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Through the Party Lens. How Citizens Evaluate TV Electoral Spots
Christina Holtz-Bacha
Bengt Johansson
Paper submitted to the International Communication Conference (ICA),
Phoenix, Arizona, 2012
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Abstract
Party affiliation is considered as one of the most important factors explaining voter’s
party choice, but also a strong intervening variable when it comes to the effectiveness of
electoral advertising. The question raised in this study is to what extent party affiliation
explains voters judgments of electoral advertising, which was investigated by using panel data
carried out during the Swedish general election campaign 2010. The results show that party
affiliation still functions as a filter when voters are exposed to electoral advertising. The
findings are suggested to be understood against the background of cognitive dissonance
theory and selective exposure according to which people try to avoid a state of cognitive
dissonance by avoiding information that conflicts with their attitudes.
KEYWORDS: ADVERTISMENT, PARTY AFFILIATION, ELECTION CAMPAIGNS
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Through the Party Lens. How Citizens Evaluate TV Electoral Spots
Party identification was once supposed to be a stable factor in the decision making
process during election campaigns. The so-called Michigan or Ann Arbor model (Campbell,
Gurin & Miller, 1954) put party identification at the entrance of the funnel of causality
leading to the voting decision and thus influencing the other variables in this process. Party
identification was also identified as a shortcut (Popkin, 1994, pp. 50-53) sparing voters the
task of seeking information as a basis for their electoral choice. In addition, when exposed to
campaign information, party identification served as a predisposition guiding the audience in
their selection process making people preferably turn to information that reinforces their
attitudes (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1948).
However, the Western democracies have experienced an erosion of party identification
during the last decades leading Dalton (2002) to speak of a dealignment process. Dealignment
means that more and more citizens lose their traditional party ties which had long been a
strong predictor of the vote. Instead, voters base their voting decision on short term factors
making them also more prone to change their mind from one election to the other or even
during the course of the election campaign. The new instability of the vote is also indicated by
the fact that the percentage of late deciders increases.
In Sweden, the country that this study refers to, partisanship has drastically decreased
since the end of the 1960s. While 65 percent of the electorate identified with a party in 1968,
only 31 percent said they felt close to a party in 2006 and only 15 percent showed strong party
ties. Another aspect of weakening ties between parties and the voters is the rising amount of
floating voters. In the beginning of the 1960's 11 percent changed party between elections,
and the corresponding figure in 2006 was 37 percent (Oscarsson & Holmberg, 2008, p. 25).
Without the 'protective shield' of party identification and voters now being more 'open'
for switching allegiances, they should also be more susceptible to campaign messages. If that
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is the case, campaigns are important and campaigners are well advised to make efforts for
mobilizing and convincing the electorate: Much can be gained in an election campaign, but
much can be lost as well (Holtz-Bacha, 1999, p. 11).
Against this background, this paper seeks to assess to what extent party identification
still works as a filter when people are exposed to campaign advertising. Since previous
research has found party affiliation to be a strong intervening variable when it comes to the
effectiveness of electoral advertising, the question is whether that is still the case or whether
the weakening party ties have indeed brought up a new openness of voters towards party
advertising and thus increased chances for its persuasive power.
Previous Research
Early research on the effects of electoral advertising on television suggested that the
spots could overcome the barrier set up by low interest and partisan selectivity particularly
due to the impossibility to avoid the advertising (Atkin, Bowen, Nayman, & Sheinkopf,
1973). Compared to other campaign material, TV spots were therefore regarded as a superior
channel to reach voters. Joslyn (1981) attributed to electoral ads a major influence on partisan
defections (defined as votes cast contrary to one's partisan identification) and thus supported
the view that these broadcasts can overcome party identification. Later research using party
identification as a control variable, however, concluded that the group of voters most likely to
be influenced by campaign advertising on television would be the independents and weak
identifiers (e.g., Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1995). A more recent study by Franz and Ridout
(2007) yielded inconsistent effects of partisanship and showed that ads, contrary to the
researchers' expectations, did not have their greatest effects on independents and viewers with
weak attachments but also affected strong Democrats.
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In particular, party identification has demonstrated its influence on the mobilizing and
persuasive effects of negative advertising. Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995) established that
attack ads are likely to decrease turnout among independents and tend to reinforce the support
of partisans for their candidate. They also found Republicans to be the least affected in their
turnout. This finding was supported by Franz and Ridout's (2007) general assessment that
Republicans seem to be more immune to the appeals of electoral advertising but was
challenged by Lemert, Wanta and Lee (1999) who found effects of negative advertising on
partisans of both parties. In contrast to Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995), Jackson, Mondak
and Huckfeldt ascertained that "[e]xposure to negative political ads apparently does not have
especially problematic consequences for the attitudes of either non-partisans or the politically
unsophisticated" (2009, p. 63). A meta-analysis of research on the effects of negative
campaigning found some support for the stimulation of turnout among partisans and the
likelihood of independents being turned off but also pointed to the weak evidence due to the
small number of studies (Lau, Sigelman, & Rovner, 2007).
All in all, the findings of extant research on the potential of electoral TV ads to
overcome partisan selectivity are mixed. In addition, due to the long tradition of electoral
advertising on television and the paramount importance of the ads in U.S. campaigns, most of
the studies on their effects were done in the United States. Parties do not play the same role in
the U.S. as for instance in the European countries where, irrespective of an increasing focus
on candidates, parties still dominate the political process.
However, the erosion of partisanship over the last decades has been a phenomenon that
became visible throughout the Western world (Dalton, 2002). Parties lost their loyal base,
party ties got weaker and votes became more unpredictable. This development seems to speak
for increasing possibilities for campaign advertising to influence voters while on the other
hand the protective shield of partisanship should get porous. Nevertheless, in an overview on
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political communication and campaign effects, Iyengar and Simon concluded: "Party
identification remains the salient feature of the American electoral landscape" (2000, p. 159).
Therefore, this paper sets out to study the effectiveness of party identification as an
intervening variable in the reception of party advertising in a European context. Based on
what was said before about party affiliation, the research question of this paper is: To what
extent does party affiliation explain how electoral advertising is judged by the audience?
Electoral Advertising on Swedish Television
Until now, political advertising has played a limited role in Swedish political campaign
culture. Instead media, controlled by journalists, has been seen as more important. The socalled free media, news casts on television, newspapers and journalistic interviews and
debates, were believed to be more effective and significant compared to political advertising
(Petersson, Djerf-Pierre, Strömbäck, & Weibull, 2006). These attitudes should be understood
in relation to Swedish regulations of electoral advertising on television. TV ads were
prohibited before the digitalization of terrestrial television in 2005, and political advertising
was therefore not broadcast on major channels until the European parliament election 2009
and the Swedish general election 2010. The election in 2010 can be seen as the breakthrough
for electoral advertising on television, since all major parties purchased airtime on the
commercial channel TV4 during the last weeks of the campaign (Grusell & Nord, 2010).
Even if there was a code of conduct between the broadcaster (TV4) and the political
parties in the 2010 campaign, the legal regulations are few. The ads only have to observe the
law, which mostly refers to criminal law and facts like incitement to racial hatred or violence.
Further, there are no legal limitations for the amount of airtime possible to purchase in order
to broadcast political advertising, and there is no announcement before or after the spot is
aired. The spots are also broadcast in-between other commercials; there is no block where
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political ads are aired exclusively. All in all, due to these conditions TV viewers are rather
caught by surprise and cannot easily avoid the spots.
It is no exaggeration to argue that electoral advertising has changed the Swedish
campaign culture. Results showed that exposure to TV ads during the European election
campaign had a significant and positive effect on voter turnout (Dahlberg, 2010) and the
political parties have changed their way of campaigning in relation to this new campaign
channel (Grusell & Nord, 2009).
The parties spent approximately two million Euros on producing and purchasing airtime
for television ads in the 2010 campaign and 69 percent of the electorate watched at least one
commercial during the 2010 campaign (Oscarsson & Holmberg, forthcoming). The
corresponding figure during the European parliament campaign was 66 percent (Oscarsson &
Holmberg, 2010, p. 26). An intense debate took off the last weeks of the campaign when TV4
refused to air the spot produced by the Sweden Democrats, claiming it was violating the
Radio and Television Act which is regulating television broadcasting. After removing some
parts of the spot it was broadcast, but the complete version had then more than 500.000 clicks
on YouTube.
Method
The method used to analyze the effectiveness of party affiliation as an intervening
variable in the evaluation of party advertising was panel data collected using The 2010
Internet Campaign panel (E-panel). It is a six wave study of self-recruited respondents, which
was carried out during the Swedish general election campaign in September 2010. Data was
collected during a five week period (August 24 to September 30) and during this intense part
of the campaign four pre-election web questionnaires and one post-election were sent out to
15.143 respondents. The respondents were recruited from various sources. Different web-sites
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at the University of Gothenburg were used such as the Multidisciplinary Research Opinion
and Democracy Group (MOD), The Elections Study Program and the SOM-Institute (Society,
Opinion, Media). During the same period, editors for Swedish local newspapers were
contacted to allow advertizing for recruitment to the panel on their web-site. Eleven Swedish
newspapers agreed to take part in the recruitment process. Other sources used were two webbased party sympathy simulators constructed by researchers at the University of Gothenburg.
These simulators could be used through Facebook and the Public Service Radio web-site.
Social media web-sites were also used to recruit respondents (Dahlberg, Lindholm,
Lundmark, Oscarsson, & Åsbrink, 2010).
In order to avoid drop-outs caused by too long questionnaires combined with the need to
measure specific campaign exposures, the sample was randomized into five equal sized
groups. These groups received a weekly questionnaire (Monday to Friday) during a five week
period. To shorten the questionnaire for each respondent randomization was used to construct
each individual's questionnaire. This was done for each group of questions and each spot was
shown to approximately 400 respondents.
Due to the recruitment process there are deviations in the E-panel compared to the
Swedish population. Tests show bias in gender, since there are fewer women compared to
men in the panel and the proportion of men and women is equal in the Swedish population as
a whole. But the E-panel respondents are also younger and more interested in politics
compared to the general public (Dahlberg, Lindholm, Lundmark, Oscarsson, & Åsbrink,
2010). This bias must of course be taken into consideration when the data is analyzed.
However, the purpose of the paper is not to study the representativeness of evaluations of the
spots. Instead we aim to analyze how and in what way party identification explains
perceptions of electoral advertising. The use of the E-panel is therefore equal to an experiment
and not a traditional survey based on a representative sample.
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The spots
All spots were 30 seconds and shown to respondents in the middle of the survey, after
questions about election promises and which message the respondents related to different
parties. After the spot was shown the respondents answered a question controlling the ability
to watch the spot in the web-survey. Thereafter a question followed asking the respondents to
answer if they had seen the ad before (television, internet etc.). The last question on the theme
contained a number of claims about the broadcast; if the ad was considered professionally
produced, entertaining, whether it communicates the message of the party effectively, arouses
strong emotions, gives a positive image of the party and if it is believed to convince people to
vote for the party. All these items could be answered on a scale ranging from 0 (totally
disagree) to 10 (totally agree). No opinion was also an alternative.
Below follows a short presentation of the themes in the spots analyzed in the paper.
Eight spots were shown in the E-panel. Only six are included in the following analysis
because two spots from the Moderate Party and the Folkpartiet the Liberalsi were shown to
the respondents.
Christian Democrats – a More Human Sweden
In the beginning of the spot a number of rapid clips show violence, loneliness and no
empathy, all in dark lighting. A gang starting to beat someone lying down, a prostitute talking
to a customer in a car, a girl sitting afraid on a public toilet and an old woman falling on the
street but no one cares. The music accompanying these scenes is "The lion sleeps tonight" by
the Tokens. Later on there are cross-cuts between a lion hunting down a zebra, vultures
pecking a cadaver and the scenes described above. The spots ends with the text: "We want a
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more human Sweden". Signed by the name of the party and the wind anemone, which is the
party symbol.
Green Party – Modernize Sweden
As most parties the Green Party uses a montage of different short scenes accompanied
by pop music with a slogan interpreting what we have seen. In the Green Party ad we watch a
girl recycling her broken doll, a man in a suit waiting for the bus, an old lady throwing bottles
in the recycle bin and a girl entering a meeting bringing her cycle-helmet. In the end a voiceover from party leader Maria Wetterstrand is heard saying: "There are a lot of people working
for a better environment. It's about time we get a government doing the same". The spot ends
with a picture showing the name of the party and the slogan they used during the campaign:
"Modernize Sweden".
Folkpartiet the Liberals – Nuclear Power
This is the only party not using any music, but industrial noise is used as a rhythm-track
in the spot. Fast clips showing workers pushing buttons, putting the time card in the stamp
clock, machines moving, a forklift driving etc. In the end one hears the voice of party leader
Jan Björklund declaring: "Almost half of all electricity in Sweden is produced by Swedish
nuclear power. Keep nuclear power and we will keep the jobs". The last words can also be
seen against a backdrop of smiling men and women in working clothes and helmets and the
Liberals' party symbol, the corn flower, appears.
Moderaterna Party – Love at Work
The movie shows a number of fast-changing scenes with men and women showing
interest in people they meet in work-related situations, mostly by smiles and occasional eye-
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contact. The soundtrack is the 1990s rock-ballad "I wanna know what love is" by Foreigner
and the spot ends with the slogan "Love at work. Just one reason why people should have a
job". The last picture shows the logo of the party.
Social Democrats – We Can't Wait
The spot contains a number of scenes where young people are pictured as unemployed
and not wanted; everyone leaves at a meeting, but a girl remains eating breakfast, fire-men are
leaving on a mission and a young man is dressing slower and left behind etc. The music is
fast, cheerful but also stressful in a silent-movie style. The slogan in the end says: "207 000
young people would like to join up. We can't wait". This last sentence is signed by the party
symbol: the rose.
Sweden Democrats – Immigration or Pension?
The movie starts with a counter showing spending in state budget and two clerks sitting
at a desk. A voice-over claims that "politics is about choice and priorities". Suddenly the
counter stops and an alarm sounds. Thereafter the viewer sees the signs at the desks of the
clerks. One says immigration officer and the other pension officer. Then appears an old
woman with a walking chair slowly walking up to the desk, but she is followed by a group of
burqa-dressed women with baby carriages running to pass her. Two emergency brake handles
are seen and the old woman and the group of women reach for the handles. The voice-over
says: "On September 19th you have the choice between immigration or pension, vote for the
Sweden Democrats". The last picture shows a sign with the name of the party, the slogan
"security and tradition" and a blue anemone, which is the party symbol.
The spots described above are in many ways similar, but there are differences too. They
are alike in terms of length (30 seconds). When spoken words are used it is voice-over to
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emphasize and explain what is shown in the spot. All spots employ the technique of fast clips
and music except one which used different sounds creating a rhythm. The narration is also
similar since they all, except for the Swedish Democratic spot, start with fast clips, the
explanation following at the end, by inserts or by text combined with voice-over. Like the
pack-shot at the end of commercials, all parties show their name or party symbol in the end of
the spot to remind voters who was responsible for the spot.
But as mentioned above we do find differences too. The most striking one is the use of
humor and the attempt to arouse emotions. There are no jokes or slapstick in the spots, but the
Moderaterna Party slogan can be seen as an amusing twist. The Social Democratic ad with the
cheerful music has elements of humor, but since the message of alienation and unemployment
is proclaimed the smile gets stuck in the throat. The spots of the Christian Democrats and of
the Sweden Democrats are clearly intended to arouse emotions. The analogy between animals
eating and killing each other and the scenes of a gang beating a person in the Christian
Democratic spot is effective in arousing emotions. The same can be said about the race
between the old woman and the group of burqa-dressed women. In terms of negative
campaigning, the ads of the political opposition (Social Democrats, Swedish Green Party and
the Sweden Democrats) can be interpreted as attacking their opponents. The Christian
Democratic spot has a negative tone, but is not aimed at anyone and should be considered as
an attack on society as a whole, not a single party or government since the party is a partner in
the incumbent government.
Does Party Affiliation Make a Difference?
Multiple regression analysis was applied to determine the independent influence of
party affiliation on the evaluation of the individual party ads while controlling for sociodemographic variables that may be important for political opinion formation (gender, age,
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education). The party affiliation variable is based on the question of which party the
respondent declares s/he would vote for, excluding those who were not yet allowed to vote
(under 18), don't knows and those who said they would not vote at all. The six evaluation
items were combined in an additive scale with Cronbach's alpha ranging from around .90
(Christian Democrats, Folkpartiet the Liberals, Green Party , Social Democrats, Moderaterna
Party) to .71 (Sweden Democrats) for the different spots/parties. The scale thus demonstrates
a very good consistence and a better performance than the individual items.
In a first step, Table 1 gives an overview of the spot evaluation according to party
affiliation. It presents the means for the individual items demonstrating that those respondents
who declared being close to the Moderaterna Party accorded the spot broadcast by their
preferred party the highest rankings on three out of six items. In particular, they assessed the
spot as being professionally produced, entertaining and presenting a positive image of the
party. The followers of the Sweden Democrats, however, gave the highest marks to their
party's spot on the items emphasizing that it was communicating the party message
effectively, that it would be able to arouse strong feelings and were convinced that the spot
would convince more voters to cast their vote for the party. On the other hand, the adherents
of the Sweden Democrats found the spot the least entertaining and not much qualified to
convey a positive image of the party.
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Table 1
Evaluation of the Electoral Spots by Respondent With Party Affiliation (mean scores)
The spot is
professionally
produced
The spot is
entertaining
The spot
communicates
the message of
the party
effectively
The spot
arouses strong
emotions
The spot
presents a
positive image
of the party
The spot will
convince more
voters to vote
for the party
N
Christian Folkpartiet
Democrats
the
Liberals
7.08
7.32
Green
Party
Moderaterna
Social
Party
Democrats
Sweden
Democrats
7.16
8.10
7.49
6.26
4.68
4.46
5.17
6.06
4.98
3.15
4.95
6.51
6.81
5.56
5.71
8.47
6.87
4.56
4.14
5.01
4.14
8.18
4.32
5.16
6.36
6.38
5.35
2.79
3.89
4.49
4.58
4.67
4.36
4.73
19
47
57
93
64
26
Note: Each item was rated on a scale ranging from 0=disagree to 10=agree
Bivariate correlations (Pearson's R) for the six evaluation statements and the control variables
were mostly significant with some differences for the individual spots/parties. For instance,
while gender and age proved to be highly significant in the evaluation of the Social
Democratic spot, education was only significant for the production item. In the evaluation of
the Moderaterna Party spot, however, education and age were significant but gender did not
play any role in the rating. Age was the only socio-demographic variable that was
significantly correlated with some of the evaluations of the Christian Democratic spot. For the
other parties, the picture was mixed with gender, age and education being variably significant
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for some of the items. Across the board, the party affiliation variable showed highly
significant bivariate correlations with most of the individual evaluation items and all spots.
Multiple regression analysis was used to assess the influence of party affiliation on the
evaluation of the electoral broadcasts while simultaneously controlling for the sociodemographic variables. Table 2 presents the standardized beta coefficients for the regressions
on the combined evaluation scale. For all parties and spots the coefficients for party affiliation
are highly significant demonstrating the strong influence of the variable on the evaluation of
the party broadcasts. Controlling for socio-demographic variables hardly weakened the impact
of party affiliation confirming the independent role of the variable. At the same time, if at all,
gender, age and educational level affect the evaluation of the spots differently not taking out
much of the explanatory power from party affiliation.
Table 2
Evaluation of the Electoral Spots (beta coefficients)
Party
Christian Democrats
Folkpartiet the Liberals
Green Party
Moderaterna Party
Social Democrats
Sweden Democrats
Gender
.04
.13
-.14 *
.03
-.15 **
.09
Age
-.25
-.12
-.23
-.25
-.24
-.23
**
**
**
**
**
Education
.04
.10
.10 *
.16 **
.01
-.01
PA
.25
.15
.18
.27
.29
.32
**
**
**
**
**
**
R²
12%
7%
16%
17%
17%
16%
N
357
337
344
333
364
381
Note: PA = party affiliation. ** significant ≤ .01, * significant ≤ .05
The explanatory power of the models, using R² as a measure, is 16 to 17 percent for all parties
except the Christian Democrat model (12%) and the Folkpartiet the Liberals model (7%).
Which level of explained variance can be tolerated is hard to determine, since it always has to
be put in relation to what is expected and numbers of independent variables included in the
model. However, the R² clearly indicate that party affiliation and the age of the respondents
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are especially important to understand why people evaluate political advertising in different
ways.
Conclusions
Even though long-term data show that party identification is on decline in Sweden,
party affiliation still functions as a filter when voters are exposed to electoral advertising.
Party affiliation correlates with a strong positive evaluation of the party's advertising. The
decision to vote for a specific party goes hand in hand with regarding this party's spot more
professional, more entertaining, as communicating the message effectively and arouse strong
feelings, as presenting a positive image of the party and suited to convince other people to
vote for that party. Since the questions were asked only once, no comparisons over time are
available. Therefore, the beta values only indicate the correlation but not the direction in the
sense of cause and effect. However, plausibility speaks for the filter being built up with the
voting decision and this to precede the positive evaluation of the television advertising.
The clear outcome of the analysis is the more convincing in view of the fact that this
study had to use an indicator that does not represent the persistent partisanship as conceived in
the concept of party identification. The variable included in this analysis captures respondents
who have a long-term identification with a party but also one-time voters who may not have
the stable affiliation with their presently preferred party. This variable thus actually provides
for a stronger test of the influence of party affiliation and the findings show that even under
the condition of only a short-term partisanship party affiliation works. Party affiliation
contributes to the explanatory power independently and in addition to the socio-demographic
variables that are known to influence political communication.
These findings can be understood against the background of the cognitive dissonance
theory and selective exposure according to which people try to avoid a state of cognitive
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dissonance by avoiding information that conflicts with their attitudes (Festinger, 1962). Once
people have made a voting decision and feel close to a party, even if only for one election,
they tend to bolster their decision by regarding their party's advertising as professional and
working in favor of the party image.
The message for the parties following from these findings is only partly bad: The
findings do not support the hopes that were raised by early research expecting TV ads to
overcome partisan selectivity. Their advertising might work with undecided voters who have
not yet made up their mind and thus do not apply the party affiliation filter but it will be
difficult to convince those who have already made their voting decision. Nevertheless, the
good evaluations of the party advertising by partisans could serve to mobilize these voters and
make sure they actually cast their vote on Election Day which would be an important function
as well in times of decreasing turnout rates.
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i
The translation of the Swedish names of the parties is as follows; Christian Democrats (kristdemokraterna),
Folkpartiet the Liberals (folkpartiet liberalerna), Green Party (Miljöpartiet – de gröna), Moderaterna Party (nya
moderaterna), Social Democrats (socialdemokraterna), Sweden Democrats (sverigedemokraterna)
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