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Article: Elections: personal popularity in U.S. presidential elections.
- Article from:
- Presidential Studies Quarterly
- Article date:
- March 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Center for the Study of the Presidency. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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As Election Day 2004 approaches, there will undoubtedly be a lot of talk concerning which major party candidate is most personally appealing. A commonly held view is that presidential elections are largely personality contests, and that the candidate with the best-liked personality wins. If such a view is correct, then presidential elections are fairly similar to elections for class president in high school, albeit on a much larger scale. But is this really the case? Based on a careful analysis of national survey data from the last 11 presidential elections, this article concludes that such a view is unfounded.
Despite commonplace assertions from pundits that the ...