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Voting Intentions and the 1980 Carter‐Reagan Debate 1
Author(s) -
Davis Mark H.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1982.tb00880.x
Subject(s) - perception , context (archaeology) , psychology , voting , social psychology , democracy , political science , politics , law , history , archaeology , neuroscience
A study was conducted to assess the impact of the 1980 Carter‐Reagan debate on subsequent voting intentions. As predicted, perceptions of Reagan's debate performance significantly affected respondents' post‐debate intention to vote for him; perceptions of Carter's debate performance were not significantly related to post‐debate intentions regarding Carter. Additionally, it was found that while party identification had a predictable effect on debate perceptions (Republican respondents favoring Reagan; Democratic respondents favoring Carter), this effect did not prevent respondents from also making more “objective” assessments of the candidates' performance. Within the general context of viewing “their” candidate more favorably, respondents (1) perceived Carter as more honest in the debate, (2) perceived Reagan as stronger, and (3) perceived Reagan as performing better overall in the debate.