The 2016 election cycle is an example of things we do not often get to study. The campaign was characterized by one of the most unusual and emotionally negative primary cycles in recent electoral history coupled with a few variables of interest. The real estate mogul and reality television personality Donald Trump won the nomination in a contentious Republican primary, which exposed internal rifts within the party organization. The Republicanâs intra-party fracture threatened to eclipse the historic nomination of Hillary Clinton as the first woman to win a major partyâs presidential nomination. The convergence of celebrity, identity politics, and negative emotional dimensions seemed to intensify in the echo chamber of political incivility.
There is an expanding literature of scholarly analysis dedicated to understanding what happened in the 2016 president election (for a nuanced review of the 2016 presidential campaign and election, see Aldrich et al. 2018; Bitecofer 2017; Ceaser et al. 2017; Crotty 2018; Johnson and Brown 2017; Nelson 2018; Sabato et al. 2017; Wayne 2017). Much of the literature is focused on each candidateâs campaign, strategies, voter turnout, media coverage, what happened, and what did not. This book adds an examination of emotions in politics to the existing work on campaigns and elections.
The argument advanced in this book is that emotions in political contexts, specifically, the electorateâs emotional responses toward candidates, provide important information to voters. Furthermore, votersâ emotional responses to political elites and contextual cues in the campaign landscape are highly sought, and the strategies deployed to elicit them are short-term political strategies. The national mood of each campaign cycle varies depending on the factors including the political candidates, attractiveness of the candidates, the impact of foreign and domestic policy issues, and other, more localized circumstances (Flanigan et al. 2015). The more current variables present in each campaign cycle are something referred to as a short-term factor, defined as something that, âmay move voters away from their usual party choiceâ (Flanigan et al. 2015, 101). Emotions are treated as a short-term force in campaign politics. This research demonstrates that when holding long-term determinants of vote choice constant (party identification, ideology, demographic factors, etc.) emotions are found to be statistically significant predictors of attitudes and choices. However, the unusual characteristics that defined the 2016 presidential campaign were a noticeable departure from some of these conventional norms. The presidential election was marked by highly emotive campaign rhetoric authored predominately by Donald Trump that ended up eclipsing his primary opposition, and later, Hillary Clintonâs campaign in the general election. The role of emotion in this case did not necessarily move voters away from their usual party choices; instead, emotional appeals (and votersâ responses) mobilized many first-time voters and galvanized the partisan support of the candidates.
This research builds on an on-going foundation aimed at answering this questionâdo votersâ feelings toward political candidates influence their support of campaign issues ? Findings suggest the affirmative that the electoratesâ emotional responses toward political candidates do provide a contextual cue for voters, and that they rely on them as salient information.
In an election consumed by candidate-centered politics, negative emphasis on candidate personalities seemed to overshadow substantive issues. The compelling question emerged on how voters evaluated substantive issues when candidates emphasized the politics of spectacle? Given the deficit of policy discussion, voters relied on emotional cues and their own responses as political information. This book is interested in how a spectrum of emotions (anger, fear, disgust, pride, and hope) affected voter attitudes toward campaign issues. Specifically, this research, in particular, examines a phenomenon called âcandidate affect responseâ or a voterâs emotional response to a political candidate (Marcus 1988; Marcus and MacKuen 1993), affected political attitudes and factored into political reasoning in the 2016 presidential election.
The established foundation of research on emotions in politics suggests votersâ emotional responses to political cues serve an important function in voter cognition. Voters interpret emotional responses to candidatesâ messages as political information and rely on it to inform candidate preference, appraise public policy, and ultimately influence vote choice.
Vindicating Emotions in Politics
If the mind is the market place of ideas, then political campaigns are the market place of emotions (Westen 2007). Political environments are highly emotive for several reasons. Whether political campaigns were sources of popular entertainment or just a contemporary political strategy, a consensus among political scholars is that elections are deliberately becoming more laden with emotive tactics.
Traditionally, emotions have been dismissed as conduits of irrational and destructive consequences for the democratic citizenry. Only recently have researchers determined that emotions demonstrate utility in cognitive processes, which do not lead to unreasonable or destructive outcomes (Marcus et al. 2000; Westen 2007). Like studies conducted prior to this, the function feelings in political cognition are vindicated as an organic process attached to cognition that is both rational and constructive leading voters to reasonable choices. The commonly celebrated expectation of democratic participation streams from a constructed image of the dispassionate citizen. However, Aristotle referred to humans as âpolitical animals,â and it is worth mentioning that all animals have varied levels of habits and instincts necessary for social and literal survival. Humans possess a sophisticated cognitive system, in which emotions serve a vital adaptive function that aids in human acclimation and adaptability. Whether it is navigating prehistoric society for actual survival or maneuvering the political environment of presidential elections, humans interpret their emotional responses as critical information about their environment (Marcus 2000, 2002).
More recent research on voting behavior has included the role of emotions in politics. New research, mostly informed by social psychology, provides political science a foundation in which to redefine the role of emotions as less irrational, more complex and a reasonable element within political decision-making. Human emotions are presented in this research as politically valid and aid voters significantly as they negotiate the complexities of contemporary campaigns. Feelings have a potentially useful role in helping voters judge political candidates when confronted with overwhelming amounts of information about a political campaign, issue, or candidate.
The environmental context and campaign narrative is important in cueing emotional appraisals of political information and choices. The culture of modern politics has been transformed by the influences of candidate personality, campaign issues, and the tone of news media coverage. With the increased displays of emotion and affective cues in modern media, opinion news broadcasts, and editorial publications, combined with increased access to social media, the campaign narratives have been transformed.
Interpreting the Meaning of Feelings
In campaign research, credible surveys have successfully tapped into a variety of emotional dimensions. In this research, the four emotions pride, hope, fear, and anger are analyzed for their effects in campaign contexts. It is important to understand what a specific emotion conveys in explicit social or political contexts. Broadly, emotions provide a practical function for human existence and in social life. Emotions provide a sense of meaning for life and aid humans in interpreting their surroundings and navigate the environment. Positive emotions reinforce successful goal pursuits while negative emotions provide unpleasant reminders that something has gone wrong (Snyder 2000).
The implications for political contexts are that voters rely on their feelings to give meaning in political situations, toward candidate traits and public policy. It is reasonable to expect that voters rely on feelings to navigate the messages conveyed by political campaigns and to interpret the impact of government policies.
Hope and Pride
On the dimension of positive emotions, hope and pride convey specific meanings for those experiencing these specific feelings. The emotion of hope is disarming and when applied to the individual level, it enables people to feel empowered and they have the agency to engineer their future. When applied to society, feelings of hope are attributed to constructed notions of common or shared social goals. When accomplished by a large group, the sense of positive feeling is accentuated by belonging to a collective unit and a sense of meaning on a grander scale. The sense of goal achievement provides satisfaction that often ...