Talking the Vote: Why Presidential Candidates Hitthe Talk Show Circuit

Matthew A. Baum University of California, Los Angeles

The 2000 presidential election found the major party presidential candidates chatting with Oprah Winfrey, Rosie O’Donnell,and Regis Philbin, trading one-liners with Jay Leno and David Letterman, and discussing rap music on MTV. This studyinvestigates the impact of entertainment-oriented talk show interviews of presidential candidates, using the 2000 electionas a case study. I consider why such shows cover presidential politics, why candidates choose to appear on them, and who islikely to be watching. This discussion yields a series of hypotheses concerning the effects of these interviews on public attitudesand voting behavior. I test my hypotheses through a content analysis of campaign coverage by entertainment-oriented talkshows, traditional political interview shows, and national news campaign coverage, as well as through a series of statisticalinvestigations. I find that politically unengaged voters who watch entertainment-oriented TV talk shows are more likely tofind the opposition party candidate likeable, as well as to cross party lines and vote for him, relative to their counterpartswho are more politically aware or who do not watch such shows.

During the 1960 presidential campaign, RichardNixon sought to “humanize” himself by playingpiano on The Tonight Show (Rosenberg 2000).

Three decades later, in 1992, Bill Clinton courted youngvoters by playing his saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Showand appearing on MTV. In recent years, journalists (e.g.,Kurtz 2002; Weiss 2003) and communication scholars(e.g., Jamieson and Waldman 2003; Niven and Amundson2003; Young 2003) have increasingly recognized the po-tential for the entertainment media to influence Americanpolitics. Yet, with few exceptions (e.g., Ridout 1993), po-litical scientists have devoted scant attention to deter-mining whether or to what extent candidate appearanceson entertainment-oriented media outlets might influencethe outcomes of presidential elections. The 2000 electionsuggests the need for a systematic assessment of this phe-nomenon. Politicking in the entertainment media movedfrom occasional novelty to political center stage, as themajor party candidates competed aggressively for the mil-lions of voters who consider Oprah Winfrey and Regis

Matthew A. Baum is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Communication Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Box951472, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1472 (mbaum@ucla.edu).

Portions of this research were supported by a fellowship from the UCLA Center for American Politics and Public Policy. An earlier draftof this study was presented at the 2002 meeting of the American Political Science Association. I am grateful to the following individualsfor helpful comments and suggestions: Jeeyang Rhee Baum, Jamie Druckman, Kristian Gleditsch, Tim Groeling, Shanto Iyengar, SamKernell, Jeff Lewis, John Zaller, the AJPS editors, and several anonymous reviewers. I also wish to thank Amy Ennis and Angela Jamison forresearch assistance and Phil Gussin for coordinating the content analysis project. I am also grateful to Paul Rosenthall and Barbara Osbornfor assistance in obtaining many of the transcripts and videotapes employed in my content analyses. Finally, I thank the APSA PoliticalCommunication section for their support of this project. The data employed in my content analyses, along with coding instructions andvariable definitions, can be downloaded at: http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/mbaum/research.html.

Philbin trusted friends, or who depend on Jon Stewart’sparodies and Jay Leno’s late-night monologues for theirdaily update on national affairs.

Yet, such programs are clearly not in the businessof covering presidential politics. As one publicist for theTonight Show commented regarding appearances by pres-idential candidates in 2000: “Of course ratings are a toppriority . . . We are not sending a political message one wayor another . . . If people get anything out of it, that’s fine,but that’s not why we’re here. We’re not ‘Hardball’ . . . ”(Niemberg 2001). Oprah Winfrey, in turn, describes herprogram’s priorities as follows: “ . . . our mission state-ment for ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ is to use television totransform people’s lives, to make viewers see themselvesdifferently and to bring happiness and a sense of fulfill-ment into every home” (Feder 2000). Given this decidedlyapolitical orientation, it is not too surprising that OprahWinfrey’s interviews with Al Gore and George W. Bushwere the first political interviews of her 15-year career asa talk show host (LaGanga 2000). As Winfrey explained:

American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 49, No. 2, April 2005, Pp. 213–234

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“I’ve tried to stay out of politics for my entire tenure on theair. Basically, it’s a no-win situation. Over the years, I havenot found that interviewing politicians about the issuesworked for my viewing audience. I try to bring issues thatpeople understand through their hearts and their feelingsso they can make decisions” (Feder 2000).

So, why would entertainment-oriented TV talk shows(henceforth “E-talk shows”), like The Oprah WinfreyShow, interview political candidates? The answer, simplystated, is that by focusing on candidates’ personal qualitiesrather than “arcane” policy debates, such interviews canappeal to their relatively apolitical, entertainment-seekingaudiences. In fact, Nielsen ratings indicate that in 2000,E-talk show audiences tuned in to candidate appearancesin large numbers. For instance, 8.7 million householdswatched Al Gore’s September 11, 2000 appearance on theseason premier of The Oprah Winfrey Show, well abovethe program’s average of 7.5 million households duringthe prior (1998–99) season (Getlin 2000) and up 27%from Oprah’s 1999–2000 premier episode (Lowry 2000).George W. Bush’s appearance on the program eight dayslater earned even higher ratings (Getlin 2000).

Presidential aspirants, in turn, hit the E-talk show cir-cuit with good reason. While typical talk show viewers arenot among the most politically engaged Americans, suchindividuals do vote in significant numbers. According tothe 2000 American National Election Study (ANES), 60%of respondents who indicated that they follow what’s go-ing on in government and public affairs “hardly at all”or “only now and then” claimed to have voted. Andtwo-thirds of respondents who watched more than onestandard deviation above the mean quantity of daytimeTV talk shows indicated that they had done so. Whileself-declared voting rates in surveys are typically inflated(Sigelman 1982), the difference between these respon-dents and frequent national network news viewers is lessthan 13 percentage points. Recent research (Bernstein,Chadha, and Montjoy 2001), in turn, suggests that theleast politically aware individuals are least likely to falselyreport having voted.

Clearly, many E-talk show viewers and politicallyinattentive individuals vote. One-on-one interviews onMeet the Press or the Jim Lehrer News Hour are unlikelyto reach these potential voters. In today’s increasinglypersonality-driven political environment, appearances onE-talk shows afford candidates perhaps their best oppor-tunity to communicate with a substantial niche of theelectorate. As Bennett notes, “If a candidate wants toexcite people who normally do not vote, reaching past‘Meet the Press’ is probably not a bad way to start” (1999,74).

This study assesses the impact of E-talk show inter-views with presidential candidates, using the 2000 elec-

tion as a case study. With relatively few exceptions (e.g.,Druckman 2004; Iyengar and Kinder 1987; Johnston et al.1992), previous media effects research has focused onhow media exposure influences public opinion. While Itoo explore the effects of E-talk show coverage on publicattitudes, I also investigate whether and how media con-sumption directly influences vote choice. Similar to thosefew studies—both experimental and survey-based—thathave focused on voting behavior, as well as many studies ofpolitical campaigns in general (e.g., Berelson, Lazarsfeld,and McPhee 1954; Jacobs and Shapiro 1994), my data istime bound, focusing on a single election. Yet the 2000election is of particular theoretical interest, as the trendsI investigate are relatively new, at least in terms of thescale in which they unfolded in 2000. Hence, in additionto addressing a relatively new phenomenon, this study isintended to serve as a baseline for future research into theeffects of nontraditional media on political campaigns.

I begin by considering why E-talk shows cover pres-idential politics and the possible consequences of suchcoverage. I then consider how coverage of presidentialpolitics by E-talk shows might influence voters and howsuch influence might differ from that of traditional newsoutlets. This discussion yields a series of hypotheses con-cerning the effects of E-talk show and traditional newscoverage of presidential politics on viewer attitudes to-ward the candidates and on voting behavior. Next, I testmy hypotheses through a content analysis of campaigncoverage by E-talk shows, traditional political interviewshows and national newscasts, as well as a series of statisti-cal investigations, employing the 2000 American NationalElection Study (ANES). I conclude by considering the im-plications of my findings.

Presidential Campaigning in aChanging Television Marketplace

In 2000, the average American household received 74 tele-vision channels, an 80% increase from 1995 (Bednarski2001). In a TV environment characterized by ever-expanding programming alternatives, a politically apa-thetic and cynical citizenry (Bennett 1986; Nye, Zelikow,and King 1997) possesses both the motive and oppor-tunity to tune out politics. One primary consequence isthat an increasing portion of the television audience isunwilling to stay tuned when political news crosses theirscreen. For instance, thanks in large measure to risingcompetition from cable and satellite television, the audi-ence for presidential television appearances has declinedprecipitously (Baum and Kernell 1999), as have those forthe major broadcast networks’ evening newscasts (Baum

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2002a; Lichty and Gomery 1992), and even for local TVnews (Pew Center 2002; Rosensteil, Gottlieb and Brady2000). One survey (Pew Center 2000) found 62% of re-spondents indicating that they watch news with their re-mote control in hand, flipping to other channels whenthey are not interested in a given story. These data suggestpolitical news is an increasingly hard sell for TV broad-casters. They further suggest that traditional avenues ofaccess to the public through the media are being foreclosedto politicians.

These trends present a challenge for political candi-dates. As TV viewers are offered an ever-expanding varietyof programming alternatives, politicians confront a fun-damental paradigm shift. No longer can they merely sendout a broadcast signal and, in effect, wait for the audienceto come to them. Rather, candidates must increasinglyseek out an audience. This, in turn, requires repackag-ing their messages into forms appealing to a populacewith little patience for politics and then moving those re-vamped messages to where the target audiences have relo-cated. If a substantial portion of the public has switchedover to the entertainment media, then so too must thecandidates.

But who is likely to encounter political messages pre-sented on an E-talk show? In fact, the E-talk show audi-ence is quite large. Ratings for some daytime talk showsrival or exceed those for the evening newscasts of the ma-jor networks (Baum 2002a, 2003). But, compared to thetraditional news audience, the E-talk show audience is,on average, less educated, less interested in politics, andmore likely to be young, female, and liberal (Baum 2003;Davis and Owen 1998; Hamilton 2003; Pew Center 2000and 2002; Burns, Kinder, Rosenstone, and Sapiro 2001).According to the 2000 ANES, in turn, they are also morelikely to be Democrats (34%) or Independents (40%) thanRepublicans (26%). And Republicans are more politicallyaware and more likely to vote than either Democrats orIndependents (Baum 2002b).

These data suggest that candidates hoping to commu-nicate effectively with E-talk show audiences, while con-vincing them to refrain from switching channels, wouldhave to tailor their messages to appeal to audiences lessinterested in or knowledgeable about politics than thetypical audience for traditional news. One increasinglycommon strategy for doing so entails deemphasizing thepartisan content in a candidate’s message. This suggestscoverage of presidential politics by E-talk shows may dif-fer significantly from that of the traditional news media,which have, in recent decades, grown increasingly negative(Brody 1991; Groeling and Kernell 1998; Patterson 1996).As a consequence, traditional news outlets are becomingan inhospitable environment for presidential candidates.Due to their personality/human-interest orientation,

E-talk shows represent a potentially attractive alternativeoutlet for candidates.

Theory and Hypotheses

There is no reason to believe that E-talk shows wouldsuspend their entertainment-oriented sensibilities whenpolitical candidates cross their stages. Indeed, it is theirrelatively apolitical orientation that appeals to candidatesseeking refuge from the negativity of the mainstream newsmedia, as well as access to segments of the populationthat do not typically follow traditional political debates.This, after all, is what makes candidate appearances onE-talk shows mutually beneficial: talk shows seek to en-tertain their audiences by offering “fun,” human interest-oriented interviews with high profile individuals; can-didates covet an opportunity to present themselves in apositive light, without having to face hostile questioningfrom jaded political reporters.

This suggests that we should observe less emphasison partisan conflict or policy-oriented topics and themesin E-talk show interviews, relative to candidate interviewson traditional political programs or campaign coverage onnational news shows. Indeed, political candidates wouldseem to have little incentive to appear on E-talk showsunless they are confident that they will be able to presentthemselves in a favorable light, with minimal risk of em-barrassment. Given the demographics and interests ofmost E-talk show viewers, the hosts of such programsare unlikely to risk alienating their audiences with tough,issue-oriented questions or partisan debate. Instead,E-talk show hosts and viewers, as well as presidential can-didates, all seem likely to prefer interviews that empha-size the candidates’ personal qualities, rather than theirpolitical views or issue positions. This suggests severalhypotheses:

H1: Relative to interviews or campaign coverageby traditional news outlets, candidate interviewson E-talk shows will include fewer references topolitical parties, partisan themes, or other poten-tially divisive images.

H2: Relative to interviews or campaign coverageby traditional news outlets, candidate interviewson E-talk shows will offer more favorable coverageof the interview subject.

H3: Relative to interviews or campaign coverageby traditional news outlets, candidate interviewson E-talk shows will offer less emphasis on sub-stantive issues or comparisons of candidate posi-tions on the issues.

216 MATTHEW A. BAUM

Of course, the content of E-talk show coverage is onlyof interest if it influences voters. If traditional news pro-grams differ materially from E-talk shows in their cover-age of presidential politics, such differences may, in fact,have meaningful consequences for voter attitudes and be-havior. Research (e.g., Popkin 1994; Sniderman, Brody,and Tetlock 1991) has shown that most individuals relyupon information shortcuts, or heuristic cues, to helpthem make sense of the political world. The availabilityof simple heuristics, especially a candidate’s “likeability”(Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991, chapter 6) or partyidentification, makes it possible for even relatively unin-formed voters to figure out which candidate best repre-sents their own interests.

At the same time, not all individuals rely similarlyupon, or respond similarly to, political information. Ac-cording to the reception-acceptance model of opinionformation (McGuire 1968; Zaller 1992), individuals atdifferent levels of political awareness tend to have vary-ing propensities to encounter political information andto react differently to information to which they are ex-posed. The least politically aware individuals tend not toexpose themselves to political information. Hence, theyfrequently have no basis upon which to alter their opin-ions. The opinions of highly politically aware individu-als are also relatively stable, but for a different reason.These latter individuals have well-formed belief systemsas well as, due to their greater attentiveness to politics,a far greater number of accessible considerations regard-ing typical political issues that they can bring to bear to“counterargue,” and thereby resist accepting, dissonantmessages, even if they receive them. I refer to this latterpropensity to reject information inconsistent with preex-isting attitudes, given exposure, as selective acceptance.

One consequence, long recognized by students of vot-ing behavior (e.g., Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954;Campbell et al. 1960), is that exposure to political cam-paigns in the media tends to reinforce partisan predispo-sitions rather than challenging them, particularly amonghighly aware individuals. In other words, such individu-als will discount dissonant information (e.g., criticism oftheir party’s candidate or praise of the opposition candi-date), while focusing on information that reinforces theirpredispositions (e.g., praise of their party’s candidate orcriticism of the opposition candidate).

Relative to their highly aware counterparts, low-awareness individuals are less likely to encounter mostpolitical messages, or pay attention to or understand themif encountered in a traditional news context (Baum 2002a;Hamill and Lodge 1986; Hamilton 2003). For these indi-viduals, such information will be relatively inaccessibleand hence uninteresting. As a consequence, traditional

news coverage of a political campaign is unlikely to influ-ence these latter individuals’ attitudes or voting behavior.After all, they can either ignore any such information thatmight cross the television screen or simply reach for theirremotes.

While, in turn, it is fairly clear why traditional cam-paign news will most likely exert only a modest influenceon politically unaware individuals, the likely valence of anysuch effects, however modest, is more difficult to deter-mine. On the one hand, low-awareness individuals tendto be less strongly wedded to their partisan predisposi-tions (Zaller n.d.), and hence, presumably more amenableto altering their assessments of the candidates and theirvote choice. But, on the other hand, as discussed, theyare less likely to encounter or attend to any informationthat might induce them to do so. The net effect of thesecountervailing tendencies is unclear.

Compared with traditional news shows, in order toappeal to their relatively apolitical audiences, E-talk showsmake political information more accessible. This reducesthe likelihood that low-awareness individuals will tunesuch information out. Yet to the extent that E-talk showsemphasize candidate personalities, rather than compar-ing issue positions, ideology, or the political “horse race,”the standard partisan heuristic cues voters use to makesense of politics may be less prevalent, or at least lesseasily recognizable. Moreover, the key audience demo-graphic for E-talk shows—relatively apolitical individu-als with limited education—is particularly dependent ona relatively small number (compared to highly aware in-dividuals) of highly accessible heuristic cues in makingpolitical decisions (Lau and Redlawsk 2001).1 Hence, therelative scarcity of political or partisan cues or issue com-parisons seems likely to affect disproportionately the leastpolitically aware members of the public.

At the same time, the relative absence of nega-tive or conflictual frames and tones, in favor of softer,personality-oriented topics and themes, will tend to paintany candidate in a positive light. This suggests that E-talkshows will tend to prime (Iyengar and Kinder 1987) thecandidates’ “likeability” (recall the “likeability” heuris-tic), increasing its prominence to viewers—especially low-awareness viewers—as a factor influencing their votechoice. For these individuals, a positive portrayal of acandidate may counter any relatively weakly held nega-tive associations based on the candidate’s party affiliation.

1While recent experimental research (Lau and Redlawsk 2001) sug-gests that political sophisticates may make greater and more effec-tive use of a wider range of heuristic cues than their less politicallyaware counterparts, additional research (e.g., Sniderman, Brody,and Tetlock 1991) has shown that individuals at all levels of politi-cal sophistication make use of heuristics.

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Hence, watching a candidate interview on an E-talk showis likely to enhance a low-awareness viewer’s regard forthat candidate, especially if he or she held a negative atti-tude ex ante. Moreover, this effect is likely to trump anymore critical information about the candidates presentedin traditional campaign coverage. After all, as noted, suchcoverage is relatively unlikely to influence low-awarenessindividuals, even if they encounter it.

This logic, however, is less likely to apply to highly po-litically aware individuals, who are better able to identifyreinforcing cues, even in a relatively nonpartisan environ-ment. They are also better equipped than their less polit-ically aware counterparts to employ selective acceptance,and thereby discount any favorable coverage of an opposi-tion party candidate. Hence, highly aware individuals willmost likely be able to identify and focus on informationthat reinforces their partisan predispositions, even in thecontext of relatively nonpartisan E-talk show interviews.

At first glance, given that many low-awareness view-ers are presumably exposed to similarly positive portray-als of both candidates, one might expect the effects ofE-talk show viewing on such individuals to cancel out. Yet,the default position for the vast majority of Americans—including most low-awareness individuals—is to supporttheir own party’s candidate. For instance, when askedin the pre-election wave of the 2000 ANES to indicatewhom they planned to vote for in the upcoming presi-dential election, fully 90% of self-described Democratsindicated that they intended to vote for Al Gore, while89% of self-described Republicans planned to vote forGeorge W. Bush. This suggests watching an E-talk showthat portrays their fellow partisan in a positive light is un-likely to substantially increase typical individuals’ supportfor their fellow partisan candidate. In all likelihood, theyalready supported him or her anyway.

In contrast, because party identifiers tend to hold theopposition candidate in much lower esteem, there is sim-ply more room to reevaluate the opposition party candi-date upward following a sympathetic appearance on anE-talk show. Hence, even if most E-talk show viewers arepositively impressed with the performance of their ownparty’s candidate, this is unlikely to produce a substantialincrease in support for that candidate. In contrast, if even arelatively small number of viewers are favorably impressedwith the opposition candidate or unimpressed with theirfellow partisan candidate, this is likely to produce a netincrease, all else equal, in support for the opposition can-didate. Moreover, given that politically unaware individ-uals are less intrinsically resistant to changing their posi-tions than their highly aware counterparts (Zaller n.d.),the largest effects are likely to be located among the leastpolitically aware segments of the population.

Unlike their less aware counterparts, highly politi-cally aware individuals are presumably just as effectiveat counterarguing dissonant information when watchingE-talk shows as when watching the evening news. Thereis no reason to believe that selective acceptance will op-erate any less strongly for these latter individuals whenwatching entertainment-oriented programming. Hence,for highly aware individuals, the effects of exposure toE-talk shows and traditional news shows are likely to becomparable. The greater accessibility of campaign cover-age by an E-talk show will matter little to a viewer whofinds politics intrinsically engaging. As a consequence,to the extent watching an E-talk show interview has anyeffect at all on a highly aware individual, it is likely to re-inforce his or her predispositions, rather than underminethem. Given, however, that such individuals typically haverelatively strong partisan preferences, and so are likely toalready support their party’s candidate, we are unlikely toobserve a strong reinforcement effect.

This discussion suggests that any E-talk show influ-ence on the voting behavior of low-awareness individu-als can be traced, at least in significant measure, to theeffects of such shows on voter perceptions of the candi-dates’ personal qualities in general, and their likeabilityin particular. This implies that we should anticipate fairlyanalogous effects on both likeability and voting behavior.A series of hypotheses follow:

H4: Among highly politically aware individuals,exposure to traditional news coverage of the cam-paign will have a relatively modest effect on view-ers’ perceptions of the candidates’ likeability. Anysuch effects will enhance their assessment of theirown party’s candidate.

H5: Among politically unaware individuals, expo-sure to traditional news will have a smaller effectthan exposure to E-talk shows on perceptions re-garding the candidates’ likeability. It is unclearwhether any such effects will raise or lower theseindividuals’ evaluations of the candidates.

H6: Among highly politically aware individuals,exposure to traditional news coverage of the elec-tion campaign will have a relatively modest effecton vote choice. Any such effects will increase theirpropensity to vote consistently with their partisanpredispositions.

H7: Among politically unaware individuals, expo-sure to traditional news will have a smaller effecton vote choice than exposure to E-talk shows. Itis unclear whether any such effects will increase

218 MATTHEW A. BAUM

or decrease their propensity to vote consistentlywith their partisan predispositions.

H8: Among politically unaware individuals,watching E-talk shows will be associated withan increase in the perceived likeability of theopposition candidate. This effect will weakenas political awareness increases, and may evenreverse among highly aware individuals, withE-talk show exposure being associated with amodest decline in perceived likeability of the op-position candidate.

H9: Among politically unaware individuals,watching E-talk shows will be associated with anincreased likelihood of voting for the oppositionparty candidate. This relationship will weaken aspolitical awareness increases, and may even re-verse among highly politically aware respondents,with E-talk show consumption becoming associ-ated with a modestly increased propensity to voteconsistently with their partisan predispositions.

Data and Methodology

I test my hypotheses through two investigations. The first,which tests Hypotheses 1–3, consists of a content analysisof candidate appearances on E-talk shows and traditionalpolitical talk shows, as well as candidate interviews andcampaign coverage by the national news media. The sec-ond analysis, which tests Hypotheses 4–9, employs the2000 ANES survey.

Beginning with the former, I analyzed the content ofpresidential candidate appearances on E-talk shows (in-cluding Oprah Winfrey, Rosie O’Donnell, Live with Regisand Kelly, Queen Latifah, Jay Leno, and David Letterman),traditional political talk/interview shows and nationalnews programs (including Meet the Press, This Week, theJim Lehrer News Hour, Hardball, CNN’s Morning Newsand Early Prime programs, and the network eveningnewscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC), as well as a randomsample of 60 campaign reports by the major networkevening newscasts and CNN’s primetime news program-ming. These data include all nationally broadcast E-talkshow interviews with Bush or Gore, as well as all networknews and political talk show candidate interviews fromthe networks and shows listed above, between March 7and November 6,2000.2 I focus primarily on candidate

2I exclude interviews and reports prior to March 7, 2000 (“Su-per Tuesday” in the 2000 campaign), after which media attentionshifted from the primaries to the general election. I also excludeseveral interviews that included the candidates’ wives or took theform of “a day in the life of a candidate.”

appearances because they represent the highest-profile,the most widely watched, extensive and extended (for E-talk shows), and hence presumably the most consequen-tial, form of campaign coverage. Moreover, unlike mostmedia campaign coverage, candidates are able to controlwhen and where they make personal appearances.3

For each report, two graduate student research as-sistants, working independently, counted the number ofmentions of political parties and campaign issues (usingsentences as the units of analysis), as well as the num-ber of comparisons of the candidates’ partisan or issuepositions. The former were labeled “partisan cues,” be-cause they provided information relating the candidatesto their party, or the opposition party, while the latterwere termed “issue cues,” because they compared the can-didates’ stands on issues. If an interview or report men-tioned a substantive issue, but offered no comparison tothe other party or candidate, the comment was codedas an “issue mention.” Coders also tallied the numberof positive and negative references regarding both ma-jor party candidates. These were termed “valence cues.”Any comment or statement that supports a given candi-date or his position on an issue, or in some other waypresents him in a positive light, or, alternatively, criticizesor otherwise presents his opponent in a negative light,was coded as positive. The coders also noted whethera given positive (negative) reference consisted of praise(criticism) of a candidate or criticism (praise) of his op-ponent, as well as the source of such praise (criticism). Inorder to minimize subjectivity, only unambiguous com-ments or statements were coded. The coding guidelinesare summarized in Appendix B. The coding by my tworesearch assistants, based on a sentence-by-sentence re-view of each report, correlated at .92. The correspondingCohen’s Kappa score (Cook 1998), measuring overall in-tercoder reliability, is .93.

Turning to the second analysis, the 2000 ANES in-cludes a series of questions concerning media consump-tion habits, one of which asks respondents how often theywatch daytime talk shows. I investigate the implications ofwatching these programs, as well as national network newsshows, for respondents’ political attitudes and behavior.To test my hypotheses regarding vote choice, I employ thefollowing question as my dependent variable: “Who did

3Political humor during late-night talk show monologues tends tobe critical of the candidates (Jamieson and Waldman 2003). Someevidence (Young 2003), in turn, suggests that this may increase thesalience of negative candidate traits among low-awareness viewers.Hence, to at least some extent, late-night jokes may offset someof the positive effects of candidate appearances. Nevertheless, suchnegative effects appear fairly limited in magnitude (Young 2003).Moreover due to their unusually high profile and extended dura-tion, candidate appearances seem likely to be much “louder” signalsfor low-awareness viewers than the standard fare late-night humor.

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you vote for [for president]?” Responses were coded asfollows: 1 = Al Gore, 2 = George W. Bush, and 3 = allother candidates. Because my theory concerns vote choice,rather than the decision to vote, self-declared nonvoterswere excluded.4

To investigate attitudes toward the candidates, I con-struct a “likeability” scale from a series of questions askingrespondents to name what they like and dislike about eachcandidate.5 Interviewers coded up to five likes and five dis-likes per candidate. From these questions, I created twovariables—one for each candidate—based on the totalnumber of likes mentioned as a proportion of the com-bined total number of likes and dislikes mentioned. Thetwo resulting variables run from 0 to 1, where 0 indicatesthat a respondent mentioned only “dislikes” and 1 indi-cates that he or she mentioned only “likes.” The likeabilityratios have means (�) of .52 and .49, and standard devia-tions (�) of .34 and .35, for Gore and Bush, respectively.Because these indicators are bounded between zero andone, I transform them into natural logarithms.6

This indicator reflects Zaller and Feldman’s (1992)argument that the opinions expressed by typical individ-uals tend to reflect whichever considerations about a givenissue are most accessible at the time they are queried. Byemploying a ratio, in turn, I avoid any potential bias re-sulting from the ability of highly politically aware indi-viduals to access more considerations regarding issues orcandidates (Zaller 1992; Zaller and Feldman 1992). Af-ter all, while low-awareness individuals may bring fewerconsiderations to bear in making political decisions, therelative proportion of favorable-to-unfavorable consid-erations they possess concerning the candidates is just aslikely to influence their vote choice as that of politicalsophisticates (Zaller and Feldman 1992).

Some research (e.g., Rahn, Krosnik, and Breuning1994) suggests that people tend to forget exactly whythey prefer a candidate, and respond to open-ended“likes/dislikes” questions with post-hoc rationalizationsfor their already-formed preferences. If so, the likeabilityratio might not be an actual cause of respondents’ votechoices. Yet, Rahn, Krosnik, and Breuning (1994) findthat post-hoc rationalization is most prevalent amonghighly politically engaged individuals and those with min-imum media exposure, and least prevalent among voters

4Including the option of nonvoting does not materially affect thereported results.

5The questions are worded as follows: “Is there anything in particu-lar about [Vice President Al Gore/Texas Governor George W. Bush]that might make you want to vote [for/against] him?”

6Zero mentions of likes or dislikes were recoded as .1 prior to loggingthe scale. Self-reported voting for Bush and Gore correlates withthe logged likeability ratios at .65 and .64, respectively.

who make up their minds relatively late in the campaign.Hence, this seems least likely to be the case among low-awareness voters—who tend to hold weaker preferencesthan political sophisticates—who were exposed to me-dia coverage of the campaign via E-talk shows. Moreover,since the “likes/dislikes” questions appeared at the out-set of the ANES pre-election wave, respondents could nothave been influenced by their answers to other questionsregarding their political preferences. Consequently, to theextent likeability and vote choice move in tandem, thisrepresents evidence that the mechanism underlying thepredicted effects of E-talk shows on vote choice—i.e.,their effects on viewers’ perceptions of the candidates’likeability—is itself consistent with the theory, especiallyamong low-awareness viewers.

The key causal variable, in turn, is based on the fol-lowing question: “How many times in the last week haveyou watched daytime television talk shows such as OprahWinfrey, Rosie O’Donnell, or Jerry Springer?” Because rela-tively few respondents (9%) reported watching more thanthree such shows, I collapse this indicator into four cat-egories, coded: 0 = none, 1 = one time, 2 = two times,and 3 = three or more times.Overall, 28% of respondentsindicated that they had watched at least one daytime talkshow during the prior week. (For the recoded scale, � =.61 and � = 1.07.)

While this indicator does not explicitly measure expo-sure to candidate interviews on E-talk shows, I believe that,in addition to being the best—indeed, to my knowledge,the only—available indicator for testing my hypothesesin close proximity to a presidential election, it is alsoreasonably valid. There are two reasons for this. First,the more an individual watches daytime talk shows, themore likely he or she is to be watching when a candi-date makes an appearance. And second, given that theANES question asks respondents about their talk showviewing in the week prior to the interview, and given thatall but one of the candidates’ E-talk show appearancestook place during the pre-election wave (which beganon September 5,2000), the relationship between watchingE-talk shows and encountering candidate interviews onsuch shows was far higher during this period than at anyother time.

The control variables fall into four categories andinclude many of the most widely employed variables inthe study of American voting behavior (e.g., Rosenstoneand Hansen 1993, 273–75). These are: (1) demograph-ics (age, education, gender, race, religiosity), (2) politi-cal attitudes (party ID, strength of partisanship, ideology,retrospective economic evaluation, strength of candidatepreferences, participation in the 2000 campaign, caringabout the election outcome), (3) political disaffection

220 MATTHEW A. BAUM

TABLE 1 Comparison of Political Content of Candidate Interviews on E-Talk Shows withInterviews on Traditional Political Interview Shows and National News CampaignCoverage (Average Cues-per-Minute)

Partisan Issue Issue Valence TotalCues Cues Mentions Cues Cues

Type of ProgramE-Talk Shows 0.22 0.65 0.23 0.19 1.29Traditional Political Interview Shows 1.00 1.78 0.74 0.80 4.32National News Campaign Reports 3.89 2.25 0.31 1.29 7.74All Traditional Campaign Coverage (News Reports +

Interviews)3.11 2.12 0.43 1.16 6.83

E-Talk Show Cues as % of all Campaign Coverage Cues,including News Reports and Interviews[E-Talk Shows ÷ (Traditional News + E-Talk Shows)]

7% 24% 35% 14% 16%

E-Talk Show Cues as % of all Interview Show Cues[E-Talk Shows ÷ (Traditional News + E-Talk Shows)]

18% 27% 24% 19% 23%

Statistical Significance of Differences1

E-Talk Shows vs. all Traditional Campaign Coverage .0000 .0000 .02 .0000 .0000E-Talk Shows vs. Traditional Interview Shows .0000 .0007 .004 .0002 .0000E-Talk Shows vs. National News Coverage .0000 .0000 .31 .0000 .0000

1two-tailed t-tests

(trust in government, external efficacy), and (4) mediaconsumption (national network TV news, local TV news,newspapers, political talk radio, politics on the internet,cable access).7

I also create an indicator of respondents’ politicalawareness. Zaller defines political awareness as “the ex-tent to which an individual pays attention to politics andunderstands what he or she has encountered” (1992, 21).In order to capture both parts of Zaller’s definition (at-tention and understanding), I create a scale derived fromfour elements, assessing (1) interest in government andpublic affairs, (2) attention to the 2000 election, (3) levelof political information, as estimated by the interviewer,and (4) factual political knowledge, derived from a seriesof 10 questions. All four elements were normalized to a0–1 interval and then added together to create a sum-mary political awareness indicator. The resulting vari-able, which combines objective measures with respon-dents’ self-assessments, runs from 0 to 4 (� = 2.5 and

7Price and Zaller (1993) find that survey respondents tend to over-state their media consumption, particularly for questions address-ing relatively broad media categories. The questions employedherein ask respondents to recall their consumption of specific pro-grams during the prior week, thereby mitigating this problem.Moreover, differences in the probabilities of holding an attitude, asmedia exposure varies, should not be affected by systematic over-reporting of the level of exposure.

� = 1.0).8 To determine whether consuming talk showsor network news has differing effects on the attitudes ofdifferent types of respondents, I separately interact day-time talk show and national network news consumptionwith political awareness and with respondents’ party iden-tification.9 (See Appendix A for variable ID numbers andcoding.)

Statistical Investigations

How E-Talk Shows Covered the 2000 Election. I beginwith Hypotheses 1–3. Hypothesis 1 predicts that candi-date interviews on E-talk shows will include fewer ref-erences to political parties, partisan themes, or otherpotentially divisive images, than traditional news re-ports or candidate interviews. The column in Table 1labeled “Partisan Cues,” supports this hypothesis. Can-didate interviews on E-talk shows featured an averageof one partisan cue every five minutes. The correspond-ing figures for traditional political interview programsand national news campaign reports were far smaller: 1.0and 3.1 partisan-cues-per-minute, respectively. The dif-ferences are each significant at the .0001 level or better

8The alpha reliability score for the four items included in the sum-mary scale is .70.

9For the network news consumption scale, � = 3.29 and � = 2.80.

TALKING THE VOTE 221

TABLE 2 Comparison of Aggregate Valence Cues, and Negative Cues Offered by Interviewers orReporters, in E-Talk Show Candidate Interviews, Interviews by Traditional PoliticalPrograms, and National News Campaign Reports

Supportive Comments by Interviewers/Reporters & Candidates, by Candidate

Valence Cues-per-Minute Statistical% Pro-Interview Significance

Pro-Bush Pro-Gore Subject N of Differences1

Traditional News ProgramsGore interviews .45 .59 57 11 .22Bush interviews .37 .20 65 11 .09National newscasts .54 .75 422 60 .09

E-Talk ShowsGore interviews .01 .21 96 6 .04Bush interviews .25 .01 95 4 .01

Supportive vs. Critical Comments by Interviewers/Reporters & Candidates

Valence Cues-per-Minute

Critical of Supportive StatisticalInterview of Interview % Significance

Subject Subject Critical N of Differences1

Traditional News ProgramsGore interviews .42 .17 .81 11 .02Bush interviews .15 .12 .66 11 .32National newscasts 1.04 .21 .83 60 .001

E-Talk ShowsGore interviews .00 .06 .00 6 .02Bush interviews .01 .12 .05 4 .08

Supportive vs. Critical Comments by Interviewers/Reporters Only

Valence Cues-per-Minute

Critical of Supportive StatisticalInterview of Interview % Significance

Subject Subject Critical N of Differences1

Traditional News ProgramsGore interviews .41 .06 .88 11 .01Bush interviews .15 .03 .81 11 .03National newscasts .70 .17 .80 60 .0000

E-Talk ShowsGore interviews .00 .03 .00 6 .06Bush interviews .00 .07 .00 4 .12

1one-tailed t-tests.2% pro-Bush.

(based on two-tailed t-tests). These results support myfirst hypothesis.

Hypothesis 2 predicts that E-talk shows will be moresympathetic to their interview subjects than traditionalnews shows. Table 2 presents the results of my tests of this

prediction. Once again, the results support my hypothesis.As shown in the top section of Table 2, during Al Gore’sappearances on E-talk shows, 96% of all valence cues werefavorable to the Vice President (i.e., supportive of Goreor critical of Bush). The corresponding figures for Gore’s

222 MATTHEW A. BAUM

appearances on traditional news and political interviewprograms, and in national news reports, were only 57and 58% favorable, respectively. This “favorability” gap isstatistically significant at the .05 level (one-tailed t-test).10

Then-Texas Governor George W. Bush received sim-ilarly favorable treatment by E-talk shows. During hisappearances, 95% of all valence cues were sympatheticto the Republican candidate. The corresponding figuresfor Bush’s appearances on traditional news and interviewprograms, and in national news reports, were 65 and 42%favorable, respectively. Once again, this favorability gap isstatistically significant (p< .01). In contrast, neither of thesmaller corresponding differences between pro-Bush andpro-Gore valence cues in traditional news and interviewprograms are significant at standard levels, though thatfavoring Bush (with respect to political interview shows)is nearly so (p < .09).

The middle section of Table 2 compares the overallvolume of positive versus negative content in candidateinterviews and national news reports. These data indicatethat sizeable majorities of all valence cues in traditionalpolitical interviews and network newscasts were criticalof the two candidates. During Gore’s traditional politicalinterviews, 81% of all valence cues pertaining to the VicePresident were negative (p < .02). The corresponding fig-ure for Bush was 66% (insig.). National news campaignreports, in turn, were even more negative, with 83% of allvalence cues critical of the candidates (p < .001). In sharpcontrast, during Gore’s and Bush’s E-talk show interviews,100 and 95%, respectively, of all valence cues pertaining tothe interview subjects were sympathetic. The differencesbetween supportive and critical comments in E-talk showsare significant at the .02 and .08 levels, for Gore and Bush,respectively.11

Thus far, these figures do not distinguish betweenthe sources of praise and criticism (i.e., from interview-ers or reporters versus from the candidates themselves).Yet previous research (e.g., Lupia and McCubbins 1998;Miller and Krosnick 2000) suggests that evaluations froma trusted or relatively unbiased third party are likely to bemore credible to a typical viewer than evaluations by thecandidates themselves or their representatives. This is be-cause self-praise or criticism of one’s opponent is cheaptalk, whereas praise or criticism from a trusted or less-biased third party, such as a talk show host or reporter,

10In comparing interviews on E-talk show and traditional politicalshows, a one-tail test is appropriate, as there is little likelihood thatthe latter shows would be significantly softer than E-talk shows.

11The lower significance level for Bush’s E-talk show interviewsis presumably attributable to the smaller N (4 Bush E-talk showinterviews, compared to 6 for Gore).

is, under many circumstances, at least a somewhat morecostly signal.

In fact, disaggregating the data to take into accountthe source of valence cues reinforces the picture presentedabove. As shown in the bottom section of Table 2, thehosts/interviewers of traditional news and interviewshows criticized Gore and Bush about once every 2.5and 6.7 minutes, respectively, during their interviews (or.41 and .15 criticisms-per-minute, respectively). Indeed,88 and 81%, for Bush and Gore interviews, respectively,of all valence cues attributable to traditional news inter-viewers, journalists, or program hosts were critical of theinterview subjects. The differences between positive andnegative comments by journalists or interviewers are sta-tistically significant (p < .01 and p < .03 for Gore andBush interviews, respectively). In contrast, while E-talkshow hosts offered far fewer valence cues, all of those theydid interject were supportive of the candidate being inter-viewed. Not surprisingly, the stark differences betweenthe propensity of entertainment and traditional politi-cal program hosts to criticize their interview subjects arehighly significant (p < .001 and p < .01 for Gore andBush interviews, respectively).

The picture is similar for national news campaignreports. Overall, 80% of all valence cues attributable toanchors or reporters during national news campaign cov-erage (excluding candidate interviews) were critical of thecandidate(s) featured in the story. Once again, the differ-ence in frequency of positive and negative valence cues ishighly significant (p < .0001). In contrast, the relativelyrare positive comments by national newscast anchors orreporters were nearly evenly divided between the candi-dates (.47 vs. .53 for Bush and Gore, respectively). This lat-ter difference is statistically insignificant. Taken together,these results support Hypothesis 2.

Hypothesis 3 predicts that E-talk show interviewswill offer less emphasis on substantive issues or compar-isons of candidate issue positions than traditional politi-cal talk show programs or national news campaign cov-erage. The columns in Table 1 labeled “Issue Cues” and“Issue Mentions,” respectively, measure the frequency ofcomparisons of candidates’ respective issue positions andthe frequency of mentions of substantive policy issues inwhich no comparison with the opposition candidate isdrawn. (Issue mentions are presumably of less heuristicvalue to voters than issue cues, since they do not distin-guish between the candidates.) Finally, the column labeled“Valence Cues” measures the frequency of statements sup-portive or critical of either candidate.

E-talk shows presented an average of .65 issue cues,.23 issue mentions, and .19 valence cues per-minute dur-ing their candidate interviews. The corresponding figures

TALKING THE VOTE 223

for interviews on traditional news and political interviewprograms were 1.78, .74, and .80 issue cues, issue mentionsand valence cues per-minute, respectively. National news-casts, in turn, presented an average of 2.25, .31, and 1.29issue cues, issue mentions, and valence cues per-minute,respectively. Hence, relative to E-talk shows, traditionalnews interviews offered about three times more issue cuesand issue mentions and over four times more valence cues,per minute. And national news reports offered about 3.5times more issue cues, more than one-third more issuementions, and nearly seven times more valence cues thanE-talk show candidate interviews. For both issue and va-lence cues, the gaps between E-talk shows and traditionalnews programs (both interview shows and national newsstories) are statistically significant at the .001 level or bet-ter. With respect to issue mentions, the difference betweenE and political talk shows is significant at the .01 level,while that between E-talk shows and national news re-ports is insignificant. It appears in these data that nationalnews reports nearly always compare and contrast candi-date issue positions, rather than noting them in isolationfrom one another. E-talk shows, in contrast, simply do notmake frequent mention of substantive policy issues, withor without comparisons to the positions of the oppositioncandidate. These results support Hypothesis 3.

The findings presented thus far are based on datafrom both daytime and late-night E-talk shows. Due, how-ever, to limitations in available questions, the analyses thatfollow employ as the key causal variable a question con-cerning exposure to only daytime E-talk shows. Yet a seriesof t-tests revealed that across all 22 categories of politi-cal content I investigated in my content analyses, not onesubstantial or statistically significant difference emergedbetween daytime and late-night talk shows. Hence, in-cluding both in my content analyses does not bias mysubstantive findings. Moreover, the audiences for daytimeand late-night talk shows share several key demographicsimilarities. The median viewer for both program formatsis a relatively young (age 18–34), liberal, female, with onlylimited political interest or knowledge (Hamilton 2003;Pew Center 2000 and 2002). Hence, for my purposes, thedifferences in audiences for daytime and late-night talkshows are less important than a key characteristic theyshare in common: relatively low political awareness.

How E-Talk Shows Influenced Voters in 2000. I now turnto the effects of watching daytime talk shows and nationalnetwork newscasts on individual attitudes and voting be-havior (Hypotheses 4–9). Table 3 presents the results fromfour OLS and two unordered multinomial logit analyses.The first three models exclude all control variables. These

are intended to determine whether any of the results re-ported below are artifacts of model specification. In fact,most of the key coefficients in the stripped-down models,though, as one would expect, not identical to the fullyspecified models, are nonetheless similar. Hence, we canproceed more confidently to the fully specified models.The fourth and fifth models investigate the effects of talkshow and national network news consumption on thecandidates’ likeability, while the sixth replicates the anal-ysis with vote choice as the dependent variable.

Table 4 summarizes the predicted effects of media ex-posure on Democratic and Republican respondents’ like-ability ratios and propensities to vote for the two majorparty candidates. For ease of interpretation I employ asimulation technique developed by King, Tomz, and Wit-tenberg (2000) to transform the results from the likeabilitymodels into linear form and those from the voting mod-els into probabilities, as well as to estimate the statisticalsignificance of the predicted effects. I separately present—for both respondents’ fellow partisan candidate and theopposition party candidate—the effects of a maximumincrease in exposure to daytime talk shows (from 0 to3+ talk shows in the past week) and network newscasts(from 0 to 7 days in the past week) as respondents’ polit-ical awareness varies by one standard deviation, centeredat the mean.12

Hypotheses 4 and 6 predict that exposure to tradi-tional news will have only modest effects on highly politi-cally aware individuals. They further predict that any sucheffects will modestly reinforce these individuals’ partisanpredispositions. Beginning with highly aware Democrats,Table 4 indicates that a maximum increase in nationalnetwork news watching is associated with a statisticallyinsignificant 13 percentage point increase in likeabilityfor Gore (on the 0–1 scale) and a smaller and statisticallyinsignificant 3 percentage point decrease in likeability forBush. Among these same respondents, a maximum in-crease in network news watching is associated with a sub-stantively small and statistically insignificant 5 percentagepoint increase in the probability of voting for Gore and anequivalent decrease in the probability of voting for Bush.

Among highly aware Republicans, a maximum in-crease in national news watching is associated with a sta-tistically insignificant 2 percentage point decrease in like-ability for Gore and a much larger 27 percentage pointincrease for Bush (p < .10). In this case, a comparableincrease in national news watching is associated with astatistically insignificant 1 percentage point decrease inthe probability of voting for Gore and an identical—in

12For all reported results, I vary political awareness by one standarddeviation, centered on the mean.

224 MATTHEW A. BAUM

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TALKING THE VOTE 225

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226 MATTHEW A. BAUM

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TALKING THE VOTE 227

TABLE 4 Effects of Maximum Increases in Daytime Talk Show and National Network NewsConsumption on Likeability Ratios and Probability of Voting for Candidates

Low Political Awareness High Political Awareness

Respondent Party ID Talk Shows Network Newscasts Talk Shows Network Newscasts

Likeability

Opposition CandidateDemocrats +.15∧ .00 −.09∧ −.03Republicans +.29∗ −.15 .00 −.02

Fellow Partisan CandidateDemocrats −.18 −.18 +.20 +.13Republicans −.21 −.05 +.46∗ +.27∧

Vote Choice

Opposition CandidateDemocrats +.18∗ −.04 .00 −.05Republicans +.63∗∗ −.08 −.10∧ −.01

Fellow Partisan CandidateDemocrats −.16 +.04 +.01 +.05Republicans −.56∗∗ +.08 +.11∧ +.01

∧p ≤ .10, ∗p ≤ .05, ∗∗p ≤ .01

magnitude and insignificance—increase in the probabil-ity of voting for Bush.

Overall, across all eight possible cases (i.e., Republi-cans’ and Democrats’ likeability ratings of, and decisionsto vote for, Gore or Bush), and consistent with Hypotheses4 and 6, as highly aware individuals consume more na-tional news, their propensity to support their own party’scandidate increases. Yet, also consistent with my hypothe-ses, most of these increases are modest, and they approachstandard levels of statistical significance in only one ofeight instances.

Hypotheses 5 and 7 predict that among low-awareness individuals, consuming traditional news pro-gramming will be associated with smaller effects than con-suming E-talk shows. To evaluate these hypotheses, it istherefore necessary to compare the effects across thesetwo media. Beginning with traditional news, among low-awareness Democrats, a maximum increase in nationalnetwork news watching is associated with a statisticallyinsignificant 18 percentage point decrease in likeabilityfor Gore. With respect to Bush, in turn, variations in net-work news watching have no effect whatsoever on like-ability. Turning to vote choice, the corresponding effectsare a statistically insignificant 4 percentage point increasein the probability of voting for Gore and an identical—inmagnitude and insignificance—decrease in the probabil-ity of voting for Bush.

Among low-awareness Republicans, a maximum in-crease in national network news watching is associated

with somewhat larger, though still statistically insignif-icant, 15 and 5 percentage point decreases, respectively,in likeability for Gore and Bush (though the decrease forGore is nearly significant at p < .15). The correspondingeffects on voting behavior are a statistically insignificant8 percentage point decrease in the probability of votingfor Gore and an identical—again in both magnitude andinsignificance—increase in the probability of voting forBush.

Turning to the effects of watching daytime talk showson low-awareness individuals, among Democrats, a max-imum increase in talk show viewing is associated with astatistically insignificant 18 percentage point decrease inlikeability for Gore, and a 15 percentage point increasein likeability for Bush (p < .10). With respect to votechoice, the corresponding increase in talk show viewingis associated with a 16 percentage point decrease in theprobability of voting for Gore (p < .15) and an 18 per-centage point increase in the probability of voting for Bush(p < .05).

Finally, among low-awareness Republicans, a maxi-mum increase in E-talk show viewing is associated with a29 percentage point increase in likeability for Gore (p <

.05) and a 21 percentage point decrease in likeability forBush (insig). With respect to vote choice, the correspond-ing effects are an impressive 63 percentage point increasein the probability of voting for Gore (p < .01) and a simi-larly large 56 percentage point decrease in the probabilityof voting for Bush (p < .01).

228 MATTHEW A. BAUM

These results support Hypotheses 5 and 7. The effectsof daytime talk show viewing on low-awareness Republi-cans’ attitudes toward Gore, and their Democratic coun-terparts’ attitudes toward Bush, as well as on the sameindividuals’ propensities to vote for the opposition partycandidate, are larger and more significant than the corre-sponding effects associated with watching national net-work news. They also offer strong support for Hypothe-ses 8 and 9, as the strongest effects of watching daytimetalk shows emerge among the least politically aware re-spondents, who are most dependent on such programsfor their political information. As predicted, among low-awareness individuals, increased talk show viewing is as-sociated with a substantial and statistically significant (ornearly so) increase in both likeability ratings and in theprobability of voting for the opposition party candidate.The corresponding effects among highly aware respon-dents are both substantively smaller and run in the oppo-site direction, consistent with partisan predispositions. Tothe extent that talk shows matter at all for highly aware re-spondents, selective acceptance appears to indeed producethe hypothesized reinforcement effect, raising the proba-bility of supporting their fellow partisan candidate.13

Interestingly, in most instances the reinforcement ef-fect among political sophisticates appears to be strongerfor likeability than for vote choice. This may be at-tributable, at least in part, to the aforementioned post-hoc rationalization phenomenon, which, as noted, Rahn,Krosnik, and Breuning (1994) found to be most prevalentamong political sophisticates. Also most likely contribut-ing to this difference is a ceiling effect (Wright 1993).Fully 90% of highly aware Democrats and 93% of theirRepublican counterparts indicated that they planned tovote for their fellow partisan candidate. This compares tosomewhat less stratospheric average likeability ratios forfellow partisan candidates of about .75 and .82 (on the0–1 scale), respectively, among highly aware Democratsand Republicans. Hence, there is simply more room forhighly aware partisans to raise their estimate of their fel-low partisan candidate’s likeability than there is for themto alter their vote choice in his favor.

Conversely, among low-awareness respondents,many of the counterpartisan effects are larger for votechoice. This may be attributable to their relatively weaklyheld partisan preferences. Because these individuals pre-sumably lie closer to the point of ambivalence regardingthe candidates, relatively small changes in likeability maybe sufficient to alter their vote choice. These patterns are

13Across all four groups, the effects of talk show viewing on like-ability of, and propensity to vote for, an independent or third partycandidate (not shown) are small in magnitude and/or insignificant.

illustrated in Figure 1. The four graphics separately plotthe effects of E-talk show exposure on likeability and votechoice among low- and high-awareness Democratic andRepublican identifiers.

A Few Words on Possible Selection Effects. It remainspossible that my talk show exposure indicator is cap-turing some internal characteristic of viewers having lit-tle to do with their exposure to campaign information.For instance, as noted, compared to nonviewers, typi-cal daytime talk show viewers tend to be less politicallyengaged, and—presumably as a consequence—to holdweaker preferences over political candidates. Yet my mod-els explicitly control for political awareness, strength ofpreferences over the candidates, and various other re-lated factors. Indeed, if we compare only low-awarenesstalk show viewers—the group that exhibited the strongesteffects—to low-awareness nonviewers, the former groupis actually somewhat more likely to hold strong candi-date preferences and to care about the election outcome.Hence, it seems improbable that a residual greater willing-ness to cross party lines among low-awareness talk showviewers is driving these relationships.

This latter pattern, however, raises the possibility thata disproportionate number of individuals who were in-terested in the election but undecided about the candi-dates, and who typically do not watch daytime talk shows,elected to tune in to one or two such shows explicitly tohelp resolve their ambivalence. If so, we would expect thatduring weeks in which the candidates appeared on day-time talk shows, the audiences for such shows would beat least somewhat different than in periods in which thecandidates made no appearances. In particular, one wouldexpect that candidate-attracted audience members mightbe more politically aware and involved—after all, in thisscenario they would have gone out of there way to exposethemselves to campaign information—but less stronglycommitted to their fellow partisan candidate.

Given that the daytime talk show question asks re-spondents to recall their viewing behavior during theweek prior to their ANES interview, it is possible to testthis possibility directly. The maximum number of can-didate appearances on daytime talk shows in any singleweek was two. Hence, respondents who reported watchingmore than two such shows during the prior week could nothave done so exclusively to see presidential candidates. Todetermine whether candidate-seeking, occasional viewersdiffered materially from regular talk show viewers, I di-vided talk show viewers into four subgroups, based uponwhether: (1) they reported watching 1 or 2 versus 3 ormore daytime talk shows in the prior week, and (2) theirinterviews took place within seven days of a candidate

TALKING THE VOTE 229

FIGURE 1 Likeability Ratio∗ and Probability of Voting for Gore or Bush, as Political Awarenessand Daytime Talk Show Exposure Vary

.00

.10

.20

.30

.40

.50

.60

.70

.80

.901.00

Talk Show Consumption.00.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.90

1.00

Talk Show Consumption

Gore Likeability Ratio Bush Likeability Ratio

.00

.20

.40

.60

.80

1.00

1.20

1.40

Talk Show Consumption

Probability of Voting for Gore Probability of Voting for Bush

.00

.20

.40

.60

.80

1.00

1.20

1.40

Min. Max.Talk Show Consumption

Min. Max.

Min. Max.

Min. Max.

Go

re L

ikea

bili

ty R

atio

Pro

bab

ility

of

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tin

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or

Go

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sh L

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of

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tin

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or

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sh

Democrats (Low-awareness)Democrats (High-awareness)

Republicans (Low-awareness)Republicans (High-awareness)

∗Plotted values represent linear transformations of dependent variable (not bounded between zero and one).

appearance on a daytime talk show. For each subgroup, Icalculated averages for five factors: (1) political awareness,(2) strength of partisanship, (3) campaign participation,(4) probability of having “strong” candidate preferences,and (5) probability of caring about the election outcome.The results (not shown) indicate that there are no statis-tically significant differences for any of these five factorsregardless of frequency of talk show viewing or timing ofthe interview.

Of course, meaningful differences might still emergeamong partisan subgroups. In fact, the unusually high rat-ings for these shows during candidate appearances suggestthat at least some self-selection most likely took place.For instance, Figure 1 indicates that low-awareness Re-publicans were far more willing than their Democraticcounterparts to reevaluate the opposition candidate. Thiscould simply imply that Gore outperformed Bush in thesevenues. In fact, some evidence supports this conjecture.Among independents below the mean level of political

awareness—the group least likely to report strong can-didate preferences—a maximum increase in talk showconsumption was associated with a 26 percentage pointincrease in the probability of voting for Gore (p < .05),and an identical decrease in the probability of voting forBush (p < .05).

Yet, a more effective performance by Gore mostlikely accounts for only part of this partisan differen-tial. Among daytime talk show viewers interviewed withinseven days of a candidate talk show appearance, Republi-cans were 10 percentage points less likely than Democratsto indicate that they held “strong” candidate prefer-ences. Moreover, while Democrats’ likelihood of report-ing strong preferences did not vary with their interviewtiming, Republicans interviewed within a week of a can-didate appearance were 14 percentage points less likelythan their counterparts interviewed in other time peri-ods to report strong preferences. This suggests that someof the pro-Gore movement among Republicans may in

230 MATTHEW A. BAUM

fact be attributable to greater ex ante open-mindednessamong viewers attracted to talk shows by candidateappearances.

Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind thatthe effects of talk show consumption were also sub-stantial and statistically significant among Democrats,whose strength of preferences did not vary accord-ing to the timing of their interviews. Moreover, themagnitude of the counterpartisan effects among low-awareness Republicans substantially exceeds the inter-and intrapartisan gaps described above. Consequently, itseems highly improbable that internal differences betweencandidate-seeking, occasional talk show viewers and theirmore-frequent-viewing counterparts can adequately ac-count for the relationships identified in this study. Rather,one can adequately account for these relationships only bytaking into account the effects of individual characteris-tics in interaction with variations in exposure to differentvarieties of campaign information.14

Conclusion

Important changes are underway in the conduct of na-tional presidential campaigns. Simply stated, if America’spolitical leaders wish to communicate with members ofthe public who are not predisposed to seek out political

14As further tests for selection effects (not shown), I replicated mymodels, substituting in place of my talk show scale: (1) frequencyof watching game shows (Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy), and (2)a series of dummy variables for different levels of talk show con-sumption, plus all pertinent interactions. In a third test, I includedthe quadratic of talk show exposure, along with all pertinent in-teractions. Beginning with the first test, like E-talk shows, gameshows are entertainment oriented. Yet they are virtually devoid ofpolitical content. If viewers’ internal characteristics account for anycounterpartisan patterns, then we might anticipate similar patternsassociated with consuming both game shows and talk shows. If,however, the counterpartisan trends are attributable to the contentof E-talk shows, then game show consumption should not influencesupport for the opposition candidate. The latter two tests, in turn,allow me to determine if the reported counterpartisan effects arelimited to viewers of small numbers (i.e., one or two) talk shows.Since these viewers could, in theory, have tuned in solely to watch thecandidates, such a finding would suggest that self-selection mightaccount for at least some of the observed counterpartisan patterns.In fact, game show viewers were not more likely than nonviewersto like, or vote for, the opposition candidate. And viewers of smallnumbers of talk shows were not statistically significantly more likelythan more-frequent viewers to like or vote for the opposition candi-date. Likelihood ratio and BIC tests, in turn, indicated that neitheremploying talk show exposure dummies nor adding the quadraticof talk show exposure improves the fit of the model (or at leastnot sufficiently so to offset the loss in degrees of freedom causedby including a series of additional causal variables). This furthersuggests that self-selection by viewers is not driving the reportedrelationships.

information, they must put the information where thesepotential voters are likely to notice it. In part, this involvestailoring political messages to the sensibilities of E-talkshow audiences. In 2000, the major presidential candi-dates appear to have begun to learn this lesson. ManyAmericans who might otherwise have ignored the pres-idential campaign entirely were, as a result of candidateappearances on a variety of E-talk shows, exposed to atleast some information about the candidates prior to theelection. Moreover, as my content analyses clearly demon-strated, Americans who relied on E-talk shows for newsabout the campaign received substantially different in-formation than their counterparts who tuned in to moretraditional sources of election news.

My findings do not, of course, imply that E-talk showhosts never ask serious questions. For instance, on Octo-ber 20, 2000, David Letterman greeted George W. Bushwith a litany of questions on public policy issues. Yet Let-terman’s relatively tough questioning, while the norm fortraditional news outlets, was so unusual for an E-talk showthat it became the primary headline in news stories aboutBush’s appearance. Nevertheless, in the opinions of mycontent coders, none of Letterman’s questions were suffi-ciently pointed to constitute criticism of Governor Bush.

By most accounts (e.g., Weiss 2003), in turn, Let-terman is the toughest of E-talk show interviewers. Forinstance, when Democratic presidential aspirant GeneralWesley Clark appeared on the show on November 20,2003, “Letterman wanted to know about bullet wounds,the Kosovo campaign, rebuilding Iraq. He resurrectedsome of Clark’s early campaign woes. He barely crackeda smile” (Weiss 2003). Yet, Weiss also conceded “ . . . thiswas not, on balance, the world’s toughest grilling. Letter-man . . . asked mostly friendly questions, and gave Clarka free pass on broad assertions. All in all, it was a tri-umph of sorts for the Clark campaign, the equivalent of avery long biographical ad.” This suggests, consistent withmy findings, that the contrast between even the toughestof E-talk show interviews and typical traditional politicalinterviews is stark.

My statistical investigations, in turn, showed thatthese differences mattered for voter attitudes toward thecandidates, and at the ballot box. Politically unawareAmericans who watched daytime talk shows consideredthe opposition party candidate more likeable, and conse-quently were much more likely to cross party lines, thantheir counterparts who did not. These effects diminishedas respondents’ political awareness increased. Presum-ably, exposure to E-talk shows matters little for Ameri-cans who find politics intrinsically engaging. In contrast,exposure to traditional news programming mattered farless than daytime talk show viewing for low-awareness

TALKING THE VOTE 231

respondents. Finally, as anticipated, traditional news pro-gramming had little effect on highly aware respondents,though, to the extent such exposure mattered at all forthese individuals, it tended to reinforce their preexistingpartisan leanings.

These latter findings are consistent with the prevail-ing wisdom in the media effects literature, which Iyengarand Simon characterize as follows: “ . . . decades of aca-demic research into the effects of media-based politicalcampaigns purports to demonstrate that exposure to cam-paigns mainly reinforces voters’ preexisting partisan loy-alties. Political scientists still routinely attribute electoraloutcomes to structural variables . . . giving short shrift tothe specifics of day-to-day campaign events” (2000, 150).While, like prior media effects research, my theory onlypartially unpacks the psychological processes interven-ing between information consumption and vote choice,it does hold potentially important implications for fu-ture scholarship in this area. In particular, my findingssuggest that one reason for the relative dearth of evi-dence of media effects on campaign outcomes is thatscholars have defined the relevant media too narrowlyand have underemphasized a potentially important seg-ment of the public. The most common mechanisms bywhich voters are purportedly able to resist dissonant me-dia messages—such as selective reception, attention andretention (Campbell et al. 1960)—may simply be less ap-plicable to E-talk shows, at least for low-awareness voters.

These results should be of particular interest to fu-ture presidential hopefuls and their campaign advisors,as the mostly apolitical audiences of E-talk shows rep-resent a large, and traditionally mostly ignored, pool ofrelatively persuadable potential voters. As discussed, po-litically aware individuals—a key audience for traditionalnews outlets—tend to counterargue information incon-sistent with their preexisting preferences. This implies thatappeals by presidential candidates are unlikely to changethe minds of most political news enthusiasts. In sharpcontrast, even though they are somewhat less likely tovote, those E-talk show viewers who do vote are far moreprone to be persuaded by properly tailored candidate ap-peals. Hence, future presidential candidates would be wiseto devote a greater proportion of their campaign effortsto appealing to this hitherto largely discounted portion ofthe electorate.

This lesson has apparently not been lost on recentcandidates for political office. During the 2004 presi-dential primaries, for instance, most of the Democraticcandidates appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,The Late Show with David Letterman, or The Daily Showwith Jon Stewart. During the general election campaign,in turn, the Bush and Kerry campaigns each devoted sub-

stantial resources, in the form of advertising dollars, toreaching E-talk show audiences. According to a report byThe University of Wisconsin Advertising Project (Rutten-berg 2004), between March 3 and June 20, 2004, of the 10TV programs where the Bush and Kerry campaigns placedthe most campaign ads, three and four, respectively, wereE-talk shows. These included, for both candidates, Livewith Regis and Kelly, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and TheDr. Phil Show as well as, for Bush, The Tonight Show withJay Leno. Bush and/or Kerry also made personal appear-ances on most of these same shows, as well as on The LateShow with David Letterman and The Daily Show with JonStewart .

This trend has even trickled down to state level pol-itics, with California Gubernatorial candidate ArnoldSchwarzenegger appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show(on 9/15/03), apparently in order to shore up his supportamong women. Two days later, The New York Times ed-itorialized: “Oprah Winfrey did Arnold Schwarzeneggera big favor . . . when she had him on her show. Now sheneeds to do the voters a favor, and extend an invitationto the other top candidates in the California governor’srace. For anyone selling a book or a movie—or a polit-ical candidacy—‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ is a covetedoutlet. It is viewed by a large number of women, many ofwhom have great respect for Ms. Winfrey’s opinions.”

For better or worse, millions of voters maketheir decisions about candidates based on personalcharacteristics—the predominant emphasis of E-talkshows—rather than public policy issues. Indeed, focusgroups during the 2000 presidential election found, con-sistent with my evidence, that candidate appearances onE-talk shows like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno andThe Oprah Winfrey Show weighed heavily in the mindsof many voters as they contemplated their vote choice(Decker 2000). The steady increase in E-talk show cover-age of national politics over the past several presidentialelection cycles strongly suggests that, for better or worse,this particular blend of politics and entertainment is likelyto continue in the foreseeable future. The evidence pre-sented in this study further suggests that this trend maybe of significant consequence for American politics.

Appendix AANES Variable Coding

(Question wording is available at: http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/mbaum/research.html)

Political Awareness: Scale constructed from four, equallyweighted, elements: (1) variable 001367 (coded:

232 MATTHEW A. BAUM

0 = hardly at all, 1 = only now and then, 2 = some of thetime, 3 = most of the time); (2) variable 000301 (coded:0 = not much interested, 1 = somewhat interested,2 = very much interested); (3) variable 001033 (coded1-5, where 5 = maximum information); and (4) fac-tual political knowledge scale (� = .42, � = .26) de-rived by summing the number of correct responses to10 questions: 001447, 001450, 001453, 001456, 001458,001462, 001466, 001470, 001356, and 001357.

Ideology: Scale derived by subtracting variable 001310from variable 001311 (coded:−100= strongest positivefeelings toward conservatives and negative feelings to-ward liberals, 0 = neutral or equivalent feelings towardboth, and 100 = strongest positive feelings toward lib-erals and negative feelings toward conservatives; Zaller[1991]).

Strength of Candidate Preference: Variable 001250 (coded:0=not strong, don’t know, or will not vote for presidentand 1 = strong).

Guidance from Religion: Variable 000873 (coded: 0 = notimportant, 1 = some, 2 = quite a bit, 3 = a great deal).

Campaign Participation: Scale based on variables 001225,001226, 001227, 001228, and average of variables001229 and 001231 (each variable coded: 0 = no,.5 = don’t know, and 1 = yes). The five elements weresummed and the resulting scale normalized to a 0–1interval.

Care Who Wins Election: Variable #000302: (coded: 0 =don’t care very much, 1 = care a good deal.)

I Have a Say in Government : Variable 001528 (coded: 0 =agree, .5 = don’t know, 1 = disagree.)

Government Cares What I Think: Variable 001528 (coded:0 = agree, .5 = don’t know, 1 = disagree.)

Strength of Partisanship: Variable 000523 (coded: 0 = apo-litical, 1 = Independent or other, 2 = Independent, leanDemocrat or Republican, 3 = Weak Democrat or Re-publican, and 4 = Strong Democrat or Republican).

Trust in Government : Scale constructed from the sum ofvariables 001534 (coded: 1 = never, 2 = only some ofthe time, 3 = most of the time, 4 = just about always);and 001535 (coded: 1 = waste a lot, 2 = waste some,3 = don’t waste very much).

Media Consumption Variables: (1) number of days in priorweek respondent consumed TV news and newspapers(variables 000329, 000331, 000332, and 000335); (2)Listen to Talk Radio: scale derived from variables 001430and 001431 (coded: 0 = never, 1 = only occasionally,

2 = once or twice a week, 3 = most days, 4 = everyday); (3) Campaign on Internet : Variable 001434 (coded1 = followed campaign on Internet); and (4) CableAccess: Variable 000334 (coded 1 = subscribe to cableor satellite TV).

Appendix BSummary of Content Analysis

Coding Scheme

(Detailed coding instructions are available at: http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/mbaum/research.html)

Partisan Cues: Mention of: (1) a major party candidate’sname within a partisan political context, or (2) a majorparty within a political context.

Issue Cues: Mention of an issue, issue area, or issue public:(1) that helped voters conclude that the candidates helddifferent positions on an issue; (2) in which the can-didates were reported to hold identical positions; (3)that specified the policy preferences of a candidate; or(4) that allowed voters to discern that one candidate is“generally” perceived as better on an issue by a groupor individual.

Issue Mentions: Mention of: an issue, issue area, or issuepublic without reference to the positions of the candi-dates or parties.

Valence Cues: These codes capture three pieces of informa-tion: (1) Was the source of a coded sentence a Journalistor Candidate?; (2) Was the sentence pro-Gore or pro-Bush?; and (3) Was the sentence positive/supportive orcritical/negative?

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