Campaigning to the New American Electorate: Advertising to Latino Voters

211 Pages·2010·1.61 MB·English

by  Marisa Abrajano

Campaigning to the New American Electorate

Campaigning to the
New American Electorate
Advertising to Latino Voters
Marisa A. Abrajano
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2010 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights
reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University
Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abrajano, Marisa, 1977–
Campaigning to the new American electorate : advertising to Latino voters / Marisa A.
Abrajano.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8047-6895-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8047-6896-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Advertising, Political—United States. 2. Political campaigns—United
States. 3. Hispanic Americans—Politics and government. I. Title.
JK2281.A26 2010
324.70973—dc22
2009052985
Typeset by Motto Publishing Services in 10/14 Minion
This book is dedicated to my parents,
Jess and Mary Abrajano, for all their
sacrifi ces, support, and unconditional love.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Campaigning to a Changing American Electorate 1
2 A Th eory of Information-Based Advertising 17
3 Campaigning to Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the U.S. 31
4 Candidates’ Advertising Strategies 53
5 Advertising Eff ects on the Latino Vote 84
6 Th e Consequences of an Information-Based
Advertising Strategy 99
7 Th e Future of Ethnically Targeted Campaigns 138
8 Epilogue: Th e 2008 Campaigns 147
Appendix A: Coding the Advertisements 157
Appendix B: Constructing the Ad Exposure Variable 161
Appendix C: Voter Learning and Vote-Choice
Model Specifi cation 165
Notes 169
References 179
Index 191

Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK, A WORK IN PROGRESS since 2003, would not have been possible without
encouragement, advice, and suggestions from so many individuals. I am most
indebted to my graduate advisor and now collaborator, Jonathan Nagler, for
the countless hours of advice and suggestions. It is really diffi cult to express
in words my deep gratitude for all the support he has provided throughout
my graduate career and postgraduate life as junior faculty. Th is book is truly
a refl ection of all the years of training and mentorship that he provided. I
also thank Mike Alvarez for being such a great mentor and for his constant
encouragement and motivation.
I was fortunate to receive feedback on an earlier version of this project
from the political science departments at Brown University; Dartmouth
College; Texas A&M University; the University of California, San Diego
(UCSD); the University of Connecticut; the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign; Th e University of Texas at Austin; and the University of Wash-
ington. My colleagues at UCSD—Amy Bridges, Gary Cox, Steve Erie, Zoltan
Hajnal, Th ad Kousser, Mat McCubbins, Megumi Naoi, Keith Poole, Sam Pop-
kin, and Sebastian Saiegh—have off ered very helpful suggestions and support
on the project over the years. I off er a most heartfelt thanks to Zoli in particu-
lar for reading the entire manuscript and providing so many thoughtful and
constructive comments. I thank Gary for his assistance in the development
of the policy complexity scale, and Mat for his words of encouragement dur-
ing the book review and publication process. Sebastian painstakingly read
the manuscript and off ered endless hours of advice and support, especially
in the bleakest of times. I thank also Neal Beck, Ben Bishin, Feryal Cherif,
ix