Candidate Image

CANDIDATE IMAGE CONSISTS of the impressions that voters have of a candidate and the emotional affect (consisting of favorable or unfavorable feelings) associated with that candidate. The image component of a campaign tends to highlight a candidate's unique personal and political role characteristics more than a candidate's policy positions. Personal characteristics include a candidate's appearance, style, charisma, competence, empathy, integrity, and leadership. Political role characteristics include a candidate's record as a public leader, policy positions, and tendencies toward liberalism or conservatism, and positioning in the context [Page 109]of their political party. Images are formed through an interactive process between an individual's existing beliefs and the information provided by candidates, the media, political parties, and advocacy groups.

President Richard Nixon standing in a crowd of people at daughter Tricia Nixon's wedding at the White House, June 12, 1971-an opportunity for Nixon to enhance his popular image before the 1972 presidential election.

Campaigns seek to influence the impressions that voters have of a candidate by controlling the appearance and expressions of a candidate. They seek to establish widespread recognition of the candidate's name, and to make voters feel favorably disposed to the candidate. While critics of modern campaigns sometimes argue that candidate images are molded like clay, candidates generally do not conjure an image from scratch. Rather, candidates present themselves selectively to emphasize their personal strengths and deemphasize their weaknesses.

Candidates also try to frame their political role characteristics favorably. For example, experience in government may be portrayed as proof of a candidate's competence, while a lack of experience may be portrayed as having new ideas or as uncorrupted by the system.

Candidates in high visibility campaigns do not fully control the information used by voters to construct images of the candidates. News coverage may reinforce or detract from the images projected by a candidate, depending on the consistency of news content and candidate messages. Countervailing messages of opposing candidates, advocacy groups, or political parties that play roles in campaigns may also alter the images of a candidate. These alternative sources of information are important because each of these groups have objectives that differ from those of the candidate. The for-profit news media seek to gain audience share, as well as provide information to the public. The news media tend to present sensationalist stories about scandals or candidate gaffes because they draw audience attention. Such information contributes to impressions that differ from [Page 110]those intended by a candidate. Opposing candidates and political parties often seek to create an unfavorable effect associated with a targeted candidate's name through negative or attack advertisements.

A candidate's image depends on how voters see them. Voters do not bring everything they know to bear on what they are paying attention to, nor do they pay attention to the full range of information available in the environment. Instead, the construction of candidate images taps into relevant information stored in long-term memory and fragments of information gained from episodic exposure to a candidate through advertisements, appearances, or media coverage. The electorate constructs images of the candidates by making inferences and generalizations using these fragments of information, and by filling in the blanks using their existing beliefs—the cognitive networks of associated ideas about politics stored in long-term memory. Images are formed, reinforced, or modified as voters encounter new bits of information that interact with their existing information base stored in long-term memory, organized into networks of associated ideas. Individuals have different pieces of information in their cognitive networks of ideas, creating distinct patterns of beliefs that are used to interpret new information. Thus, a given bit of information may have different meaning to different people, so a candidate's image is largely in the eye of the beholder.

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