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This study investigated the ways in which motivations and goals affect patterns of political information‐seeking and the consequent structure of memory about candidates. Undergraduate participants used a computerized system that displayed different layers of information about fictional political candidates; the system recorded the strategies they used to search through this information. Results showed that motivations to engage in effortful processing produced tendencies to engage in within‐candidate searches, better recall, and memory structures clustered by candidate. The goal of forming impressions of the candidates, which was expected to lead to within‐candidate searching, was in fact modestly associated with weaker tendencies to do so, once effort was taken into account. Impression‐formation goals, however, were associated with less attribute‐based memory structures. The findings confirm that the manner in which people acquire candidate information has important consequences for the way they store that information in memory, and that these processes vary according to individual motivations and goals.

Abstract
This paper assesses differences between women and men political candidates in their likelihood to interact with peers who share the same gender, political affiliation, electoral district, incumbency, age, and the governmental status of their party. Using Twitter (currently X) data from Finland's 2019 election campaign, we find a tendency towards homophily—a tendency to interact predominantly with similar others—among all candidates across the various studied characteristics. However, some gender differences in the tendency towards homophily emerge. Notably, women are more inclined than men to retweet candidates from their own party but are less likely to retweet peers with the same incumbency status and the same gender. Our multivariate analyses further show that retweet tendencies based on age, shared electoral district and party governmental status exhibit no significant gender disparities. These nuanced variations in homophilous relations highlight the complex interplay between gender and other characteristics in candidates' social media interactions during electoral campaigns.

Moral reframing involves crafting persuasive arguments that appeal to the targets' moral values but argue in favor of something they would typically oppose. Applying this technique to one of the most politically polarizing events—political campaigns—we hypothesized that messages criticizing one's preferred political candidate that also appeal to that person's moral values can decrease support for the candidate. We tested this claim in the context of the 2016 American presidential election. In Study 1, conservatives reading a message opposing Donald Trump grounded in a more conservative value (loyalty) supported him less than conservatives reading a message grounded in more liberal concerns (fairness). In Study 2, liberals reading a message opposing Hillary Clinton appealing to fairness values were less supportive of Clinton than liberals in a loyalty-argument condition. These results highlight how moral reframing can be used to overcome the rigid stances partisans often hold and help develop political acceptance.

Issue trespassing is defined as a policy proposal of one party's candidate derived from the opponent's typical partisan platform as a means of generalizing the policy space, in order to garner more votes. In the 1988 presidential election, Democrat Michael Dukakis pledged to increase national defense, a traditionally Republican stance, while Republican George Bush campaigned on promises to create 30 million more jobs & to become the education president. Here, data obtained in a nationally representative telephone survey (N = 1,875 respondents), conducted just prior to the general election, are used to examine voter familiarity with unfamiliar candidate claims & the attribution of issues to both party affiliation & campaign exposure. It is found that Bush's attempt to target voters through expanding beyond the traditional Republican platform was not successful, but only because voters identified these pledges with Dukakis. Ambiguity is not advised during campaigns because already confused voters may ignore the issue, or worse, endorse the opponent. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 17 References. Adapted from the source document.

The strategy of ambiguity counsels candidates for office to take up some policy positions in the territory of the opposing party. Using evidence from the 1988 presidential election, examines how aware voters were of incidents of 'issue trespassing'; whether attention to the electoral campaign helped voters become more aware; and the strategy's electoral payoff. (Abstract amended)

This study examines the effects of candidate religiosity, candidate secularism, and voter fundamentalism on voters' support for a political candidate. Seven effects were tested: 1) the religiosity effect, which suggests that a religious candidate will be supported more than a nonreligious candidate; 2) the secularism effect, which suggests that a secular candidate will be supported more than a nonsecular candidate; 3) the JFK effect, which suggests that a secular religious candidate will be supported more than a nonsecular religious candidate; 4) the deviant effect--an opposite of the JFK effect--, which suggests that a secular religious candidate constitutes a group deviant, and thus will be supported less than a nonsecular religious candidate; 5) the moderating effect of voter fundamentalism, which suggests that low fundamentalists will display the secularism and JFK effects whereas high fundamentalists will display the religiosity and deviant effects; 6) the controversial issue effect, which suggests that, since secularism is a controversial issue, neither secular nor nonsecular candidates will be supported more than a candidate who says nothing about secularism; and 7) the relative amount of information effect, which suggests that adding more information about a candidate's issue positions will decrease the relative influence of other issue positions on voters' evaluation of the candidate. The study employed an experimental design. To manipulate candidate religiosity, the candidate was either described or not described as religious. To manipulate secularism, the candidate was described as favoring policies that endorsed religion-state separation, favoring policies that endorsed religion-state blending, or as not possessing any particular secularism policies. The dependent variables were the likelihood of voters to vote for the candidate, voters' attitude toward the candidate, and perceived competence and integrity of the candidate. The findings support the religiosity effect and the secularism effect, which ...