Impact of Television on Presidential Elections

The Impact of Television on Presidential Elections

The aim of this paper is to look at the relationship between the mass media, specifically television, and presidential elections. This paper will focus on the function of television in presidential elections through three main areas: exit polls, presidential debates, and spots. The focus is on television for three reasons. First, television reaches more voters than any other medium. Second, television attracts the greatest part of presidential campaign budgets. Third, television provides the candidates a good opportunity to contact the people directly. A second main theme of this paper is the role of television in presidential elections in terms of representative democracy in the United States.

Researchers tend to hold one of three views about television's influence on voters. Some believe that television affects voters in the short run, for example in an election campaign. Another group of researchers believes that television has a great influence on voters over time and that television's impact on voters is a continuous process from one campaign to the next. Others stand between the two views or combine both.

In the last three decades, polls became an important instrument for the media, especially television networks, to determine who wins and who loses the election. Caprini conducted a study about the impact of the early prediction of a winner in the 1980 presidential race by the television networks. He

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l of Government noted that voters and non-voters agree that debates are more helpful in deciding whom to vote for than either television news reports or the candidate's own television ads (Kraus, 1988, p. 128). So it is obvious that such debates will have some impact on the outcome of the elections. Presidential debates are controlled by the candidates in several ways: the decision about whether to participate, the approval of areas of discussion, and the refusal to debate without panelists (p. 142). The 1988 debates were actually just joint appearances by Bush and Dukakis answering reporters' questions in two-minute and one-minute segments (Mickelson, 1989, p. 164). The year 1952 witnessed the emergence of the televised spot commercial in politics. The spot is a very short ad designed to convey a specific point or image without going into depth on issues or providing much detail. Since that time, spot commercials have been a main part of presidential campaigns. Joe McGinniss, an expert on campaigns, noticed the importance of the political ads: It is not surprising then, that politicians and advertising men should have discovered one another. And, once they recognized that the citizen did not so much vote for a candidate

Category: Government - I