Patrick J. Kenney – författare

This book offers a bold, comprehensive look at how campaigns actually work, from the framing of issues to media coverage to voters' decisions. In so doing, it challenges the common wisdom that campaigns are a noisy, symbolic aspect of electoral politics, in which the outcomes are determined mainly by economic variables or presidential popularity. Campaigns, the authors argue, do matter in the political process. Examining contested U.S. Senate races between 1988 and 1992, Kim Kahn and Patrick Kenney explore the details of the candidates' strategies and messages, the content, tone, and bias of the media coverage, and the attitudes and behaviors of potential voters. Kahn and Kenney discover that when the competition between candidates is strong, political issues become clearly defined, and the voting population responds. Through a mix of survey data, content analysis, and interviews, the authors demonstrate how competition influences serious political debates in elections. Candidates take stands and compare themselves to their opponents.The news media offer more coverage of the races, presenting evaluations of the candidates' positions, critiques of their political careers, and analyses of their campaign ads. In response, the voters pay closer attention to the rhetoric of the candidates as they learn more about central campaign themes, often adjusting their own voting criteria. The book concentrates on Senate races because of the variance in campaign strategy and spending, media coverage, and voter reactions, but many of the findings apply to elections at all levels.

In Choices in a Chaotic Campaign, Kim Fridkin and Patrick Kenney explore the dynamic nature of citizens' beliefs and behaviors in response to the historic 2020 presidential campaign. In today's political environment where citizens can effortlessly gather information, it is important to move beyond standard political characteristics and consider the impact of pre-existing psychological predispositions. Fridkin and Kenney argue these predispositions influence assessments of campaign events and issues, and ultimately alter citizens' voting decisions. The book relies on data from an original three-wave panel study of over 4,000 people interviewed in September, October, and immediately after Election Day in November 2020. The timing of the surveys provides the analytical leverage to explore how views of the campaign alter citizens' impressions of the candidates. The book demonstrates that expanding the relevant citizen characteristics to include psychological predispositions increases our ability to understand how campaigns influence voters' decisions at the ballot box.