This Article Full Text (OnlineFirst PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Ensley, M. J. Articles by Bucy, E. P. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Do Candidate Positions Matter? The Effect of the Gay Marriage Question on Gubernatorial Elections

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mjensley{at}gmail.com.

	Abstract

This article demonstrates that candidate positions on the ballot measure to ban gay marriage had an effect on gubernatorial voting. With exit poll data from three states in 2006, we find that the effect of support for the ban is at least twice as large when the candidates adopted divergent positions. Support for the ban has a smaller but significant effect on vote choice when the candidate positions converge, which suggests an indiscriminate priming effect. These findings are supported with aggregate data from 45 gubernatorial races in 2004 and 2006. The analysis reveals that Republican candidates benefited if candidate positions diverged, with the Democratic candidates expressing opposition to the gay marriage ban.

First published on September 10, 2009
American Politics Research 2009, doi:10.1177/1532673X09337190


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?