John G Geer
Biographic Data
| ID | 1534436 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John G Geer |
| GIVEN NAMES | John G |
| FAMILY NAME | Geer |
| SIGNATURE | GEER J G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vanderbilt University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 695 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Rethinking the Concept of Negativity: An Empirical Approach
Over the last twenty years, there has been a tremendous amount written on “negativity” in political campaigns. Yet, there is a conceptual disconnect between the definition of negativity used by researchers and how citizens define negativity. In this article, we show how large this disparity is and what its consequences are. Using a nationally representative online survey of 17,400 Americans and nearly 100 scholars of American politics who viewed …
Courting the Women’s Vote: The Emotional, Cognitive, and Persuasive Effects of Gender-Based Appeals in Campaign Advertisements
Negativity, Information, and Candidate Position-Taking
The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of how negativity affects voters’ assessments of the positions candidates take on issues. We argue that the inferences people make about candidates’ positions on issues differ depending on whether the information they encounter comes from attack or self-promotional statements. Specifically, we posit that attacks offer two pieces of information to voters—insight into the positions of the ta…
The News Media and the Rise of Negativity in Presidential Campaigns
Negative ads have become increasingly common in presidential campaigns. Figure 1 well illustrates this point (see also West 2009). The upcoming 2012 elections will almost surely augment this upward trend of more and more negativity. In fact, with the emergence of Super Pacs, the share of attack ads in 2012 will likely be significantly higher than in 2008, which in and of itself was the high-water mark for attack ads in the modern era. The harsh t…
C. Neal Tate
C. Neal Tate, born October 17, 1943, passed away September 13, 2009, in Nashville, Tennessee. At the time of his death, Neal was the Alexander Heard Distinguished Service Professor, professor of political science, and professor of law at Vanderbilt University, where he had also served as chair of the political science department since 2003. He had previously served on the faculty of the University of North Texas from 1970 through 2003. With a dee…
Two steps forward, one step back? Bias in the 2008 presidential election
Stanley Kelley, Jr
Stanley Kelley, Jr., a creative scholar and legendary teacher at Princeton University, died on January 17, 2010, at the age of 83
Lynn Vavreck. The Message Matters: The Economy and Presidential Campaigns
Around June 2008, we started to read or hear predictions from political scientists that Senator Obama would soon become President Obama. These forecasts of an Obama victory relied heavily on the state of the economy. The economy in June was not doing well, and various economic indicators were plugged into time-tested regression models that yielded estimates suggesting that Barack Obama would be taking the oath of office in January 2009. These pre…
Beyond Negativity: The Effects of Incivility on the Electorate
There is much concern among pundits and political observers that incivility undermines our electoral process. Yet we have little evidence that actually documents whether incivility has such pernicious effects. This article seeks to advance our understanding of the influence of incivility on the electorate. We argue that three dimensions are central to understanding both the perceptions and effects of different types of campaign messages: tone (ne…
Filling in the Blanks: A New Method for Estimating Campaign Effects
Scholars have invested a great deal of effort in trying to estimate the impact of political campaigns on the public. While progress has been made, one fundamental problem continues to plague our attempts to study campaigns: the lack of good, detailed data about the behaviour of candidates. In the United States, for instance, the presidential battle is a national struggle that unfolds locally on the stages of fifty states, yet most data collection…
Polling to Govern: Public Opinion and Presidential Leadership
Experimenting With the Balancing Hypothesis
The reasons why divided government is on the rise in the United States remain unclear. Of the explanations offered, Fiorina's (1992) balancing hypothesis—the idea that voters intentionally cast their ballots in a way that would increase the prospects of split party control—has drawn the most attention. This study gathered empirical evidence to test the hypothesis; its focus was not on whether citizens want divided government, but rather on whethe…
Remembering Attack Ads: An Experimental Investigation of Radio
Parties and Partisanship: A Brief Introduction
A Spot Check: Casting Doubt on the Demobilizing Effect of Attack Advertising
Theory: Recent research contends that campaign advertising demobilizes the electorate, with particularly strong effects among political Independents. We dispute this claim, arguing instead that there is little reason to expect a powerful relationship between the tone of campaign advertising and voter tumout. Attack advertising may depress tumout among some voters, but it is likely to stimulate others by increasing their store of political informa…
Creating impressions: An experimental investigation of political advertising on television
William Jennings Bryan on the Yellow Brick Road
Grabbing attention: An experimental investigation of headlines during campaigns
1993). Grabbing attention: An experimental investigation of headlines during campaigns. Political Communication: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 175-191
Party Competition and the Prisoner's Dilemma: An Argument for the Direct Primary
A commonly held belief among students of American politics is that competition within political parties undermines the ability of parties to foster the democratic control of government. This essay questions this view. Relying on the logic of the Prisoner's Dilemma, we argue that intraparty competition is an important ingredient for parties to be responsive to the wishes of voters. This argument is unorthodox, since most scholars think intraparty …
New deal issues and the American electorate, 1952?1988
Critical Realignments and the Public Opinion Poll
With the advent of the public opinion poll, politicians began to have access to highly reliable information about the electorate's views on issues. Prior to this development, party leaders could only make educated guesses about public opinion. These guesses, however, were often incorrect, since they were based on unsystematic evidence. But armed with polls, parties should avoid such errors, approximating Downs' (1957) assumption of certainty. If …
The Electorate's Partisan Evaluations: Evidence of a Continuing Democratic Edge
Journal Article THE ELECTORATE'S PARTISAN EVALUATIONS: EVIDENCE OF A CONTINUING DEMOCRATIC EDGE Get access JOHN G. GEER JOHN G. GEER JOHN G. GEER teaches at Arizona State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 55, Issue 2, SUMMER 1991, Pages 218–231, https://doi.org/10.1086/269253 Published: 01 January 1991
Do Open-Ended Questions Measure "Salient" Issues
Closed-ended questions dominate most interview schedules. Yet the almost exclusive use of this form did not arise because open-ended questions, its major competitor, proved to be weak indicators of public opinion. Instead, responses from open-ended questions proved more difficult and expensive to code and analyze than those from closed-ended questions. Although such practical concerns are important, the real task of survey researchers is to measu…
What Do Open-Ended Questions Measure
Open-ended questions are frequently used by survey researchers to measure public opinion. Some scholars, however, have doubts about how accurately these kinds of questions measure the views of the public. A chief concern is that the questions tap, in part, people's ability to articulate a response, not their underlying attitudes. This paper tests whether this concern is warranted. Using open-ended questions from the Center for Political Studies, …
Assessing the Representativeness of Electorates in Presidential Primaries
One of the widely held beliefs of students of American politics is that electorates in presidential primaries are of the following. Specifically, scholars believe that voters in primaries are better paid, better educated, and more ideologically extreme than the following. This paper challenges this belief. My results show that the following, not voters in primaries, are better educated, better paid, and more ideologically extreme. This finding em…
Beyond Negativity: The Effects of Incivility on the Electorate
There is much concern among pundits and political observers that incivility undermines our electoral process. Yet we have little evidence that actually documents whether incivility has such pernicious effects. This article seeks to advance our understanding of the influence of incivility on the electorate. We argue that three dimensions are central to understanding both the perceptions and effects of different types of campaign messages: tone (ne…
A Spot Check: Casting Doubt on the Demobilizing Effect of Attack Advertising
Theory: Recent research contends that campaign advertising demobilizes the electorate, with particularly strong effects among political Independents. We dispute this claim, arguing instead that there is little reason to expect a powerful relationship between the tone of campaign advertising and voter tumout. Attack advertising may depress tumout among some voters, but it is likely to stimulate others by increasing their store of political informa…
Do Open-Ended Questions Measure "Salient" Issues
Closed-ended questions dominate most interview schedules. Yet the almost exclusive use of this form did not arise because open-ended questions, its major competitor, proved to be weak indicators of public opinion. Instead, responses from open-ended questions proved more difficult and expensive to code and analyze than those from closed-ended questions. Although such practical concerns are important, the real task of survey researchers is to measu…
Assessing the Representativeness of Electorates in Presidential Primaries
One of the widely held beliefs of students of American politics is that electorates in presidential primaries are of the following. Specifically, scholars believe that voters in primaries are better paid, better educated, and more ideologically extreme than the following. This paper challenges this belief. My results show that the following, not voters in primaries, are better educated, better paid, and more ideologically extreme. This finding em…
Creating impressions: An experimental investigation of political advertising on television
What Do Open-Ended Questions Measure
Open-ended questions are frequently used by survey researchers to measure public opinion. Some scholars, however, have doubts about how accurately these kinds of questions measure the views of the public. A chief concern is that the questions tap, in part, people's ability to articulate a response, not their underlying attitudes. This paper tests whether this concern is warranted. Using open-ended questions from the Center for Political Studies, …
The News Media and the Rise of Negativity in Presidential Campaigns
Negative ads have become increasingly common in presidential campaigns. Figure 1 well illustrates this point (see also West 2009). The upcoming 2012 elections will almost surely augment this upward trend of more and more negativity. In fact, with the emergence of Super Pacs, the share of attack ads in 2012 will likely be significantly higher than in 2008, which in and of itself was the high-water mark for attack ads in the modern era. The harsh t…
Rethinking the Concept of Negativity: An Empirical Approach
Over the last twenty years, there has been a tremendous amount written on “negativity” in political campaigns. Yet, there is a conceptual disconnect between the definition of negativity used by researchers and how citizens define negativity. In this article, we show how large this disparity is and what its consequences are. Using a nationally representative online survey of 17,400 Americans and nearly 100 scholars of American politics who viewed …
Rules Governing Presidential Primaries
Many observers of American politics have been highly critical of the proliferation of primaries that occurred in the 1970s. One of the reasons given for this unfavorable assessment is that the direct primary cannot consistently yield candidates who have broad electoral support--something that is thought necessary to win general elections. And since the major goal of parties is to win elections, this perceived shortcoming is cause for concern. In …
Two steps forward, one step back? Bias in the 2008 presidential election
Filling in the Blanks: A New Method for Estimating Campaign Effects
Scholars have invested a great deal of effort in trying to estimate the impact of political campaigns on the public. While progress has been made, one fundamental problem continues to plague our attempts to study campaigns: the lack of good, detailed data about the behaviour of candidates. In the United States, for instance, the presidential battle is a national struggle that unfolds locally on the stages of fifty states, yet most data collection…
Remembering Attack Ads: An Experimental Investigation of Radio
Courting the Women’s Vote: The Emotional, Cognitive, and Persuasive Effects of Gender-Based Appeals in Campaign Advertisements
Critical Realignments and the Public Opinion Poll
With the advent of the public opinion poll, politicians began to have access to highly reliable information about the electorate's views on issues. Prior to this development, party leaders could only make educated guesses about public opinion. These guesses, however, were often incorrect, since they were based on unsystematic evidence. But armed with polls, parties should avoid such errors, approximating Downs' (1957) assumption of certainty. If …
Grabbing attention: An experimental investigation of headlines during campaigns
1993). Grabbing attention: An experimental investigation of headlines during campaigns. Political Communication: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 175-191
Experimenting With the Balancing Hypothesis
The reasons why divided government is on the rise in the United States remain unclear. Of the explanations offered, Fiorina's (1992) balancing hypothesis—the idea that voters intentionally cast their ballots in a way that would increase the prospects of split party control—has drawn the most attention. This study gathered empirical evidence to test the hypothesis; its focus was not on whether citizens want divided government, but rather on whethe…
The Electorate's Partisan Evaluations: Evidence of a Continuing Democratic Edge
Journal Article THE ELECTORATE'S PARTISAN EVALUATIONS: EVIDENCE OF A CONTINUING DEMOCRATIC EDGE Get access JOHN G. GEER JOHN G. GEER JOHN G. GEER teaches at Arizona State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 55, Issue 2, SUMMER 1991, Pages 218–231, https://doi.org/10.1086/269253 Published: 01 January 1991
Polling to Govern: Public Opinion and Presidential Leadership
Negativity, Information, and Candidate Position-Taking
The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of how negativity affects voters’ assessments of the positions candidates take on issues. We argue that the inferences people make about candidates’ positions on issues differ depending on whether the information they encounter comes from attack or self-promotional statements. Specifically, we posit that attacks offer two pieces of information to voters—insight into the positions of the ta…
Party Competition and the Prisoner's Dilemma: An Argument for the Direct Primary
A commonly held belief among students of American politics is that competition within political parties undermines the ability of parties to foster the democratic control of government. This essay questions this view. Relying on the logic of the Prisoner's Dilemma, we argue that intraparty competition is an important ingredient for parties to be responsive to the wishes of voters. This argument is unorthodox, since most scholars think intraparty …
New deal issues and the American electorate, 1952?1988
Parties and Partisanship: A Brief Introduction
Rules Governing Presidential Primaries
Many observers of American politics have been highly critical of the proliferation of primaries that occurred in the 1970s. One of the reasons given for this unfavorable assessment is that the direct primary cannot consistently yield candidates who have broad electoral support--something that is thought necessary to win general elections. And since the major goal of parties is to win elections, this perceived shortcoming is cause for concern. In …
What Do Open-Ended Questions Measure
Open-ended questions are frequently used by survey researchers to measure public opinion. Some scholars, however, have doubts about how accurately these kinds of questions measure the views of the public. A chief concern is that the questions tap, in part, people's ability to articulate a response, not their underlying attitudes. This paper tests whether this concern is warranted. Using open-ended questions from the Center for Political Studies, …
Assessing the Representativeness of Electorates in Presidential Primaries
One of the widely held beliefs of students of American politics is that electorates in presidential primaries are of the following. Specifically, scholars believe that voters in primaries are better paid, better educated, and more ideologically extreme than the following. This paper challenges this belief. My results show that the following, not voters in primaries, are better educated, better paid, and more ideologically extreme. This finding em…
Critical Realignments and the Public Opinion Poll
With the advent of the public opinion poll, politicians began to have access to highly reliable information about the electorate's views on issues. Prior to this development, party leaders could only make educated guesses about public opinion. These guesses, however, were often incorrect, since they were based on unsystematic evidence. But armed with polls, parties should avoid such errors, approximating Downs' (1957) assumption of certainty. If …
The Electorate's Partisan Evaluations: Evidence of a Continuing Democratic Edge
Journal Article THE ELECTORATE'S PARTISAN EVALUATIONS: EVIDENCE OF A CONTINUING DEMOCRATIC EDGE Get access JOHN G. GEER JOHN G. GEER JOHN G. GEER teaches at Arizona State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 55, Issue 2, SUMMER 1991, Pages 218–231, https://doi.org/10.1086/269253 Published: 01 January 1991
Do Open-Ended Questions Measure "Salient" Issues
Closed-ended questions dominate most interview schedules. Yet the almost exclusive use of this form did not arise because open-ended questions, its major competitor, proved to be weak indicators of public opinion. Instead, responses from open-ended questions proved more difficult and expensive to code and analyze than those from closed-ended questions. Although such practical concerns are important, the real task of survey researchers is to measu…
Party Competition and the Prisoner's Dilemma: An Argument for the Direct Primary
A commonly held belief among students of American politics is that competition within political parties undermines the ability of parties to foster the democratic control of government. This essay questions this view. Relying on the logic of the Prisoner's Dilemma, we argue that intraparty competition is an important ingredient for parties to be responsive to the wishes of voters. This argument is unorthodox, since most scholars think intraparty …
New deal issues and the American electorate, 1952?1988
William Jennings Bryan on the Yellow Brick Road
Grabbing attention: An experimental investigation of headlines during campaigns
1993). Grabbing attention: An experimental investigation of headlines during campaigns. Political Communication: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 175-191
Creating impressions: An experimental investigation of political advertising on television
A Spot Check: Casting Doubt on the Demobilizing Effect of Attack Advertising
Theory: Recent research contends that campaign advertising demobilizes the electorate, with particularly strong effects among political Independents. We dispute this claim, arguing instead that there is little reason to expect a powerful relationship between the tone of campaign advertising and voter tumout. Attack advertising may depress tumout among some voters, but it is likely to stimulate others by increasing their store of political informa…
Parties and Partisanship: A Brief Introduction
Remembering Attack Ads: An Experimental Investigation of Radio
Polling to Govern: Public Opinion and Presidential Leadership
Experimenting With the Balancing Hypothesis
The reasons why divided government is on the rise in the United States remain unclear. Of the explanations offered, Fiorina's (1992) balancing hypothesis—the idea that voters intentionally cast their ballots in a way that would increase the prospects of split party control—has drawn the most attention. This study gathered empirical evidence to test the hypothesis; its focus was not on whether citizens want divided government, but rather on whethe…
Filling in the Blanks: A New Method for Estimating Campaign Effects
Scholars have invested a great deal of effort in trying to estimate the impact of political campaigns on the public. While progress has been made, one fundamental problem continues to plague our attempts to study campaigns: the lack of good, detailed data about the behaviour of candidates. In the United States, for instance, the presidential battle is a national struggle that unfolds locally on the stages of fifty states, yet most data collection…
Beyond Negativity: The Effects of Incivility on the Electorate
There is much concern among pundits and political observers that incivility undermines our electoral process. Yet we have little evidence that actually documents whether incivility has such pernicious effects. This article seeks to advance our understanding of the influence of incivility on the electorate. We argue that three dimensions are central to understanding both the perceptions and effects of different types of campaign messages: tone (ne…
Stanley Kelley, Jr
Stanley Kelley, Jr., a creative scholar and legendary teacher at Princeton University, died on January 17, 2010, at the age of 83
Lynn Vavreck. The Message Matters: The Economy and Presidential Campaigns
Around June 2008, we started to read or hear predictions from political scientists that Senator Obama would soon become President Obama. These forecasts of an Obama victory relied heavily on the state of the economy. The economy in June was not doing well, and various economic indicators were plugged into time-tested regression models that yielded estimates suggesting that Barack Obama would be taking the oath of office in January 2009. These pre…
C. Neal Tate
C. Neal Tate, born October 17, 1943, passed away September 13, 2009, in Nashville, Tennessee. At the time of his death, Neal was the Alexander Heard Distinguished Service Professor, professor of political science, and professor of law at Vanderbilt University, where he had also served as chair of the political science department since 2003. He had previously served on the faculty of the University of North Texas from 1970 through 2003. With a dee…
Two steps forward, one step back? Bias in the 2008 presidential election
The News Media and the Rise of Negativity in Presidential Campaigns
Negative ads have become increasingly common in presidential campaigns. Figure 1 well illustrates this point (see also West 2009). The upcoming 2012 elections will almost surely augment this upward trend of more and more negativity. In fact, with the emergence of Super Pacs, the share of attack ads in 2012 will likely be significantly higher than in 2008, which in and of itself was the high-water mark for attack ads in the modern era. The harsh t…
Negativity, Information, and Candidate Position-Taking
The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of how negativity affects voters’ assessments of the positions candidates take on issues. We argue that the inferences people make about candidates’ positions on issues differ depending on whether the information they encounter comes from attack or self-promotional statements. Specifically, we posit that attacks offer two pieces of information to voters—insight into the positions of the ta…
Rethinking the Concept of Negativity: An Empirical Approach
Over the last twenty years, there has been a tremendous amount written on “negativity” in political campaigns. Yet, there is a conceptual disconnect between the definition of negativity used by researchers and how citizens define negativity. In this article, we show how large this disparity is and what its consequences are. Using a nationally representative online survey of 17,400 Americans and nearly 100 scholars of American politics who viewed …
Political science (24 works) · Politics (22 works) · Law (19 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Presidential system (10 works) · Sociology (10 works)