Chapter 15 Exercises

Conceptual Exercises

Exercise 15.1 — The Minimal Effects Argument In your own words, state the minimal effects hypothesis and explain why Lazarsfeld's Erie County panel study design was well-suited to detect opinion conversion if it occurred. Then identify three ways in which campaigns might have real effects that the Erie County design would fail to detect.

Exercise 15.2 — Activation vs. Conversion A political consultant claims: "Our persuasion program moved 50,000 voters from undecided to supporting our candidate." A political scientist responds: "That's probably activation, not conversion." Explain the difference. What additional data would you need to distinguish between the two interpretations?

Exercise 15.3 — The Decay Hypothesis You are advising a Senate campaign with $8 million to spend on television advertising between September 1 and November 7. Given what the literature says about advertising decay, draft a spending timeline that maximizes expected persuasion effects. What assumptions does your timeline require?

Exercise 15.4 — Agenda-Setting in Practice Candidate A "owns" healthcare and economic security as issues. Candidate B "owns" immigration and public safety. The most recent poll shows that among persuadable voters, the top-ranked issue is immigration (32%), followed by healthcare (28%), and economic security (24%). What communication strategy should Candidate A adopt? What are the risks of different approaches?

Exercise 15.5 — Incumbency Advantage Sources For each of the following sources of incumbency advantage, indicate whether it is: (a) a campaign effect (could be replicated by a challenger with equal resources), (b) a structural effect (intrinsic to holding office), or (c) ambiguous. Justify your classification. - Free mailing privileges (franking) - Experience running competitive elections - Government travel funded by taxpayers - Name recognition from prior elections - Access to constituent services staff - Accumulated donor network from prior campaigns - Legislative accomplishments to campaign on

Analytical Exercises

Exercise 15.6 — Calculating Campaign Effect Impact A structural model for a Senate race predicts: Candidate X wins 49.5% of the two-party vote with a 95% confidence interval of ±3 percentage points. The campaign believes its ground game can produce a 1.2 percentage-point mobilization effect among its supporters and a 0.4 percentage-point persuasion effect among persuadable voters.

a) What is Candidate X's expected final vote share incorporating campaign effects? b) What is the probability of winning given the structural baseline and campaign effects, assuming a normal distribution of outcomes? c) How large would the combined campaign effect need to be to give Candidate X a 75% probability of winning from this structural position?

Exercise 15.7 — Ground Game vs. Air War Allocation A campaign has $3 million for its final push. It can spend on: - Television: costs $200,000 per point of gross ratings points in target markets; research suggests 0.15 percentage points of vote-share movement per 10 points of GRP, with 50% decay in 2 weeks - Ground game: costs $50 per quality voter contact; research suggests 0.07 percentage points of vote share movement per 1,000 quality contacts, with lower decay (most contacts are in final 2 weeks)

Target market has 2 million persuadable voters. Calculate the expected vote-share impact of three allocation strategies: a) 100% television b) 100% ground game c) 50/50 split

Which is most effective? What assumptions are load-bearing in your analysis?

Exercise 15.8 — Prediction vs. Explanation A campaign model finds that Hispanic voters in suburban counties have a strong positive correlation with candidate support scores for the Democratic candidate. The campaign director says, "Let's pour resources into contacting Hispanic suburban voters — the model says they'll support us."

Identify at least three problems with this reasoning. What additional information would you need to determine whether contacting these voters is the right strategy?

Applied Exercises

Exercise 15.9 — Campaign Effects Audit You have been brought in as an outside analyst for the Garza campaign 30 days before Election Day. The internal tracking shows Garza at 48%, Whitfield at 49%, with 3% undecided. The structural model predicts a 47–53 deficit without campaigns.

Write a 600-word strategic memo addressing: a) What the tracking data tells us about campaign effects to date b) Which types of campaign effects (persuasion, activation, mobilization, agenda-setting) are most relevant given the race structure c) What specific activities you would prioritize in the final 30 days and why d) How you would monitor whether the strategy is working e) What scenarios would change your recommendation

Exercise 15.10 — Research Design Challenge You want to measure the causal effect of Garza's television advertising on vote intention. Propose a research design that could credibly estimate this effect. Address: a) Why a simple before-after comparison of tracking polls is insufficient b) What identification strategy (natural experiment, randomization, regression discontinuity, etc.) you would use c) What data you would need d) What threats to causal identification remain even with your design e) What ethical considerations apply if you are randomizing advertising exposure across geographic areas

Exercise 15.11 — The Lazarsfeld Redux Lazarsfeld found that selective exposure reduced the probability that campaign information would convert voters. In the contemporary media environment (social media algorithmic feeds, cable news self-selection, partisan podcasts), has the selective exposure problem gotten better or worse? Write a 400-word argument for your position, drawing on at least two specific features of contemporary media.