THE RESPONSIVE VOTER - CAMPAIGN INFORMATION AND THE DYNAMICS OF CANDIDATE EVALUATION

We find strong support for an on-line model of the candidate evaluatio n process that in contrast to memory-based models shows that citizens are responsive to campaign information, adjusting their overall evalua tion of the candidates in response to their immediate assessment of ca mpaign messages and events. Over time people forget most of the campai gn information they are exposed to but are nonetheless able to later r ecollect their summary affective evaluation of candidates which they t hen use to inform their preferences and vote choice. These findings ha ve substantive, methodological, and normative implications for the stu dy of electoral behavior. Substantively, we show how campaign informat ion affects voting behavior. Methodologically, we demonstrate the need to measure directly what campaign information people actually attend to over the course of a campaign and show that after controling for th e individual's on-line assessment of campaign messages, National Elect ion Study-type recall measures prove to be spurious as explanatory var iables. Finally, we draw normative implications for democratic theory of on-line processing, concluding that citizens appear to be far more responsive to campaign messages than conventional recall models sugges t.