. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Endorsements by groups in American politics have typically been studied as voting cues only for members of the given organization. Using both the formal theoretical and low-information cognitive voting literatures, this article argues for a broader electoral role for group endorsements. Specifically, if groups that have clear ideological or policy preferences endorse candidates, these endorsements should provide all voters with ideological or issue information about the endorsed candidates. This inferred information should then impact voters' behavior, especially in low-information scenarios. Using both an experimental test and a test with American National Election Studies (ANES) survey data, this study analyzes the hypothesis in terms of elections to the U.S. House of Representatives. It finds that when the AFL-CIO endorses Democratic candidates, voters behave as though a liberal message has been sent--liberals are significantly more supportive while conservatives are significantly less supportive than they are when no endorsement is given, regardless of whether or not they are union members. At the same time, however, the analysis finds no support that endorsements of Republicans have any ideological impact on voting.

Campaign contribution limits have been a common feature of campaign finance reform efforts in most states. Despite their apparent popularity, campaign contribution limits have been criticized in academic literature. In particular, it has been suggested that contribution limits are likely to increase the disparity in contributions among candidates in general and the disparity between incumbents and challengers in particular. In this article we subject this important criticism of campaign contribution limits to empirical testing. Analyses of both the number of contributors and the dollar amount of contributions to gubernatorial candidates suggest no support for an increased bias in favor of incumbents resulting from the presence of contribution limits. If anything, contribution limits can work to reduce the bias that traditionally works in favor of incumbents. Also, contribution limits do not seem to increase contribution disparity between candidates in general. Results hold for different subsets of contributors: all contributors, particularistic contributors, and corporate contributors.

Political parties have recently rediscovered grassroots tactics for voter mobilization. The only solid evidence for the effectiveness of such get-out-the-vote (GOTV) tactics is based upon non-partisan field experiments that may not accurately capture the effectiveness of partisan campaign outreach. In order to address this lacuna, during the 2002 Michigan gubernatorial election, a large field experiment across 14 state house districts evaluated the cost effectiveness of three mobilization technologies utilized by the Michigan Democratic Party's Youth Coordinated Campaign: door hangers, volunteer phone calls, and face-to-face visits. Contrary to past non-partisan experiments, our results indicate that all three GOTV strategies possess similar cost-effectiveness.

Analysis of panel data from Brazil, Mexico, and Russia suggests that presidential campaigns have ambiguous effects on inequalities in political knowledge. In all three countries, the 'knowledge gap' among citizens with different levels of socioeconomic resources stayed the same or widened. At the same time, less affluent and educated citizens who paid a great deal of attention to the campaign learned more than equally attentive high-status citizens. These findings suggest that modern, media-intensive electoral campaigns do provide information to low socioeconomic status citizens in readily digestible form, but they fail to stimulate sufficient attention to politics among these citizens to close the knowledge gap.

In order to see whether men and women emphasize different messages in their campaigns, I examine the televised political advertisements of 38 candidates for the U.S. Senate between 1984 and 1986. In addition, I look at patterns of campaign coverage to determine whether the press distinguish between male and female candidates. Since a candidate's message will be most persuasive if that message is echoed by the press, gender differences in press treatment can have electoral consequences. The results of this study show that male and female senatorial candidates adopt campaign strategies that are similar on certain dimensions and strikingly different on others. Male and female candidates both prefer to focus on policy matters in their candidate-oriented appeals, although they rarely take specific stands on issues. Yet there are important gender differences in the advertisements of male and female candidates and these differences correspond to the candidates' stereotypical strengths. Men tend to concentrate on economic issues, while women are much more likely to discuss social issues such as education and health policy. These differences (and others), although evident in their own campaign communications, are not represented in media coverage of the candidates' campaigns.

This study uses response latency, the time required for a survey respondent to formulate an answer upon hearing a question, to examine the accessibility of partisan self identifications over the course of a political campaign season. Although the aggregate distribution of partisanship remains fairly stable during the campaign, party identifications become more accessible to individuals with weaker party identifications as the election approaches. Consistent with theoretical expectations, the authors find that partisan orientations are more useful in forming political judgments when those orientations are more accessible to the voter. The effect of partisanship on vote choice is a third greater for voters with highly accessible party identifications than for those with less accessible party identifications.