The Sympathy Vote: Reality or Illusion?

This paper investigates exactly what is meant by a sympathy vote in the context of the 2002 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota and proposes a specific model to explain the concept and what happened to dissipate the advantage enjoyed by Wellstone’s successor, Walter Mondale. Immediate speculation blamed Mondale’s decline in the polls on the ‘partisan’ Wellstone memorial which took place on the Tuesday night after Wellstone’s death and the night before Mondale’s nomination by the Democratic Party. While the memorial serves as part of the explanation, this paper presents a more comprehensive explanation for the changes in public opinion seen over the course of this final week-long campaign by integrating concepts and findings from the psychology, mass communication, and public opinion literatures. This more elaborate model not only accounts for the mechanism producing support for Mondale in polls, but also explains what happened to deflate such support and place the two candidates on a level playing field. Further, this model incorporates the emotional context of voter opinion in these circumstances and suggests boundaries for strategic decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]