Public Attention to Information in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election Campaign

• In Event: Parties and the Media: New Research and Directions for Study

Abstract

The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election Campaign was unique in a variety of aspects. Americans were making their choices amidst the backdrop of a global coronavirus pandemic, historic racial protests, and a host of inaccurate claims about the major party candidates. To understand what information reached ordinary Americans about this election, a team from CNN, Georgetown, and the University of Michigan conducted a nationally representative RDD telephone study for 12 weeks asking Americans an open-ended question about what they had seen, read, or heard about the major party candidates in the last few days. We used textual analysis tools to examine the words Americans associated with each candidate and topic modeling to understand how the things Americans mentioned about the candidates and the campaign shifted over time. The results of this research echoed a theme of the campaign wherein the things that were salient about Joe Biden were fairly consistent from week to week whereas there was far more variability in the terms and topics used in conjunction with Donald Trump. Despite this variability, however, recalled information about Donald Trump overwhelmingly focused on a single issue throughout the election cycle — a large portion of Americans were focused on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. In this paper, we illustrate both the stability and variability in Americans’ recalled information about the 2020 candidates and provide an assessment of how the use of various terms corresponded with sentiment toward each candidate.

Authors

• Jonathan M. Ladd, Georgetown University

• Michael W. Traugott, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• Josh Pasek, University of Michigan

• Lisa Singh, Georgetown University

• Leticia Bode, Georgetown University

• Stuart N. Soroka, UCLA