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| ***Election and Campaign Research*** Among the diverse scientific disciplines supported through NSF research grants, political science yields particularly fascinating and timely insights during this election season. NSF now supports 130 grants at institutions nationwide to study political elections and other issues related to voting. Below are examples. For more information on NSF political science research, please contact George Chartier, (703) 292-8070, gchartie@nsf.gov Contents of this Tipsheet:
ADVERTISING: POLITICS, LIES AND VIDEOTAPEA significant and growing percentage of images Americans see in TV political ads are technologically altered to create false or misleading impressions. Worse: the camera tricks largely succeed in influencing voting decisions. These are the conclusions of an NSF-supported study at the University of Oklahoma where researchers have analyzed more than 2,000 campaign ads broadcast from 1952 to 1992. Lynda Lee Kaid, director of the Political Communication Center, looked for evidence of manipulations and found plenty: bright color images of rival candidates were made dark and grainy; sinister shadows or suspicious blurs were added; faces were stretched; sound and pictures were slowed to a drunken pace or energized with artificial speed. Using the same techniques, Kaid and her research team showed audiences "clean" and altered versions of ads and found that the distortions did what political advertisers hope for: they swayed viewers' perceptions and the likelihood of voting for a candidate. Bottom line: 42 percent of ads in 1992 were deliberately distorted; early findings suggest that percentage is even higher for the 1996 campaign. Contact: Lynda Lee Kaid, (405) 325-1571, lkaid@uoknor.edu
LOVE DEMOCRACY, HATE DEMOCRACYAmericans love the principle of democracy, but don't always like to see its essential process in practice, according to John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, University of Nebraska political scientists. Their NSF-supported research indicates that Americans may defend democracy's ideals but also deplore the deals and debates -- all the squabbling among their legislators, and sometimes rancorous exchanges between the Capitol and the White House -- that epitomize the democratic process at work. "We want it both ways," says Hibbing. "We want to know that our democratic system is open, but we don't like seeing what goes on in committee meetings. It reminds us that the public is often at odds with itself," which is not the image of a big, happy family that Americans prefer. The public blames politicians and the press for creating controversies, and in the long run this denial of our society's differences and diversity is unhealthy, Hibbing warns. He and Theiss-Morse turned their research into a book, "Congress as Public Enemy" (Cambridge University Press, 1995) which recently won an American Political Science Association award. Contact: John Hibbing, (402) 472-3220, jhibbing@unlinfo.unl.edu or Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, (402) 472-3221, eat@unlinfo.unl.edu
PUBLIC OPINION AND ELECTORAL BEHAVIORThe NSF-funded National Election Studies (NES) program at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research has up to five decades of data tracing public opinions and electoral behavior. Among the data: 43 percent of Americans surveyed in 1958 believed that "people in government waste tax money"; in 1994, 70 percent expressed that opinion. Offered the statement "Public officials don't care what people think," 35 percent of those surveyed in 1952 thought so; in 1994, nearly twice as many -- 66 percent -- agreed. Here's another statistic: During the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy campaign, 21 percent of Americans surveyed said they wore campaign buttons or displayed bumper stickers, compared with 11 percent during the 1992 Bush-Clinton race. NES also has a store of statistics on social and religious characteristics of the American electorate, public opinion on issues like health care and affirmative action, and evaluations of political parties and presidential and congressional candidates. Contact: Thomas Ivacko, NES administrator; or Steven Rosenstone, NES principal investigator, (313) 764-5494, nes@umich.edu; or, for data on religion and politics, call David Leege, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame who chairs the NES Board of Overseers, (219) 631-7809, leege.1@nd.edu To access the database, see: http://www.umich.edu/~nes
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