Media use in the primary election: a secondary medium model

This study tests the effect of concern about the electability of candidates competing for a party's nomination for president on voters' information-seeking behavior. The analysis is based on a sample survey of voters in four California counties in early 1992. Correlational tests replicated prior findings that issue-oriented voters rely mainly on newspapers, whereas image-oriented voters tend to seek relevant information from television. But these tendencies interacted with electability. Voters with this additional concern sought information on secondary criteria in secondary media. That is, if the candidates' chances of election were also important, issue-oriented voters also sought image information, and vice versa. Issue-oriented voters sought their image information via television, if electability was important to them. The opposite interaction was not found, however; image-oriented voters used television as their source for both kinds of information, if electability was important to them.