A Study of Presidential Campaign Event Effects from 1952 to 1992

A persistent argument in political science is that presidential campaign events do not have strong effects because most people (1) are uninformed about issues and candidates, (2) tend to vote based on cues from reliable (partisan) sources about the state of the economy and condition of the country, and (3) face balanced information environments. This study argues that presidential campaign events are multifaceted and their effects are occasionally substantial. The analysis shows that certain campaign events reach voters and have significant and relatively durable effects, while other events have either negligible or transitory effects. The implication is that many previous studies have misspecified the independent variable (by lumping campaign events together), as well as the dependent variable (by considering only the immediate impact).