Following the Leader? : The importance of leaders’ images and the role of televised debates

1. Following the Leader? : The importance of leaders’ images and the role of televised debates Dr. Matthew Wall, Political Campaigns: Week10

2. Todays talk • Picking up from last week’s emphasis on valence and political capability, we focus on leader evaluations this week. • Are leader images politically influential and what is the nature of their influence? • What are the important aspects of leaders’ images to be considered? • The notion of contingency in leader effects. • Televised debates as a platform for leader images to be transformed and leader effects to be significant. • The 2010 UK experience.

3. Do leaders’ images influence election outcomes? • Certainly appears to be believed by politicians and campaign consultants: King (2006) “election campaigns in most democratic countries today are leader-centered rather than ideology- centered or policy centered.” • Leaders satisfy the classic criteria for a factor to be electorally relevant: • Voter awareness; • Voters have genuine attitudes (i.e., reasonably strong and fixed beliefs); • Voters identify the object with a given party; • Overall distribution of opinion needs to be skewed. • Strong micro-level evidence that perception of party leaders’ image helps to explain vote choice.

4. Do leaders’ images influence electionoutcomes? • No side/‘naysayers’ (Barisione, 2009). • At the ‘macro’ level, leadership effects in elections can cancel each other out – rarely does one candidate/leader dominate his opponents during a campaign. • Why? • Parties who select their leaders face similar motivations (to win votes) and are consequently likely to favour candidates who are strong communicators, presentable, likeable etc. • To the extent that the press is non-partisan most voters will hear a mixture of positive and negative candidate appraisals. • Even where candidate traits appear to be influential, voters may use candidate identity as a short cut to a range of more complex political beliefs.

5. Direct versus indirect effects • Indirect effects pertain to what a leader does: their effects on – • Their party: through organisational and/or ideological changes). • Their government (if incumbent): through effective leadership/management. • Of course their ability to influence their party/government is partly a result of their innate qualities, but also of political opportunity structures.

6. Direct versus indirect effects • Direct effects pertain to who a leader is. Their personal image. • Barisone: ‘a leader effect can be broadly defined as the added value, in electoral terms, that a specific national candidate is able to bring to his/her party or coalition through the effectiveness of his/her specific image at the time’. • Key components – added value (relative to existing party support) • Nature of leader images (popularity relative to both opponents and their own party).

7. Identifying direct leader effects • 3 broad analytic strategies: • 1) Experimental: Re-run the same election with different leaders! Not possible in the real world. Typically survey or lab experiments – one recent experiment in the UK found that fictional candidates lose vote share as their reported annual income increases (though effect is smaller among Conservative voters) • 2) Improved prediction: the additional % of votes that can be explained when ‘leadership’ is added into the sort of vote prediction models we discussed last week. • 3) Counterfactual: thought experiments and hypothetical projections where leaders or their images are altered.

8. Do leaders’ images influence electionoutcomes? • So far, mixed findings – to some extent this is a methodological issue: • Those who attribute little influence to leader effects tend to focus on the macro picture, and argue that leader effects are rarely large enough to determine the election outcome. • Those who argue that such effects are apparent focus on the opinions of individual voters and argue that marginal aggregate changes of 1-5% are politically significant.

9. Elements of a leader’s image • Most studies argue that a leader’s image can be grouped into 3 broad dimensions: • Competence • Trustworthiness • Likeability

10. Elements of a leader’s image • Competence: ability to master the various demands involved in running the country. • Typically what’s being assessed includes: • Candidate’s substantive understanding of key policy issues (understanding of economics, military strategy etc.) • Candidate’s track record of performance either in previous office or in their ‘pre-political’ life. • Some element of a candidate’s capacity to communicate with voters and elites and be ‘presentable’ in day-to-day duties. • Often measured by asking respondents to rate candidates’ “suitability for office”.

11. Elements of a leader’s image • Trustworthiness: In many ways, this is a more prospective version of competence. • Captures voter’s feelings that as previously unexpected problems or issues arise, the leader can be trusted to deal with the issue in a manner congruent with their past performance. • Trustworthiness also has a retrospective element, and ‘flip flop’ attacks on candidates are aimed at undermining their trustworthiness.

12. Elements of a leader’s image • Likeability: the extent to which voters can personally identify and sympathise with a candidate. • This trait is more a question of one’s style than one’s ability. • Charisma and oratorial skills are involved here, but not necessarily. • We see in modern politics (far more than in previous eras) that leaders’ spouses and even children are a part of their campaign effort – including these actors is an attempt to humanise candidates and build their likeability. • Difficult to define concretely, but a sense of sincerity and warmth are a part of this dimension. • Physical attractiveness can also be considered under this rubric.

13. Elements of a leader’s image • The overall image developed by a leader will seek to blend these three dimensions. • However, although leaders do work hard to be likeable, competent etc. they cannot always maximise on all dimensions. • In that case, as with the wider valence literature – campaigns will focus on the aspects of leaders that suit them, and seek to focus on their opponents’ weak points.

14. Elements of a leader’s image • Another, more quantitative way of thinking about leader image is to examine their notoriety and aggregate popularity. • Notoriety refers to how well-known a leader is to the public at large. An unknown leader cannot exercise an effect on the electorate. Also, arguably a leader must be not just known, but familiar, to build a stable and politcally useful image. • Popularity refers to the aggregate opinion of the population (i.e. net % who ‘like’ rather than ‘dislike’ a leader). Comparing net popularity across leaders gives an indication of whether an overall skew is to be found in the population.

15. The contingency of leader effects • Barisione notes that there are diverse findings on leadership effects individual elections and suggests that there are several factors that intervene to make leader effects more or less likely in a given campaign. • These are divided into: • Structural constraints (to do with the design of the overall political system); • Political opportunities (to do with the politics and economics of the day); • Individual moderators (to do with the characteristics of individual voters) and; • Image variables (to do with the types of images possessed by leaders).

16. Structural constraints – institutional context • When the office being voted for is personalised (e.g. Presidential office) we anticipate stronger leader effects than when leaders are indirectly selected as a result of election outcome (i.e. parliamentary systems). • Common, however to speak of a ‘presidentialisation’ of modern parliamentary systems as Prime Ministers are increasing their formal and informal levels of power relative to other ministers and to the legislature.

17. Structural constraints – Political context • Nature of the party system and voter loyalties: • When party system narrows the choice to 2 viable candidates, more intense focus on their images; • When the parties present very similar platforms, this gives voters incentive to focus on leaders (on the other hand, polarised party systems minimise potential leader effects); • When voter ‘dealignment’ means that party is a less reliable vote cue, leader image can potentially pay a stronger role.

18. Structural constraints – media environment • Broadcast technologies made leaders’ personalities potentially far more politically influential. • FD Roosevelt’s ‘Fireside chats’ (1933-1944) were probably the first instance of a national leader building an informal personal image by talking ‘directly’ to voters. • King 2006 – “No one who was not physically in his presence ever saw or heard Abraham Lincoln, William Gladstone, Adolphe Thiers, Otto von Bismark or Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Television is now so pervasive that voters think they know people they have never met.” • Candidates more recently have also used new media to build a personal brand – FB, Twitter, blogs, vlogs, Flickr accounts etc.

19. Structural constraints – media environment • Public’s dependence on television news (TV generally seen as a medium that encourages focus on leaders rather than policies). • Public service versus commercial media combined with media restrictions (can the media focus more attention on major party candidates in their coverage?) • Standards of ‘objective’ versus ‘partisan’ journalism. Partisan journalism often involves negative attacks on the images of rival leaders, making leader image a larger part of the campaign rhetoric overall.

20. Political opportunities – Opinion Climate • Structure of opinion relative to the status quo. • Strong collective perceptions either that things are going very well (‘don’t change horses in midstream’), or that they are going very badly (‘time for a change’) can cancel out potential leadership effects. • This is a subjective evaluation, not necessarily a description of reality! • An incumbent in times of economic plenty may win no matter how competent, trustworthy and likeable his opponent is.

21. Political opportunities – Economic Conjecture • Objective performance indicators may also limit the effects of leaders. • Either very bad or very good incumbent performance on employment, GDP growth, inflation etc. mitigate against leader effects. • So, for strong leader effects we need to see a rather neutral or disputed economic performance (as is the case in the current USA campaign).

22. Politicalopportunities – SystemicCrisis • In times of systemic disintegration of a political system, leadership effects can come to the fore. • Especially when major parties have been discredited or disbanded (e.g. Italy in the early 1990s) leader characteristics are an important cue in a confusing environment. • In contrast, when parties are long-established and stable in outlook, leader identity may be perceived as less important.

23. Politicalopportunities – Campaignenvironment • For large aggregate leader image effects, it is necessary that campaign communication flows are unequal. • Due to either media bias or superior resources/organisation by one campaign, it comes to dominate the campaign content that is fed to voters. • An overwhelming flood of either positive or negative messages about a candidate can lead to significant persuasion effects. • Such effects are less likely when positive messages about a given leader are balanced either with negative messages or competing positive messages about their rivals.

24. Individual moderators • The characteristics of individual voters that make them susceptible to leader effects. • 1) Political indecision: voters who are undecided during the campaign are, evidently, more susceptible to these effects. • 2) Sophistication: this is a more controversial moderator. Some accounts hold that unsophisticated voters are more likely to fall back on intuitive, personalised judgments. However, other studies found that more educated voters were more likely to care about leader traits. • Zaller holds that those of medium sophistication are most subject to influence – interested enough to receive campaign messages, but not sophisticated enough to ‘resist’ them.

25. Leaders’ debates • Televised leaders debates have long been a feature of politics in the USA, going back to the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate, where Kennedy’s relative attractiveness and charisma were much discussed and the debates were credited with accelerating his support. • They have been slower to spread elsewhere – the UK’s first televised debate took place in 2010.

27. Leaders’ debates • Debates vary considerably in format: • 1 key difference is the number of participants – typically 2 in US debates, 3 in the first UK leaders’ debates, 3-5 in Canadian leaders’ debates, and 7 in the Irish presidential debates. • Questions typically posed by a moderator who attempts (with varying degrees of formality) to see that participants are given equal time to respond. • Body language, humour, appearance, and physical positioning are often seen to be as important as substantive policy stances in such debates.

28. Leaders’ debates • A perfect vehicle to emphasize the persona of the leaders during a campaign. • Thus in a debate, the leader must present him/herself as much as the policies they stand for. • The epitome of a ‘campaign event’: usually watched by a large portion of the population and featuring all of the main electoral candidates in direct competition.

29. Overall trends • Blais and Perrella (2008) discuss some observed general trends of televised leaders’ debates in the USA and Canada: • 1) Candidate ratings tend to improve overall post debate. • 2) Changes in ratings among candidates post debate are not strongly correlated (i.e. an improved perception of one candidate doesn’t necessarily mean a worse evaluation of the others)

30. Overall trends • 3) Incumbents are not systematically disadvantaged. • 4) The popularity gap between candidates tends to narrow after debates – that is, televised debates bring more benefits to unpopular than to popular candidates. • The authors argue that all candidates to such high office are likely to be relatively polished performers (hence effect: 1) • Furthermore, campaign managers seek to both play down pre-debate expectations and hype candidates’ performances after the debate. • They argue that debates can increase the notoriety of minor candidates, who consequently improve their ratings.

31. Overall trends • The experiences of many voters of viewing a debate is coloured by partisanship and prior preferences. • Partisans tend to see the best in ‘their’ candidate and the worst in rivals, and typically come away from debates more convinced about their initial preferences. • However, there is emerging evidence that non partisans are influenced by leaders’ performances in televised debates.

32. The UK debates • These were a significant media event, as such debates were unprecedented in the UK: nearly 10 million viewers watched the first debate, 2-4 million followed the second, and nearly 8 million watched the third (with 30 million people eventually voting in the election). • Debate 1 saw the emergence of Nick Clegg as the ‘big winner’. His performance saw an overnight increase in Lib Dem support from 20% to 30%. Gordon Brown was perceived to be the worst performer in all 3 debates, partly due to his rather stiff persona. • Debates 2 and 3 saw stronger performances from Cameron, and at the end of the campaign the results mirrored pre-campaign polls (which was very disappointing for the Lib Dems). • However, while this points to little macro effect, individual level research (Johnston and Pattie, 2011) indicates that perceptions of who ‘won’ the debates do help to explain vote choice in the 2010 elections.

34. Conclusions • While the existence and scale of leader effects remains in doubt, campaigns a certainly acting as though these effects matter. • They can do so either by promoting their leader’s image (if popular) or diverting attention towards policy (if unpopular). • The importance of leadership is conditional on a range of structural and political variables, which vary from country-to-country and from election-to-election. • It remains a matter for normative debate whether focusing on the attributes of leaders is democratically legitimate and useful.