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Preaching to the Choir or Proselytizing to the Opposition: Examining the Use of Campaign Websites in State Legislative Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2023

Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod Open the ORCID record for Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod [Opens in a new window]
Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod*
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina, Department of Political Science, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
*
Email: meyerguj@mailbox.sc.edu
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Abstract

The Internet has spawned a renewed hope for facilitating increased access to candidate information for voters. However, the nationalization and polarization of constituents have left many candidates averse to the risks of personalized campaigns, especially in subnational elections. Under what conditions are state candidates willing to establish a personalized web presence as opposed to relying on partisanship? This study introduces a novel dataset of campaign website presence for the 2018 and 2020 state legislative elections. During this time, approximately one-third of state legislative candidates opted to forgo a personalized campaign website. District-level constituent ideology was significantly correlated with the website use, even when controlling for district education, income, age, and race, and the candidate’s competitive position. District ideological homogeneity encouraged website use across both parties, while adversarial district ideology corresponded to low website use among Republicans. The results indicate that state legislative candidates, especially Republican candidates, are far more likely to preach to their partisan choir rather than incur the risks of proselytizing among their partisan opposition. The results reiterate the divergent responses of the political parties regarding partisan polarization and shed light on the impact of nationalization within state legislative campaigns.

Keywords

campaignspolitical communicationideologyparties and electionsmass media
Type
Original Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 2023 , pp. 166 - 186
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press and State Politics & Policy Quarterly

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