Who Will Win? The Media’s Role in the Formation of Electoral Expectations

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Electoral expectations as individual perceptions of who will win an election have long been studied by political scientists, particularly because they are perceived as one possible determinant of political attitudes and behavior. Much research has been done on identifying the factors explaining how electoral expectations are formed (Blais and Bodet, 2006; Irwin and van Holsteyn, 2002; Krizan, Miller, and Johar, 2010), how they affect political preferences (Morwitz and Pluzinski, 1996) and voting behavior (Bargsted and Kedar, 2009). In addition, forecasters have studied voters’ expectations as a method to predict election outcomes (Lewis-Beck and Skalaban, 1989; Lewis-Beck and Tien, 1999; Murr 2011; Graefe 2014).
By contrast, communication science has paid only little attention to the concept and therefore the role of the mass media as a potentially important source of electoral expectations has largely been ignored. This is all the more surprising since electoral expectations can be regarded as perceptions of (future) political public opinion (Shamir and Shamir, 2000), a concept well known and extensively researched in the field of communication. The panel concentrates on the media’s role in the context of electoral expectations by examining (1) the prevalence of specific cues to political public opinion within coverage (especially polls, subjective statements on political public opinion, and general media slant), (2) the role of these cues in the formation of electoral expectations, and (3) the consequences of expectations for political attitudes and behavior.

Sub Unit

• Political Communication

Chair

• Thomas Zerback, LMU Munich

Individual Presentations

• The “Surprised Loser” in U.S. Presidential Elections (1952-2012) - Barry A. Hollander, U of Georgia

• Be Published or Perish: Polls and Party Coverage in the Run up to the 2013 German Election Campaign - Sjoerd Stolwijk, U of Amsterdam; Andreas Schuck, U of Amsterdam

• Calling it Wrong: Partisan Media Effects on Electoral Expectations and Institutional Trust - Andrew M. Daniller, U of Pennsylvania; Laura Silver, University of Pennsylvania; Devra C. Moehler, U of Pennsylvania

• Perceived Opinion Climate Mediates the Effect of Selective Exposure on Political Polarization: Experimental Evidence From the Netherlands - Damian Trilling, U of Amsterdam; Marijn Van Klingeren, ASCoR, U of Amsterdam; Yariv Tsfati, U of Haifa

• Ghost Light or Light House? Investigating Poll Reporting, Subjective Assessments, and Media Bias in Public Opinion Coverage in an Election Context - Angela Nienierza, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Muenchen; Carsten E. Reinemann, U of Munich; Thomas Zerback, LMU Munich

Respondent

• Patricia Moy, U of Washington