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This article explores the partnership between Higher Ground Productions, the production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, and streaming platforms like Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon. It discusses how these partnerships allow the platforms to position themselves as politically aware and attract a diverse audience by curating agreeably centrist-liberal programming. The article also examines the concept of "massness" in streaming entertainment and how major streamers aim to present themselves as mainstream services while accommodating individualized tastes. It highlights the impact of Higher Ground in the entertainment industry, producing documentaries and family programs that highlight marginalized artists and communities. The Obamas' partnership with these platforms reflects their commitment to diversity and education, but also raises questions about the authenticity of their progressivism. [Extracted from the article]

The essential purpose of the paper is to analyze the tendency of personalization of politics in electoral campaigns as a result of the change within party organizations, understood as institutional arrangements and adjustments that political parties have had to assume to remain present in the electoral system. Mexican parties, by maximizing the media visibility of the candidates and their personal qualities, delegating political experience to the background (Rahat, 2015) and, on the other hand, due to the personal political leadership they have developed. The case studies presented are two. The first is the 2012 presidential election, marking the return to power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) with its candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, under a campaign scheme based on the party's structural support, but also due to high media exposure of life personality of a politician with personal charismatic qualities. The second case that is analyzed is the victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it supposes the rise of a recently created political party; National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) who saw in the figure of his candidate the means to be a protagonist of national political life. Both cases represented government alternations and show two contrasting types of political leadership from their origin and in the way they developed their political careers to reach the presidency of the Republic. It is also important to note that there are exogenous factors that drive partisan change and the emergence of personal political leadership. Among them is the decrease in partisan identities (Moreno, 2009), the volatility of the vote (Díaz and Vivero, 2015) and the increase in the use of digital communication media. All this contributes to the fact that electoral campaigns are in the postmodern stage (Díaz, 2016) characterized by prioritizing the exposure of the personal image of the candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although racial identity is usually assumed to be unchanging, recent research shows otherwise. The role of politics in racial identity change has received little attention. Using panel data with waves around two recent presidential elections, this article reveals survey evidence of racial fluidity and its strong relationship with vote switching patterns. Across several models and robust to various controls, switching from a non-Republican vote in 2012 to a 2016 Republican vote (i.e. non-Romney to Trump) significantly predicts nonwhite to white race change. Among nonwhites who did not vote Republican in 2012, switching to a Republican vote in 2016 increases the probability of adopting a white racial identity from a 0.03 baseline to 0.49, a 1,533 percent increase. Individuals originally identifying as Mixed and Hispanic drive this identity-voting link. A parallel dynamic on the Democratic side—new Democratic voters moving from white to nonwhite identities—does not occur. The systematic relationship between Trump switching and white identity adoption is unlikely to be spurious or due to measurement error, does not appear for the 2008–2012 election period, and makes theoretical sense in light of 2016 campaign rhetoric and trends in political-social identity alignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research note, we argue that a segment of Trump voters may be motivated to demonstrate that they are not racially insensitive by saying they voted for Obama in 2012. As a result, what may appear as a substantial group of swing voters may be—in part—partisan voters who want to avoid perceptions of racial bias. Using data from a survey of a nationally representative nonprobability sample from YouGov, polling data from the 2016 election, and a survey experiment conducted with a convenience sample of American adults, we find that Obama-Trump voters score significantly higher on a social monitoring scale than others and that respondents are significantly more supportive of Trump when they are given the opportunity to mention who they voted for in 2012. The combination of results suggests that the number of Obama-Trump voters may be overestimated due to self-monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we posed several questions: What was the explanatory capacity of inequality and poverty at the state level in the United States presidential elections in 2012 and 2016?; what was the state balance in the presidential elections in the United States? By using the "American National Election Studies Survey", We also investigated the individual level to try to figure what variables could help us understand the vote in favor of the Republican presidential candidates in 2012 and 2016? Thus, to answer our questions, we conducted two analyzes, one at the state level and the other, based on individual voters, in order to explain the contrasting results of 2012 and 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to verify how the Rhetoric of Culture Wars manifests in the immigration debate in two of the largest French daily newspapers, in terms of distribution, Le Figaro and Le Monde, the first on the right and the second on the left of the political spectrum. In the period between two presidential elections with substantially different results (2012 and 2017), all opinion articles that contained the keyword "immigration" were selected, resulting in a total of 433 articles, 345 from Le Figaro, and 88 from Le Monde. The result was a series of rhetorical constants found that would be typical of this type of cultural clash on the immigration debate, which can be tested in other contexts in future researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In 2010, the US Supreme Court loosened contribution limits to Political Action Committees (PACs), sparking fears that big donors could exert outsize influence on elections by funding PAC advertising. However, PACs are potentially handicapped when buying advertising time; data from 2012 reveal that PACs pay 32% above regulated campaign rates. I estimate a model of demand for advertising by PACs, exploiting the misalignment of state and media market borders to address price endogeneity. I find that prices reflect willingness‐to‐pay for viewer demographics rather than media bias. The estimates further suggest that network‐owned stations discriminate more successfully than do local affiliates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, with particular focus on their respective uses of the internet and social media communication in mobilizing voters and volunteers and using their way of connecting with voters to emphazise their legitimacy as anti-elitist candidates. In his 2008 campaign, Obama set the precedent for using online strategies to build and support a national movement within the framework of the Democratic Party, Trump, an outsider in the GOP, took the strategy a step further and used social media as his primary tool of voter communication and mobilization with only emphasized his populist message. In their use of online campaigns, both Trump and Obama relied in populism rhetorical tools, though from different sides of the political spectrum, adding to contemporary debates of the nature and purpose of populism in the twenty-first century. However, in both candidates' campaigns mobilization of volunteers through their respective national movement became symbols of their populist appeals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides evidence that affective polarization is an important mechanism linking conservative media use to political misperceptions. Partisan media's potential to polarize is well documented, and there are numerous ways in which hostility toward political opponents might promote the endorsement of inaccurate beliefs. We test this mediated model using data collected via nationally representative surveys conducted during two recent U.S. presidential elections. Fixed effects regression models using three-wave panel data collected in 2012 provide evidence that conservative media exposure contributes to more polarized feelings toward major-party presidential candidates, and this growing favorability gap is associated with misperceptions critical of the Democrats. Further, these effects are more pronounced among Republicans than among Democrats. Cross-sectional analyses using data collected in 2016 provide additional evidence of the mediated relationship. The theoretical and real-world significance of these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Military Science Review / Hadtudományi Szemle is the property of National University of Public Service and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Estudios Politicos (01215167) is the property of Universidad de Antioquia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In his 2012 re-election campaign, President Barack Obama implemented what would become a highly controversial political ad called "The Life of Julia." This ad followed the life of a fictional person named Julia -- whose life was demonstrated to be better as a result of the welfare state programs of the Obama administration. Reaction to the campaign ad was so negative that it was quickly removed from President Obama's official website, and to this day cannot be found there. Staunch resistance to the ad stemmed from the accusation that it glorified the idea of a welfare state and illustrated what a life without genuine purpose or meaning would look like. In Julia's world, the state was all that mattered, and all of her life's decisions were supposed to support the legacy and longevity of the state -- at the expense of her natural, God-given liberties and her individuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents state-level estimates of the 2016 presidential election using data from the ABC News/ Washington Post tracking poll and multilevel regression with poststratification (MRP). While previous implementations of MRP for election forecasting have relied on data from prior elections to establish poststratification targets for the composition of the electorate, in this paper we estimate both turnout and vote preference from the same preelection poll. Through Bayesian estimation we are also able to capture uncertainty in both estimated turnout and vote preferences. This approach correctly predicts 50 of 51 contests, showing greater accuracy than comparison models that rely on the 2012 Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement for turnout. While the model does not perfectly estimate turnout as a share of the voting age population, popular vote shares, or vote margins in each state, it is more accurate than predictions published by polling aggregators or other published MRP estimators. The paper also reports how vote preferences changed over the course of the 18-day tracking period, compares subgroup-level estimates of turnout and vote preferences with the 2016 CPS Survey and National Election Pool exit poll, and summarizes the accuracy of the approach applied to the 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012 elections. The paper concludes by discussing how researchers can make use of this method as an alternative approach to survey weighting and likely voter modeling as well as in forecasting future elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists and political pundits have characterized the 2016 presidential campaign as one featuring unusually high levels of political involvement among the mass public. This article subjects such claims to more systematic assessment, by comparing levels of political involvement in the 2016 presidential election campaign to those of previous election cycles. Through analyses of turnout statistics, survey questions by the Pew Research Center and the American National Election Studies measuring political interest, and Nielsen audience estimates of television viewing, the article finds that the public's interest and engagement in the fall of 2016 were actually quite similar to those of other recent elections. (It was during the primaries that political involvement in 2016 stood out more.) Acknowledging that aggregate analyses may obscure countervailing subgroup changes, the article examines subgroups that figured prominently in accounts of the 2016 campaign or were thought to have been particularly energized by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012: men without a college education, African Americans, and young people. Those analyses turn up limited evidence for differential political interest trends. African Americans' campaign interest and turnout did drop compared to 2008 and 2012. But in the opposite direction of the prevailing narrative, young people showed relatively high political involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, political observers were quick to assert that Barack Obama won the African American vote because he was Black, and more generally, that African Americans were motivated by race above all other considerations. As this racial reductionist stereotype has the potential to trivialize African Americans' voting behavior and diminish the significance of the election of Barack Obama, this research examined how much support exists for the stereotype. We also examined whether a racial double standard motivates the application of this stereotype, and if so, the degree to which it is grounded in a broader antipathy toward Blacks. Several experiments embedded in two large national public opinion surveys show that there is indeed a racial double standard in the application of the racial reductionist stereotype; moreover, the attribution is connected to racial resentment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large-scale experiment during the 2010 U.S. Congressional Election demonstrated a positive effect of an online get-out-the-vote message on real world voting behavior. Here, we report results from a replication of the experiment conducted during the U.S. Presidential Election in 2012. In spite of the fact that get-out-the-vote messages typically yield smaller effects during high-stakes elections due to saturation of mobilization efforts from many sources, a significant increase in voting was again observed. Voting also increased significantly among the close friends of those who received the message to go to the polls, and the total effect on the friends was likely larger than the direct effect, suggesting that understanding social influence effects is potentially even more important than understanding the direct effects of messaging. These results replicate earlier work and they add to growing evidence that online social networks can be instrumental for spreading offline behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using large Twitter datasets collected during the 2012 U.S. presidential election, we examined how partisanship shapes patterns of sharing and commenting on candidate fact-check rulings. Our results indicate that partisans selectively share fact-checking messages that cheerlead their own candidate and denigrate the opposing party's candidate, resulting in an ideologically narrow flow of fact checks to their followers. We also find evidence of hostile media perception in users' public accusations of bias on the part of fact-checking organizations. Additionally, Republicans showed stronger outgroup negativity and hostility toward fact checkers than Democrats. These findings help us understand 'selective sharing' as a complementary process to selective exposure, as well as identifying asymmetries between partisans in their sharing practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voter participation rates vary widely across the 50 states. We seek to identify a source of this interstate variation, focusing upon the 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012 general elections. Of note is that the latter two general elections featured a minority (i.e., African-American) nominee for president from one of the major political parties. Within the context of the rational voter model, we hypothesize that the presence of a minority candidate atop the ticket will boost minorities' expected net benefits from voting, with the result that minority voter participation will be higher. Based on cross-sectional fixed-effects estimations, we find that states' voter participation rates were unaffected by the percent of the population that was either African-American or Hispanic for the 2000 and 2004 election cycles, while states' voter participation rates were positively related to the percent of the population that was either African-American or Hispanic for the 2008 and 2012 election cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of political punditry at a time when Big Data is playing a greater role in campaign journalism. It focuses on the dispute between data journalist Nate Silver and the pundits over his predictions during the 2012 U.S. presidential election. A qualitative content analysis is used to assess the online commentary in the weeks before the election. Silver's supporters touted his statistical approach while critics questioned Silver's methods and cited their own gut feelings about the campaign's outcome. When the election results vindicated Silver, most pundits resolved their cognitive dissonance by declining to give him any credit. The research suggests pundits not only favored their own party in their predictions but also tried to keep uncertainty about the elections results alive and bolster the value of their work. This research not only suggests a new method for covering America's political process, but adds to our understanding of political punditry and the advancement of Big Data journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do elections affect citizens? This paper shows that elections can have an impact in an area where researchers least expect it: an individual's religious life. It does so by drawing on psychologists' theory of compensatory control and testing whether individuals' reported religious behaviors and beliefs fluctuate with their chosen political party's fortunes. Both an originally collected panel data set and over-time cross-sectional data reveal that Democrats (Republicans) are more likely to report attending religious services and praying when Republicans (Democrats) control the White House. Rates of reported religious behaviors then decline when a copartisan is president. The results demonstrate political identities' strength and ability to influence nonpolitical behaviors, even those thought to be stable and impervious to politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]