The Politics of Emotions and Uncertainty in the 2020 Presidential Campaign

• In Event: The Interplay between Emotions and Politics

Abstract

This proposal submits a chapter from a book manuscript in progress under the submitted title. The manuscript offers an analysis of the 2020 political landscape that shaped a campaign that traversed a fractured electorate driven by deep ideological divides, intense affective polarization, distressed institutions and norms. It was likely one of the most tumultuous and chaotic presidential elections since the American Civil War. The political landscape was shaped by the incumbent president, Donald Trump, who weaponized many features of the presidency and destabilized common democratic norms. The campaign was further complicated by a summer season of social unrest during a global public health crises. Meanwhile, there were several key achievements marking the election cycle that promised to demolished traditional barriers to gender and race in the Executive Branch such as Kamala Harris’ selection as Joe Biden’s running mate. That decision marked the first time a Black woman secured the Vice President nomination on a major party’s ticket. These offer a glimpse into some of contexts which voters navigated in that election.

The chapter to be presented will show a selected emphasizes on the analysis of voters’ emotions within the theories of political behavior and more specifically, emotions as motivated reasoning. Much of the research involving the role of emotions in politics situates its attention on political elites’ usage of emotive rhetoric and/or symbolism. The available research on political elites is important and necessary to understanding the changes in electoral contexts and institutions, and yield important findings that underscore this project. However, this work continues its emphasis on how voters respond to the persuasion strategies of candidates, elite messaging, cues, and symbols, and in turn, rely on and interpret emotions as salient political information.

A key contribution of this work is that it offers an integrated approach of Marcus’(2002) Affective Intelligence Theory (AIT) and Huddy and Gunnthorsdottir (2000) transfer of affect thesis to interpret how voters rely on their emotions as salient political information. The manuscript, and hence, chapter, is not a polemic that emotions matter in politics. Rather, it endeavors to empirically demonstrate how voters’ emotions work in political contexts, and specifically, the role they played in the recent era of unusual presidential elections.

The analysis uses survey data from the 2020 National Election Studies (NES), analysis uses statistical inference modeled to estimate candidate affect response (emotional responses) influence on voters’ attitudes in the following areas: 1) presidential approval with job performance assessments (testing incumbency effects) 2) economic appraisals based on the Lewis-Beck &Tien Model of election forecasting 3) domestic policy analysis on select domains 4) foreign affairs and national security (using domestic policies such as immigration to estimate attitudes of national security) and 5) social policy, morality issues, and controversies commonly referred to as “wedge issues.” 6) identity effects, how specific voter blocs interpreted and internalized the 2020 election. The transfer of affect thesis aids the interpretation of how voters’ emotional responses to the presidential candidates correlate with attitudes in specific directions on key issues in the 2020 elections.

Author

• Heather E. Yates, University of Central Arkansas