Doctoral Dissertation Research: How Voters Use Campaign Information: On-line Versus Memory-Based Processing in a Presidential Election

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9411162 Lau During election campaigns voters are exposed to large amounts of information about candidates. In some cases voters can choose whether to pay attention, while in other cases the information is so ubiquitous that voters can hardly avoid it. But in all cases, the flow of information is dynamic, one day information of a candidate's position on an issue is readily available, the next day it can hardly be found. Yet, researchers use static surveys as the method of choice for studying campaigns. Surveys, however, can only capture a single point in time, relying generally on the voters' memories of what they have seen and paid attention to. The elections's dynamic nature is missing. One important result of this mismatch is that while we can make good predictions of the vote choice, we cannot do nearly as good a job describing how voters come to their choice. This Doctoral Dissertation research project is designed to develop a better understanding of the vote decision process by using a dynamic, computer-based methodology to trace information acquisition and decision-making while it is occurring. In particular, the question of whether voters employ an "on-line" or a "memory-based" evaluation process will be explored. Traditional voting models all suggest a memory-based model, where voters store information about candidates during the campaign and search the contents of memory in order to evaluate and choose at the "moment-of-decision." Were the model correct, then surveys conducted near the time of decision would be an ideal methodology for studying the vote decision because memories could be accurately recalled. The on-line model argues instead that voters maintain an "on-line tally" representing the current evaluation of a candidate; when the time comes to make a choice, voters need not search memory for detailed information. Indeed, that information has often been forgotten. Instead, they merely recall the tally associated with each candi date and choose accordingly.