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American Behavioral Scientist

DOI: 10.1177/0002764207300039 2007; 50; 1137 American Behavioral Scientist

Gail LeGrange Lynda Lee Kaid, Monica Postelnicu, Kristen Landreville, Hyun Jung Yun and Abby

The Effects of Political Advertising on Young Voters

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Authors’ Note: Special thank you to UVote team members who assisted with data collection for theadvertising experiment projects.

American Behavioral ScientistVolume 50 Number 9

May 2007 1137-1151© 2007 Sage Publications

10.1177/0002764207300039http://abs.sagepub.com

hosted athttp://online.sagepub.com

The Effects of PoliticalAdvertising on Young VotersLynda Lee KaidMonica PostelnicuKristen LandrevilleHyun Jung YunAbby Gail LeGrangeUniversity of Florida

Political advertising effects on candidate evaluations, issue recall, political cynicism,and gender differences are explored in this pretest–posttest examination of 764 youngadult participants. Results show no major gender differences in evaluation of candi-dates. Participants reported learning more about Bush’s image and more about Kerry’sissues through the ads. Exposure to ads did not produce increased cynicism among theparticipants but significantly increased political information efficacy.

Keywords: George W. Bush; John Kerry; political advertising; young voters; candi-date image; campaign issues; agenda setting

Young voters were among the most targeted segments of the electorate during the2004 U.S. presidential campaign. Political parties, nonprofit organizations,

issue groups, mass media, student organizations, and even popular entertainersjoined efforts to convince young people to show up at the polls. Engaging this tradi-tionally apathetic public has become more essential in the aftermath of the 2000presidential election, decided by only 500 votes and just barely half (51%) of all eli-gible voters (Federal Election Commission, 2004).

Political advertising has the potential to serve as a valid source of informationabout the candidates during a political campaign. Numerous studies have shown thatvoters exposed to political ads on television retain knowledge and information aboutthe candidates, such as their name, stance on issues, or image attributes (Atkin &Heald, 1976; Kaid, 2002; Martinelli & Chaffee, 1995; Valentino, Hutchings, & Williams,2004). Exposure to political ads is also effective in influencing viewers’ evaluationsof the candidates (Kahn & Geer, 1994; Kaid, Chanslor, & Hovind, 1992; Kaid &Sanders, 1978; Tinkham & Weaver-Lariscy, 1993) as well as voters’ perceptions ofthe political process in general and their political behavior (Ansolabehere & Iyengar,



1138 American Behavioral Scientist

1995; Kaid et al., 1992; Lemert, Wanta, & Lee, 1999). This article explores theeffects of television political advertising on young voters.

Research and Theory on Advertising Effects

Television political advertising was adopted in 1952 by Dwight D. Eisenhower’spresidential campaign as a way of promoting his presidency to voters. During thepast five decades, presidential candidates have devoted ever-higher amounts of theircampaign budgets to produce and broadcast political spots. The 2004 presidentialcampaign set a new record for advertising spending (more than $600 million), a235% increase compared to 2000 (Devlin, 2005).

Effects of Advertising Exposure on Candidate Image Evaluations

The importance given by candidates and campaigns to political advertising hasprompted substantial research about its effects. Even the earliest research on politi-cal advertising validated the candidates’ decisions to rely on this communicationtool. Researchers have shown that television advertising is successful in conveyingcandidate messages to voters, overcoming selective exposure (Atkin, Bowen,Nayman, & Sheinkopf, 1973) and gaining attention from 70% of voters.

One of the most important outcomes of this attention to political television adsmay be the impact on voter evaluations of the candidates featured in the ads.Candidates make use of advertising to generate positive feelings among the elec-torate about their own qualities or to denigrate their opponents. Research has shownthat advertising exposure can influence a voter’s evaluations of the candidates, eitherin a positive or negative direction. Kaid (1994, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003) conductedseveral experiments exposing college students as well as adult voters to spots fromvarious presidential campaigns and concluded that exposure to ads can significantlychange ratings of candidates. The change in candidate evaluations is determined bymany factors, such as the channel on which the ad is shown (Kaid, 2002; Kaid &Postelnicu, 2005) or the content of the ad. For instance, issue-focused ads are morelikely to trigger a positive attitude toward the candidate than image-focused ads, andnonattack ads are more likely to create support for the candidate than attack ads(Christ & Thorson, 1994; Kahn & Geer, 1994; Pinkleton, Um, & Weintraub Austin,2002). Negative ads are successful in denigrating the candidate who is the target ofthe attacks (Johnson-Cartee & Copeland, 1989; Perloff & Kinsey, 1992) but mayalso result in a backlash effect against the candidate who makes the attack(Garramone, 1984).

Regardless of the direction of the attitude provoked by the ad, mass communica-tion scholars largely agree that television advertising makes an impact on voters’ per-ceptions of the candidate. There is evidence that people with lower interest in politicsand with less information about a campaign are more likely to change their attitude



toward the candidates after viewing political ads on television (Cundy, 1986;Rothschild & Ray, 1974). Therefore, we expected political advertising to have a strongimpact on young voters’ evaluations of the candidate, because this group of voterstraditionally has lower levels of interest and involvement than older voters, leadingto our first hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Exposure to political television ads will significantly increase positive evalua-tions of candidates Bush and Kerry.

However, not all voters react the same to the presentation of a candidate in tele-vision advertising. Research has shown that the gender of the voter can make a dif-ference in the reaction to political spots. For instance, findings have suggested thatreactions to political ads mirror the gender gap identified in voting behavior. That is,women appear to evaluate Democratic presidential candidates more positively thanmen do, and men are more positive about Republican candidates (Kaid, 1994, 1998;Kaid & Tedesco, 1999). Although they did not find large differences between maleand female voter reactions to candidate ads, Bystrom, Banwart, Kaid, and Robertson(2004) found some evidence that women respond more positively to positive cam-paign messages. In a broader, multicountry study, Kaid and Holtz-Bacha (2000)found that women tend to be generally more susceptible to televised political spotsand rate presidential candidates higher after viewing. This research suggested oursecond hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: Women will evaluate the candidates significantly higher after advertising expo-sure than will men.

Effects of Political Advertising Exposure on Information Recall

An extensive body of research supports the finding that exposure and attention topolitical advertising leads to increased voter knowledge about candidates and issues(Faber & Storey, 1984; Groenendyk & Valentino, 2002; Kaid & Sanders, 1978).Recall of information is particularly high after exposure to negative ads (Basil,Schooler, & Reeves, 1991; Johnson-Cartee & Copeland, 1989; Kahn & Kenney,2000; Lang, 1991; Newhagen & Reeves, 1991). The amount of time spent in frontof the TV set is another mediating factor of how much information from the adspeople remember. Heavy TV viewers are more likely to recall seeing ads than peoplewho watch television less than 3 hours daily. According to a recent poll, an averageAmerican adult spends a little more than 3 hours daily watching television (Yang,2004). Recall is also directly linked to a series of other factors, such as one’s inter-est in the race (Atkin et al., 1973; Rothschild & Ray, 1974) or one’s attitudes towardpolitics (Christ & Thorson, 1994).

A great deal of research has concentrated on identifying issue learning from polit-ical ad exposure, and findings suggest that issue learning from exposure to political

Kaid et al. / Advertising Effects on Young Voters 1139



ads is surprisingly high, even greater than issue learning from television news expo-sure (Brians & Wattenberg, 1996; Patterson & McClure, 1976; Zhao & Bleske, 1995)or even televised debates (Holbert, Benoit, Hansen, & Wen, 2002; Just, Crigler, &Wallach, 1990).

Regardless of the multitude of factors that influence recall and information reten-tion, it is generally recognized that political ads have the potential to provide view-ers with knowledge about the candidates and the campaign. One of the consequencesof acquiring information from such sources is that viewers may change their issueagenda to match the issues discussed in the ads (Herrnson & Patterson, 2000;Roberts, 1992; West, 1993). Issue ads are effective in making policy issues moresalient to audiences, but image ads are equally successful in increasing the salienceof candidates’ attributes, a process called second-level agenda setting (McCombs,Lopez-Escobar, & Llamas, 2000).

These prior findings on the successful communication of issue information andthe agenda-setting effects of political ad exposure led to the next two hypothesestested in this study:

Hypothesis 3: Exposure to political television ads will result in higher levels of candidateimage learning than issue learning.

Hypothesis 4: Exposure to political television ads will have a significant agenda-setting effect,resulting in changes in the issues that respondents judge as most important.

Ad Exposure and Political System Effects

Apart from affecting viewers’ evaluations of candidates and issues, politicaladvertising can trigger more complex emotions and attitudes. Ansolabehere andIyengar (1995) believe that attack ads in particular contribute to increasing politicalcynicism among voters, together with television (Putnam, 1995) and strategic cam-paign coverage by the media (Cappella & Jamieson, 1997). Rahn and Hirshorn(1999) found that exposure to negative advertising altered young people’s politicalattitudes, although it did not significantly affect their desire to vote. On the contrary,young people with high levels of political efficacy felt stimulated in their politicalbeliefs after viewing negative ads. However, Kaid, McKinney, and Tedesco (2000)found young voters were more cynical after exposure to political spots in the 1996campaign. The connection between negative advertising, political apathy, and cyni-cism has not been clearly confirmed by other studies (Garramone, Atkin, Pinkleton,& Cole, 1990). Pinkleton et al. (2002) found no evidence for such claims, whereasKaid and Postelnicu (2005) actually found that undergraduate college votersexpressed lower levels of political cynicism after exposure to a mixture of positiveand negative ads. These findings led to the fifth hypothesis:

Hypothesis 5: Exposure to political television ads will result in no significant change in polit-ical cynicism levels for young citizens.




Getting young citizens to become involved in the political process is not an easytask. Delli Carpini (2000) painted a pessimistic portrait of Americans younger than30: Overall, they are more cynical than the older population, less interested in publicaffairs, less likely to register or to vote, and significantly less knowledgeable aboutpolitics. Several surveys found that this lack of information about candidates, par-ties, the government, and the act of voting is the number one cause of political apa-thy (Declare Yourself, 2003; National Association of Secretaries of State [NASS],1999). Respondents reported that they need to know the candidates’ stances onissues, their personal qualities, and political competence level before making aninformed decision to vote. Lack of this type of information translates into feelingsof low political efficacy that leads to apathy (Declare Yourself, 2003; NASS, 1999).

Young voters appear to be aware of their low knowledge levels, and the ThirdMillennium study of young voters’ motivations for voting and nonvoting found thatthe young generation often cited as a reason for not voting in 2000 the fact that theydid not feel they have “enough time or information” (Murphy, 2000). In their workon citizen engagement in 1996 and 2000, Kaid et al. (2000; Kaid, McKinney, &Tedesco, 2004) have found that young voters’ low levels of political information effi-cacy is a significant cause of nonvoting. However, Kaid, Landreville, Postelnicu, andMartin (2005) found that exposure to both television ads and debates can increaseyoung voters’ feelings of political information efficacy. Research has not yetexplored whether there are gender differences in political information efficacy.These concerns led to our final hypothesis and related research question:

Hypothesis 6: Exposure to the political television ads will significantly increase feelings ofpolitical information efficacy.

Research Question 1: Will men experience significantly higher levels of information efficacyafter political advertising exposure than women?

Method

Participants

An experimental design was used to test the above hypotheses. Participants were764 undergraduate students from 13 different universities1 in the United States.Experiments took place at the same time in all 13 locations, 1 week before theNovember 2004 Election Day. The total sample was composed of 44% males and56% females, with an average age of 21. Their party affiliation was 35% Republican,41% Democrat, and 24% Independent or affiliated with other parties. Both the gen-der and the party identification distributions are typical for American collegestudents. The large number of participants from diverse geographic locations cover-ing both battleground and nonbattleground states further guaranteed that the sampleis representative of college voters nationwide.




Procedure

On arrival at the various experiment locations, participants were asked to fill outa pretest questionnaire. After finishing the questionnaire, students were shown a col-lection of 10 political television ads (5 ads sponsored by George Bush and 5 by JohnKerry, alternated by candidate). These ads were typical of those running in the cam-paign during the past few weeks.2 Exposure to this ad stimulus was followed by ask-ing participants to fill out a posttest questionnaire.

Measuring Instruments

Both pretest and posttest questionnaires contained measures of participants’ eval-uations of the candidates and their levels of political cynicism and information effi-cacy. Evaluations of Bush and Kerry were measured using a feeling thermometerscale ranging from 0 (cool) to 100 (warm) like the one traditionally used by theNational Election Studies to measure attitudes toward the candidates (Rosenstone,Kinder, Miller, & the National Election Studies, 1997). Candidate evaluations werealso measured using a 12-item semantic differential scale3 developed for measuringcandidate image and used for nearly four decades as a measure of candidate image(Kaid, 2004). The 12-item image scale achieved high reliability when used as anindex with Cronbach’s alpha reliability levels of +.90 in the pretest and +.89 in theposttest for Bush, and +.87 in the pretest and +.92 in the posttest for Kerry.

Several other measures were used to evaluate participants’ levels of political cyn-icism and information efficacy. Political cynicism was measured with an eight-itemindex4 with Cronbach’s alpha reliability of +.70 in the pretest and +.83 in theposttest. Information efficacy was measured with a four-item index,5 and Cronbach’salpha levels were + .86 in the pretest and +.88 in the posttest.

Results

Effects of Ad Exposure on Candidate Image

The first hypothesis predicted that exposure to the television ads would result in ahigher positive evaluation of both candidates. Table 1 provides evidence that this hypoth-esis was not supported. Using the semantic differential scale of 12 adjectives to evaluatethe candidates, young respondents gave Bush a composite mean rating of 53.9 in thepretest and 53.6 in the posttest. Responses to Kerry were similar in the overall sample witha 53.7 pretest and a 53.5 posttest rating. Neither difference was statistically significant.

The second hypothesis stated that women would rate the candidates more positivelyafter ad exposure than would men. This hypothesis was also rejected. As Table 1shows, there was no significant difference between men’s and women’s evaluationsof Bush or Kerry before the ads were shown, and exposure did not result in anymajor changes for either candidate.




Table 1 also shows that partisan affiliation of the respondents had little relation-ship to postexposure changes in evaluations for George W. Bush. However, viewingthe spots did have a negative effect on Kerry’s image ratings among Republicanrespondents who rated Kerry at 44.64 in the pretest but gave him a significantlylower rating of 43.05 in the posttest, t = 2.54, df = 265, p = .01. Those who identi-fied themselves as Independent or sympathetic to another political party did notchange their evaluations of either candidate after viewing.

Effects of Exposure on Issue and Image Learning

The third hypothesis that predicted exposure to the television ads would result inmore learning about the candidates’ issues than about their image qualities receivedmixed support. Respondents were asked to indicate if they had learned a great deal (7)or very little (1) about the issues from the ads they saw for each candidate. They werealso asked to similarly respond to questions about how much they learned about thepersonal qualities of Bush and Kerry. Table 2 indicates that participants did believethey had learned significantly more about the personal qualities of Bush (M = 3.95,SD = 1.87) than they did about the issues (M = 3.27, SD = 1.85) from his ads, t =–9.62, df = 762, p = .001. However, the opposite was true for Kerry. Participants feltthey had learned more about the issues (M = 3.49, SD = 1.85) than about Kerry’s per-sonal qualities (M = 3.26, SD = 1.69) from his ads, t = –3.45, df = 762, p = .001.

This learning pattern is also clear when comparing the learning about each can-didate. Thus, Kerry’s issue learning score (3.49) was significantly higher than Bush’sissue score (3.27), t = –4.24, df = 762, p = .001. Likewise, Bush’s personal quali-ties learning score (3.95) is higher than the personal image score for Kerry (3.27),t = –9.67, df = 762, p = .001.

This superiority for personal qualities learning from the Bush ads is also appar-ent when comparing the actual number of personal qualities that respondents listedin an open-ended question that asked them to list specific personal qualities they


Table 1Effect of Advertising Exposure on Image Evaluations of Candidates (N == 764)

Bush Kerry

Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest

Overall sample 53.9 53.6 53.7 53.3Males (n = 336) 54.4 54.3 52.6 52.5Females (n = 428) 53.6 53.2 54.4 53.9Democrats (n = 311) 44.55 44.50 60.68 61.43Republicans (n = 267) 66.80 66.21 44.64 43.05a

Independent/Other (n = 186) 51.29 51.07 54.76 53.99

a. t test indicates difference between pretest and posttest ratings is significant at p < .05.



recalled about each candidate. Table 2 shows that respondents recalled a meannumber of 1.47 items for Bush but only 1.25 for Kerry, t = 3.51, df = 762, p = .001.Of these personal qualities, Bush also received significantly more positive mentions(M = 0.76, SD = 2.38) than did Kerry (M = 0.52, SD = 2.10), t = 2.93, df = 762,p = .003. There was no significant difference in the number of negative itemsrecalled about each candidate.

Agenda-Setting Effects of Ad Exposure

The fourth hypothesis predicted that exposure to the candidates’ television adswould have an agenda-setting effect, resulting in a change in the issues that youngcitizens judged important. This hypothesis was not confirmed for the overall samplein this study. As Table 3 shows, young citizens found the economy, the war in Iraq,health care, education, terrorism, taxes, foreign policy, and the environment to be themost important issues (in that order) in the pretest. The posttest agenda of issues washighly correlated (Spearman’s rank order correlation = +.91).

However, it is interesting to note that exposure to the ads did have an effect from agender comparison standpoint. As Table 3 shows, men and women did not have sig-nificantly correlated issue agendas before viewing the ads (rs = .64), viewing the adsbrought women and men into alignment on the issues they judged most important, andtheir posttest agendas were, like the overall sample, significantly correlated (rs = .82).

A major aspect of this agenda realignment was the fact that after exposure to theads, women had an elevated concern about the importance of the economy, whichremained at the top spot in both the pretest and posttest issue agendas for men.

Advertising Exposure and Political Cynicism

The fifth hypothesis posited that exposure to political advertising would not affectthe levels of cynicism in young citizens. This hypothesis was confirmed. On the


Table 2Learning and Recall of Issues and Image Characteristics From Ads (N == 764)

Bush Kerry

Learn about issues 3.27 3.49a

Learn personal qualities 3.95b 3.26a,b

Number of image items recalled 1.47 1.25a

Number of positive items 0.76 0.52a

Number of negative items 0.50 0.52

a. t test shows difference between Bush and Kerry is significant at p < .01.b. t test shows difference between issues and personal qualities is significant at p < .001.



composite cynicism scale, respondents scored at almost identical levels on thepretest and the posttest. Young women appear to be more cynical than young men,but exposure to the ads did not affect their cynicism levels or the differential levelbetween the genders.

Ad Exposure and Information Efficacy

The last hypothesis suggested that exposure to the candidates’ ads would result inincreased feelings of information efficacy for the young citizens. This hypothesiswas measured by comparing the pretest and posttest responses to respondents’ per-ceptions of their confidence in their understanding of politics and their informationabout the campaign. Table 4 shows that exposure to the television ads does, indeed,increase young respondents’ feelings of information efficacy, confirming this hypoth-esis. On the pretest information efficacy scale, the mean score was 13.83 (SD = 4.15),which increased significantly to a mean of 14.46 (SD = 3.73) in the posttest, t =–8.60, df = 762, p = .001.

The related research question queried whether men had a higher level of infor-mation efficacy after viewing the ads than before. As Table 4 indicates, men do expe-rience higher levels of political information efficacy after ad viewing (M = 15.03,SD = 3.74) than do women (M = 14.06, SD = 3.68), t = 3.54, df = 762, p = .001.


Table 3Agenda-Setting Effects of Exposure to Political Ads

Total Females Males

Before After Before After Before After

Rank order of issuesEconomy 1 2 4 2 1 1Iraq War 2 3 2 3 2 2Health 3 1 1 1 5 3Education 4 5 3 4 3 5Terrorism 5 4 2 6 3 4Taxes 6 6 6 4 7 6Foreign policy 7 7 7 7 6 7Environment 8 8 8 8 8 8

Spearman correlations:.91* .87* .87*

Before ⎯⎯→ After Before ⎯⎯→ After Before ⎯⎯→ After.64

Before ⎯⎯→ Before.82*

After ⎯⎯→ After

*indicates that the Spearman’s rho is significant at p < .05.



However, whereas men and women do have different levels of information efficacy,it is also important to note that exposure to the television ads significantly increasesthe information efficacy levels for both men and women.

Discussion

With the dominance of television as a political news source, image can mean every-thing. Political advertising is just one way candidates can shape their images. Pastresearch on political ads has shown that candidate image ratings can improve afterviewing ads (Kaid, 2002). However, positive evaluations of Bush and Kerry did notincrease after watching the ads in this study, and gender did not influence candidateevaluations. One possible explanation is that a few days before Election Day, when theexperiment was performed, most voters had made their voting choices, they knew whatqualities they preferred in a candidate, and they were unlikely to be influenced by ads.

With regard to gender, women did not evaluate the candidates any more favorablythan men overall. However, there were some differences between the effects of the adson men and women in regard to some of the specific scales used to measure candi-date image evaluations. For instance, men found Bush significantly more honest(M = 4.32, SD = 2.09 on the posttest compared to M = 4.08, SD = 2.37 on the pretest),t = –3.21, df = 336, p = .001. Exposure to the ads also resulted in men’s findingKerry significantly less sincere in the posttest (M = 4.32, SD = 1.85) than in thepretest (M = 4.46, SD = 1.66), t = 1.73, df = 333, p = .05. On the other hand,women found both Bush and Kerry less qualified after viewing than before.However, women found Bush significantly more aggressive after viewing (M =5.30, SD = 1.46) than before (M = 5.06, SD = 1.59), t = –3.72, df = 426, p = .001.


Table 4Effects of Advertising Exposure on Information

Efficacy and Cynicism (N == 764)

Pretest Posttest

Information efficacyOverall 13.83 14.46b

Males 14.45a 15.03b

Females 13.33a 14.04b

Cynicism levelOverall 25.6 25.6Males 25.1 24.8Females 25.9a 26.2a

a. t test shows difference between males and females is significant at p < .001.b. t test shows difference between pretest and posttest is significant at p < .03.



In addition to finding Kerry less qualified, women also found him less sophisticated(t = 4.12, df = 426, p = .001) and less friendly (t = 2.60, df = 426, p = .01) afterseeing the spots.

One demographic variable that yielded differences in candidate image evalua-tions was political party affiliation. Among Democrats, Kerry’s image rating increasedafter viewing the ads; conversely, among Republicans, Kerry’s image ratingdecreased; and there were no changes for voters with other or no affiliation. Bush’sads elicited no differences across parties. It is possible that participants acknowl-edged that the incumbent’s image was solidified, yet the challenger’s image wasmore flexible in either a positive or negative direction. Exposure to Kerry’s adsinspired Democrats to evaluate him more favorably and encouraged Republicans todislike him more.

Considering the mixed results on image and issue learning, the candidate adsseemed to have a greater influence in this area. Participants learned more about per-sonal qualities than issues from the Bush ads and more about issues than personalqualities from the Kerry ads. Also, Kerry’s issue learning score was significantlyhigher than Bush’s issue learning score and vice versa for image learning scores. Yetmore evidence for this finding is the number of positive comments about the candi-dates’ personal qualities: Bush had significantly more positive mentions than didKerry. This finding on image and issue learning could relate to the fact that Kerrywas often described as a “policy wonk” who knew the issues but was somewhat bor-ing, whereas Bush was described as a laid-back, regular guy from Texas who knewhow to get things done but was rather unsophisticated. Bush had more to gain if heran on his image and personal qualities than if he emphasized the Iraq war or theeconomy. Kerry had more to gain if he could use his thorough knowledge of policythan if he emphasized his personality. Thus, the candidate advertising was appropri-ate to each candidate’s strong points, and it seems participants’ reactions reflectedthese candidate strategies.

There were few differences in the learning or recall scores of the candidates basedon gender. However, female respondents said they learned significantly more aboutthe personal qualities of George Bush (M = 4.07, SD = 1.89) from the ads than didmales (M = 3.78, SD = 1.82), t = –2.07, df = 762, p = .04.

Another aspect of issue influence from political ads is their potential agenda-setting effect. For these young voters, exposure to ads did not have a significant agenda-setting effect. The issues ranked before and after ad exposure were similar. Again, itis important to keep in mind the experiment was conducted only days before theelection. The campaigns were coming to a close, and most voters could probablyname the most discussed issues of the campaign. When asked to list the five mostimportant issues facing the nation, it is possible many participants relied on their rec-ollection of the most talked-about issues. This could be why exposure to candidateadvertising did not significantly change their opinions—the candidates’ message andagenda and/or the overall media message and agenda had already been absorbed. It




is interesting that women’s agendas were more influenced by ad exposure. Before adexposure, women and men differed significantly on their agendas. For example, theeconomy was ranked the number one issue by men and the fourth issue by women.However, after ad exposure, whereas men kept the economy as their number oneissue, the issue jumped to number two on the women’s ranking. This could reflectthe lower levels of political information efficacy for women, because it appearswomen are more easily influenced by the ads’ issue agendas.

Critics of political advertising claim that ads hurt democracy because voters donot gain any valuable information from ads and the ads only make voters more cyn-ical of the election process. This study shows otherwise: Young voters’ feelings ofpolitical information efficacy significantly increased, and general political cynicismlevels did not significantly change. It could be that young voters have become soaccustomed to political advertising that they accept it as a legitimate source of infor-mation. Young voters seem satisfied with ads and feel comfortable using the infor-mation in ads for decision making. Additionally, both men and women exhibit higherlevels in political information efficacy after viewing the ads. However, womenshowed somewhat lower levels of political information efficacy than men. On a sim-ilar note, women seem more cynical than men. A possible reason for this is the tra-ditional masculine qualities of politics and the recent emergence of women inpolitics. There are fewer female role models in the political world, and women polit-ical reporters are not as abundant as men. Without a reflection of themselves in thepolitical sphere, women may feel more alienated from politics and become morecynical and less confident in their political information efficacy.

Notes

1. The 13 universities and the number of participants in each location were as follows: University ofFlorida (n = 113), University of Missouri (n = 88), Virginia Tech (n = 47), Iowa State (n = 123), Universityof Kansas (n = 80), University of Colorado, Denver (n = 35), University of Akron (n = 18), St. Cloud StateUniversity (n = 27), Texas A&M Commerce (n = 30), University of Oklahoma (n = 23), University ofNew Haven (n = 31), Consumes River College (n = 16), and University of Texas at San Antonio (n = 133).

2. The ads were obtained from the National Journal’s campaign ad archive and were retrieved October 22,2004, from http://www.nationaljournal.com.

3. The 12 bipolar adjective pairs used were qualified–unqualified, sophisticated–unsophisticated, honest–dishonest, believable–unbelievable, successful–unsuccessful, attractive–unattractive, friendly–unfriendly,sincere–insincere, calm–excitable, aggressive–unaggressive, strong–weak, active–inactive.

4. The eight-item cynicism index was composed of the following measures: (a) Whether I vote or nothas no influence on what politicians do, (b) One never knows what politicians really think, (c) People likeme don’t have any say about what the government does, (d) Sometimes politics and government seem socomplicated that a person like me can’t really understand what’s going on, (e) One can be confident thatpoliticians will always do the right thing, (f) Politicians often quickly forget their election promises aftera political campaign is over, (g) Politicians are more interested in power than in what the people think,and (h) One cannot always trust what politicians say.

5. The four-item information efficacy index was composed of the following measures: (a) I considermyself well qualified to participate in politics, (b) I think that I am better informed about politics and




government than most people, (c) I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of the important politicalissues facing our country, and (d) If a friend asked me about the presidential election, I feel I would haveenough information to help my friend figure out who to vote for.

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Lynda Lee Kaid (PhD, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale) is a professor of telecommunicationat the University of Florida.

Monica Postelnicu (PhD, University of Florida) is an assistant professor in the Manship School of MassCommunication at Louisiana State University.

Kristen Landreville was a graduate student in the College of Journalism and Communications at the timethis study was conducted.

Hyun Jung Yun is a graduate student in the College of Journalism and Communications and theDepartment of Political Science at the University of Florida.

Abby Gail LeGrange is a graduate student in the College of Journalism and Communications at theUniversity of Florida.




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