Continuously Campaigning for Volatile Voters? How policy positions and leadership images affect citizens’ vote intentions before and during election campaigns, the Netherlands 2006-2012

Programme Group Challenges to Democratic Representation

This project is funded by an NWO Research Talent scholarship. It looks at to what extent the Dutch electorate volatility is affected by leadership images and policy positions in the media, before and during campaigns.

Funded by: NWO Research Talent

Period:  09-2013 until 08-2016

The Dutch electorate has become highly volatile. Yet, it remains unclear to what extent volatility is affected by leadership images and policy positions in the media, before and during campaigns. 

This study:

1. Performs content analysis of news between 2006 and 2012 to assess the attention to images and positions. 
2. Studies the media effects by linking media reports to existing panel data 2006-2012 (95,485 respondents, 103 waves). 
3. Studies the mechanisms that explain media effects, using another panel study collected during the 2012 campaign (5 waves). 
4. Conducts experiments to cross validate the results of earlier analyses.

Published by  AISSR

26 September 2014