Content-Type: text/html Going Negative on the Internet Going Negative on the Internet: How Presidential Candidates Used the World Wide Web During The 2000 Presidential Campaign By Robert H. Wicks Associate Professor Department of Communication Kimpel Hall 417 University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR 72701 [log in to unmask] 501-575-5958 Souley Boubacar Graduate Student Kimpel Hall 417 University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR 72701 Kayla Johnson Graduate Student Kimpel Hall 417 University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR 72701 Paper submitted for presentation to the Communication Theory and Methodology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication at the annual meeting in Washington, DC, August 2001. Going Negative on the Internet: How Presidential Candidates Used the World Wide Web During The 2000 Presidential Campaign -Abstract- This study examines the issues and topics that dominated the 2000 presidential campaign on Internet homepages of George W. Bush and Al Gore. It also investigated the extent to which the two major party candidates used negativity as strategy to strengthen their position and to weaken support for the opposing candidate. The content analysis of the presidential web sites performed reveals that much like contemporary political television advertising, web sites were rife with attacks on one's opponent. Nearly three quarters of the information posted was negative in nature. About one quarter of the messages posed focused on education and social security. Going Negative on the Internet: How Presidential Candidates Used the World Wide Web During The 2000 Presidential Campaign INTRODUCTION Candidates for public office in the United States have long understood that attacking one's opponent through the media is an effective way of attracting voters. The strategy is intended to weaken support for the opposing candidate thereby strengthening one's own position. Negativity and attack behavior have become a "staple" in the American political campaigns. As Wattenberg and Brians (1999) have observed, few developments have altered the character of the American election campaigns as dramatically as the rise of negative advertising. While candidates themselves contend that negativity and attacks through the media debase, poison and pollute the national political discourse, few run campaigns without using it. Advertisements, speeches, and interviews given by the candidates or their partisans invariably highlight the professional inadequacies or personal shortcomings of one's opponent. In September 2000, the debate over negative campaigning was rekindled when a Republican Party television commercial on the Bush prescription drugs plan for seniors subtly flashed the word "RATS" across the screen when discussing the alleged medical bureaucracy Gore would create if elected. The ad ran in several states for more than two weeks suggesting that senior citizens lose control of their health care under Gore. Words flashed on the screen to echo the message: "The Gore prescription plan, bureaucrats decide." The word "RATS" in large white capital letters fills the black screen. Although barely noticeable, Democrats alleged that Republicans were trying to send a subliminal message about Al Gore. The 2000 election gave candidates a new mechanism by which to go negative - the Internet. Although former President Bill Clinton and former Republican Candidate Bob Dole maintained pages on the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1996, the 2000 election may have signaled the beginning of the Internet as a powerful new influence on elections and campaigning. This study will examine the rhetoric used in the official candidate websites of Al Gore and George W. Bush. Specifically, we analyzed the press releases presented during the final 50 days of the campaign to evaluate issues presented and to determine whether, like the campaign advertisements, websites rely heavily on negativity and attacks on one's opponent. LITERATURE REVIEW Early Presidential Campaigns and Technological Change The history of the United States presidential campaigns is full of instances in which candidates seeking a mandate from the people went negative against their opponents (Pfau & Kenski, 1990). Even George Washington was charged with monarchial aspirations (Jamieson, 1996) in his bid for the presidency. Negativity is defined as the process of going on the offensive against an opponent (Haynes & Rhine, 1998). It consists in discussing the opposing candidate with the intention of putting him in a unfavorable light (Klotz, 1998). Therefore, negative campaigning ignores issues, ignores party label, and concentrates mainly on candidates' personality characteristics (Washburn, 1972). Negative attacks dot the background of most presidential campaigns. As early as 1828, candidate Samuel Jackson was portrayed as "a bloody-handed man who ordered many executions, massacred Indians, and murdered soldiers who disobeyed his command" (Jamieson, 1996, p. 7). In 1840, Harrison' s opponents distilled rumors that he was "mentally and physically enfeebled" (Jamieson, 1996, p. 13). In both cases, the purpose of using such negative messages was to defeat the rival candidate by destroying his image and his reputation. Bryce (1995) characterized the late nineteenth American political campaigns as thick with charges, defenses, and recriminations in such a level that the voter knows not what to believe. Today, in the era of Internet and satellite television, negative political campaigning has taken a new form. Further, it has reached the high intensity phase of the emotional sine wave it has ridden over the course of the American history (Gronbeck, 1994). Analyzing the content of prominent advertisements in United States presidential campaigns from 1952 to 1996, West (1997) found that negative appeals have dominated the broadcast spectrum since 1980. The Internet and the WWW have become important sources of information, entertainment and retailing in a very few years. As the Internet has evolved, so have new words such as "web-surfing" and "e-tailing." Future historians may pinpoint 2000 as the year in which "cyberpolitics" grew from adolescence to adulthood. The term involves information dissemination, communication exchange, and the formation of electronic political coalitions across the Internet (Whitlock, 1997). Cyberpolitics has a very brief yet interesting history. The Internet as a means by which to shape public opinion may ultimately parallel the development of older media like radio and television. The Republican National Committee touted their Internet offerings as media history in the making, on par with the 1932 radio broadcast of FDR's nomination acceptance speech and the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates (Whitlock, 1997). Since 1960, virtually all candidates have relied on television today to address the voters. While television is often blamed for increasing the amount of negativity because of its dominance of modern political campaigns (Lau, Sigelman, Heldman and Babbit, 1999), it also affords candidates with the opportunity to communicate with millions of people at once. Television's ability to quickly reach millions of voters has elevated negative advertisement to the level of mediated argumentation whereby candidates exchange positions and views through their campaign ads (Kaid & Johnston, 1991). As pointed out by Jamieson (1992) tel evision has granted the manufacturers of campaign discourse some extraordinary powers that print and radio lacked. That is, it affords them the ability to transmit messages dramatically, rapidly, and widely. Moreover, television delivers strong visual content coupled with compelling drama, along with live coverage to a national audience (Wicks & Kern, 1995). For all these reasons, it is not surprising that for many decades, candidates for presidency have increasingly used television to try and build constituency support. The media and politics may have changed forever because of the easy access to Presidential campaign news on the Internet. As the influence of television grew in the 1960s and 1970s, many observers believe that the political influence of the Internet will grow as it evolves. As the Internet develops, so too do older technologies like radio and television. In the 1970s, broadcast newsrooms were dominated by typewriters, sprocket holes and cumbersome multi-camera studios. Now television newsrooms are based on digital technology which permits the journalist to write, research, edit and transmit from his or her desktop computer (Gaber, 1997). Together, these changes mean greater access to information than ever before. Electronic Democracy and Going Negative The Internet is now establishing itself as a new medium destined to play an increasingly important role in the American "electronic democracy." A survey conducted in 1997 by the polling firm of Louis Harris and Associates revealed that nearly 35 million people used the computer to gather political information during the 1996 presidential campaign. At that time, the Internet was primarily used by politicians as a personal-image advertising tool providing the candidate biography, a solicitation for help from potential activists, and the perception of interaction with the candidates (Davis, 1999). A nationwide survey conducted last year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press firmly established the Internet as a major source of election news and information (http://www.people.press.org/content.html). The survey found that the audience for online campaign news has expanded, increasing fourfold over the past four years. Nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) say they went online for election news during the 2000 campaign, up from 4% who did so in the 1996 campaign. The Internet, therefore, is growing as a public political news source. For this reason, one can easily understand why the political candidates consider the Internet as an important alternate way to disseminate political campaign messages to the public. Not only do candidates use the worldwide Web to convey information about their own activities, they also use it to discredit their opponents. Some researchers suggest that negative campaigning has the effect of reducing voter turnout. Ansolabehere, Iyengar, Simon, and Valentino (1994) conducted a series of experiments intended to test the relationship between campaign tone and turnout. They reported that negative advertising has significant demobilizing and alienating effects. More precisely, exposure to negative campaign messages is instrumental in reducing turnout and eroding voters' confidence in the electoral process. Ansolabehere, Iyengar, and Simon (1999) replicated the experiment using aggregate and survey data from the 1992 united States Senate elections. The multivariate analysis they performed revealed that the participation of voters in the election was low in the states where candidates employed negative ads. This outcome corroborates their initial experimental findings showing that negative advertising correlates positively with turnout. Attacks and negativity can linger over time and even become more potent as campaigns wear on. Lariscy and Tinkham (1999) used the "sleeper effect phenomenon" studied by Grader (1978) in persuasive communication to demonstrate how the impact of attack politics persists and even increases over time. The sleeper effect phenomenon is observed when a message has a greater delayed than immediate effect on receivers' attitudes. In an experiment focusing on attacks and defensive treatments, the researchers asked by telephone callback adults subjects to report their vote immediately after message exposure. They found that negative advertising has initial strong effect favoring its sponsor. Moreover, negative political advertisements have a "lasting impact" and they are "damaging" for the person attacked. As the study pointed out, attacks produce attitude change that endures throughout the duration of the campaign. Other studies, however, question the effectiveness of negative political campaigning. Sonner (1998) conducted a longitudinal survey in a "real world environment" (a statewide primary election) intended to assess the effectiveness of negative political advertisements. This case study revealed that the use of negative appeals can be "very risky" for a candidate because it may have a boomerang effect. Indeed, even though it can be effective for shifting voters away from an opponent, this does not necessarily translate into increased support for the sponsoring candidate. For the latter, negative political advertising can generate a "serious backlash". Lau et al., (1999) assessed the "legitimacy" and the "accuracy" of the fears about the "detrimental effects" of attack politics and negative campaigning on the political system. The meta-analysis performed on 52 different studies did not support either contention (legitimacy or accuracy of the fears). Indeed, the researchers found "a little evidence" to warrant the fears that electoral participation may be imperiled by the increasingly widespread use of negative political messages. Further, they found "no evidence" in the research literature on political ads that negative appeals are more effective than positive ones in helping a candidate to win an election. A secondary issue, however, is important: Does the tone of political advertising and campaign information affect individuals' likelihood of voting? In other words, do negative messages affect the propensity to vote? Kahn and Kenny (1999) attempted to answer these two questions in a content analysis of 183 televised political ads from the United States 1990 Senate races. All the negative information contained in the commercials were coded. The researchers also conducted a content analysis of the largest circulation newspapers in each state holding a Senate election in 1990 in order to measure the tone of news coverage. More precisely, the tone of news coverage was obtained by looking at the ratio of negative information to the total information presented during the campaign. They then performed a logistic regression analysis to predict the likelihood of voting across the 30 races. The results suggested that negative information significantly enhances turnout. Indeed, people are mor e likely to vote as the proportion of negative information in the candidates' ads increases and as the proportion of media criticism of the candidates escalates. However, this effect of negative information and negative advertising tone on voters depends largely on their political profile. The researchers found that factors like the voter' s psychological attachment to or disposition toward a political party, interest in politics, and cognitive understanding of political matters also determine response to negative information and campaign messages. In sum, there is no evidence that negative advertising demobilizes voters. Like many other researchers, Wattenberg and Brians (1999) believe that negative political messages increase rather than decrease voters' participation in the electoral process. Using National Election Studies (NES) survey data for 1992 and 1996 as well as aggregate sources, they subjected the "demobilizing hypothesis" to a "real world testing" in order to check its validity. In the 1992 NES, respondents were asked if they recalled seeing any presidential ads on television, and if so, what they remember about any of these ads. In the 1996 NES, people who recalled seeing an ad were asked to think about which one they recalled the best and then, say who sponsored it and what it said. In both cases, the open-ended questions enabled the researchers to identify clearly those who remember having been exposed to positive ads, negative ads, or no ads at all. Then, the information was correlated with the respondents' reported turnout. If the "demobilizing hypothesis" was supported, then tho se who complained about the high level of negativity during the 1992 and 1996 campaigns would have stayed at home the election day. Yet, Wattenberg and Brians (1999) found that the reported turnout rate for those who complained about mudslinging in 1992 was six percentage points above those who did not offer this criticism. In 1996, only five percent of the respondents complained about the negative ads. The turnout rate for this group is one percent below the rest of the sample. Hence, researchers concluded that in 1992 negativity had the effect of stimulating voter turnout while four years later data revealed no significant influence of ads on turnout. Again, there is no "clear evidence" that attack advertising drives potential voters away from the polls. Predicting When Candidates Attack While the debate over the effectiveness of negative political advertising continues, another fundamental issue is relevant to the discussion: � Is negativity simply a constant in all campaigns or do certain measurable variables predict the likelihood that a candidate will go negative? � Furthermore, what may explain the fact that at a given moment during the campaign, a candidate decides to attack his opponents? Once again, researchers seem divided on the subject. Aldrich and Alvarez (1994) assert that candidates use negativity to emphasize that they have different policy priorities rather than different issue position. This perspective holds that to some extent, negative campaigning is inevitable (Marshal 1983; Norrander 1986). Candidates need to contrast themselves with their opponents. This is particularly true during primaries containing a large number of candidates who espouse similar views on political issues. When the field is crowded, the public pays less attention to the race. Thus, candidates must seek to distinguish themselves from their competition, both within and outside their party. Inevitably, this must involve comparison, and comparison often takes a negative form (Haynes & Rhine, 1998). Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995) explained that attack ads are among the strategies intentionally used by candidates to discourage segments of the electorate from voting. By contrast, Wattenberg and Brians (1999) suggest that negative commercials are intended to convert the voters by focusing on an issue for which the sponsoring candidate has credibility in handling but on which the opponent is weak. To discover why candidates go negative, Haynes and Rhine (1998) conducted a study on the United States 1992 Democratic nomination campaign. They contented a purposive analysis of three national newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal), one national television evening news program (ABC World Tonight), and 19 state newspapers representing a variety of leading state newspapers around the country. All the attack words attributed directly to the candidates and directly focused on an opponent were coded. Their findings suggest that candidates, in general, are not as likely to attack each other as we would think, and that specific "circumstances" seem to be the main determinants of a candidate going negative. Moreover, the study showed that being the frontrunner is not a significant predictor of the risk of attacking or not attacking opponents. Indeed, frontrunners do not generally attack. However, when the race narrows or becomes competitive, they are often forced to use negativity as their rivals attack them and as the rising challengers threaten their leading position. The 1988 presidential campaign and the "obstacle course" confronted by former democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis is one of the best illustrations of the fact that rising challengers are usually subject to attacks on the part of their opponents. Having emerged after the 1988 Democratic Political Convention as a serious threat to George Bush, the Democratic presidential nominee was "dehumanized" (Jamieson, 1996, p. 462) by Republicans whose ads associated him with criminals. They presented him as a person disposed toward giving first-degree murderers like Willie Horton furloughs. The television advertisement named "furlough" presented inmates passing through a revolving door at a Massachusetts penitentiary. Haynes and Rhine (1998) believe that "reward factors" are useful in predicting election candidates attack behavior. Their study emphasized that as the delegate value of an event increases, so does the likelihood that candidates will initiate an attack and have it reported irrespective of their position with respect to other candidates. Particular "make or break" or delegate rich events (Super Tuesday, New Hampshire) also lead candidates to attack more often, according to the study. Finally, the study suggests that the presence of news media may also encourage the competitive model of negative campaigning. Indeed, when candidates see the media, they may reason that their attacks on the leaders have more chance to get covered. In this effort to be "newsworthy", they are more likely to develop negative messages against the frontrunners and other rising challengers. The first of these determinant factors of negative political behavior fits perfectly with an existing theoretical model known as the "competition model" (Ansolabehere & Iyengar 1995; Haynes & Rhine 1998). This theory posits that: 1. When two candidates are competing, the frontrunner will engage in generally positive campaigning as opposed to the more negative campaigning of the runner-up. 2. In a three-candidate campaign with one candidate clearly trailing by a large margin and playing the role of spoiler, the candidate is more likely to engage in positive campaigning. 3. In a three-candidate contest, no candidate engages in negative campaigning against the weaker of the opponents. If there is a negative campaigning in this particular case, it will be directed against the frontrunner or it will come from him if his opponents are rising. In sum, it appears clear from this perspective that the competitive position of a candidate determines, in large measure, whether attack strategies will be employed. During the hotly contested presidential race of 2000, polls bounced back and forth continually between showing leads for either Al Gore or George Bush. Even on election eve, the polls predicted that the outcome was too close to call. In fact, the outcome remained unclear for an additional five weeks pending the outcome of the now infamous Florida vote. In such an environment, one would expect the candidates to wage highly negative campaigns. Our study will assess whether the campaigns used the Internet to go negative during the 2000 presidential election. Research Questions In the United States and in many democratic countries, presidential elections captivate the attention of the public because the outcome will influence political, social and economic policy in many ways. They turn to media to receive information about their future leaders. Increasingly, citizens also turn to the Internet. Because the Internet represents unfiltered information, our first research question focuses on the degree to which news releases will contain attacks against ones opponent. This study aims first to assess the amount of negativity used by the two major party campaigns and further asses the primary election issues and primary candidate issues presented on the chosen Web sites. RQ1: What issues and topics dominated the information supplied by the major party presidential candidates on their web sites during the 2000 campaign? RQ2a: Do presidential candidates use their web sites for the purpose of attacking their opponents? RQ2b: What proportion of the news releases presented on presidential web sites might be characterized as personal attacks? Methods This study analyzed the content of news releases distributed on the homepages of the campaigns for the candidates of the two major parties, George W. Bush (www.georgebush.com) and Al Gore (www.algore2000.com). The data were collected and analyzed at a southern research institution. Each of the 485 news releases posted on the web during the 50 days leading up to election day were downloaded and stored chronologically in Microsoft word files beginning on September 18 and concluding on November 7, 2000. The news releases varied from being brief one or two paragraph statements containing an endorsement to long statements on complex social, economic or political issues. The Bush homepage yielded 258 news releases and the Gore homepage yielded 228.[1] Using systematic sampling procedures, one third of the population collected was selected for analysis. This yielded a total of 86 news releases for George Bush and 76 for Al Gore producing a total of 162 for the two candidates. Modified from an instrument developed to study the 1996 election (e.g., Lichter, Noyes & Kaid, 1999) by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a new coding scheme to study Internet homepage content was developed. The codebook was specifically designed to identify issues and themes as well as identify incidents of attack behavior and negativity. The themes evoked by the candidates during the campaign were also classified as related to the issues or the personal characteristics of the candidates. The unit of analysis is the appearance of the specified themes within the news releases. The principle researcher and a team of graduate students at a major researcher institution collected and analyzed the news releases. Scott's Pi yielded an intercoder reliability value of .76 which is typical of research of this type (Wimmer & Dominick, 1997). The specific categories analyzed were whether the news release contained: (1) an attack on a candidate; (2) the type of news release (e.g., endorsement, poll result, policy statement, etc.); (3) primary issue or topic (abortion, taxes, economics, crime, etc.), and; (4) candidate personal characteristics (e.g., Gore integrity, Bush and family values, etc.). Descriptive statistics were used to note the similarities and differences between the two major party candidates. Frequencies of the issues and reference to personal issues were also calculated and chi-square tests were performed. Results In accordance with our operational definition, the different rhetorical themes found in the sample were coded by date, source, story type, and issue type (election issue, personal issue, etc). The data were computed in order to provide descriptive statistics. Then a chi-square test was run to find out whether there is a significant difference in the use of attacks as campaign strategy between the two major party candidates. Two nominal variables (Bush and Gore) were therefore cross-classified in a bivariate table in order to determine if the differences between these two candidates in the use of attack is statistically significant. The test shows a significant difference (X2 = 32, df = 1, P < .05). The first research question investigates the main themes that dominated the two major party candidates' discourse during the United States 2000 presidential campaign. To address this, we identified all of the themes that recurred throughout the selected sample. Based on a coding system developed to analyze media content during the 1996 campaign, a list of topics including definitions was developed (Lichter, Noyes & Kaid, 1999). Table 1 presents a summary of the issues identified in the sample analyzed. ______________________ Insert Table 1 about here ______________________ Among the 162 news releases coded, education and social security were the dominant issues in the candidates' discourse. Each of them appeared 21 times: which represents 13% of the themes contained in the candidates' campaign discourse. These issues were followed by taxes (7.2%), foreign affairs (6.2%), environment (5.6%), and Medicare (3.7%). It is interesting to notice at this point that many issues that could be considered as matters of prime concern by the American voters did not receive significant attention on the web sites This was particularly true for crime, health care, and energy policy - each receiving less than 2% of the campaign news releases. The second research question if, and to what extent, the presidential candidates used negativity to spotlight personal and political deficiencies in their opponent. The most notable finding from this study is that negativity has largely dominated the candidates' campaign rhetoric. One can even say that attacks versus issues best characterized this campaign that obviously, offered no improvement in terms of behavior on the part of the candidates. Indeed, the United States 2000 presidential campaign had a very negative slant. ______________________ Insert Table 2 about here ______________________ As Table 2 reveals, more than 72% of the candidates' discourse was attack. The discussions over the election issues represented only 28% of the candidates' rhetoric. Obviously, the two major party candidates spent most of their time attacking each other and discussing their opponents' personal characteristics. ______________________ Insert Table 3 about here ______________________ Table 3 demonstrates, the frequency of the candidates' personal issues. In this regard, Gore campaign conduct and Bush professional background and qualifications dominated the debate. They occupied respectively 13.6 % and 13% of the whole campaign rhetoric. Then came, in order, Bush campaign conduct (11%), Gore strategies and tactics (9.3%), Gore professional background and character (6.8%), Bush strategies and tactics (6.2%). As for which candidate displayed the most attacking behavior, table 4 below shows a cross-tabulation between the two major party candidates and the attack variable. The cross-tabulation was performed in order to find out which of Gore and Bush was the most negative during the campaign. It appeared that both attacked each other heavily. In fact, the two candidates attacked each other almost equally in terms of frequency. However, Al Gore shows a slight advance over George W. Bush. According to the news releases analyzed, the percentage of attacks for the democratic candidate was 76% whereas the republican candidate used attack in 69% of his stories. [2] ______________________ Insert Table 4 about here ______________________ Discussion Candidates have dramatically changed the ways in which they deal with the news media over the years (Hernandez, 1997). Despite changes in technology, news reporting strategies have remained basically unchanged for many decades. Campaign strategists now realize that the personal web sites afford them the opportunity to circumvent the media establishment and take their messages directly to the people. Research suggests that news coverage of political spots is generally neutral but is more often slanted in a negative direction, and one of the best ways to attract media attention is to run negative spots (Kaid, Tedesco, & Melton, 1996). The analysis of the 2000 presidential candidate web sites reveals that the Internet serves as an instrument to discuss the election issues. During the 2000 presidential campaign the most frequently discussed issues on the Internet were education and social security accounting for 26% of the stories. These two issues also surfaced in an ad campaign st udy of the 2000 presidential campaign conducted by the Brennan Center (Lester, 2001). This web site study also resulted in two topics -- education and social security -- accounting for 54% of the ads. Although television and the Internet are different media in nature, they seem to be serving a similar purpose for election candidates. They enable them to define their economic, political, and social agendas; and to contrast their issue positions with that of their opponents. The phenomenon of negative campaigning has also expanded to the World Wide Web. Indeed, negativity has largely dominated the 2000 presidential campaign. Seventy two percent of the candidates' news releases were negative which makes the 2000 presidential election one of the most negative presidential campaigns in American political history. Since 1980 negative appeals have dominated the American political campaigns by increasing every election year (Kern, 1989). The percentages range as follows: 60 % of the 1 980 ads, 74 % of the 1984 ads, and 83% of the 1988 ads (West, 1993). In the United States, political commercials have turned quite negative in their style of presentation transforming the national airwaves into the battle ground of sophisticated and personalized air war. Due to the consistent escalation in negativity in past campaigns , the findings of the present campaign strategies and tactics support the trend of the American election candidates observed for many decades. ISSUE FREQUENCY PERCENT -Abortion -Budget-federal -Campaign ads -Campaign events -Campaign finance -Campaign horse race -Crime -Dependence on foreign oil -Domestic oil reserve -Economic policy -Economic prosperity -Education -Employment-unemployment -Energy policy -Environment -Family issues and values -Farming -Foreign affairs -Government size -Health care -Interest group -Marriage penalty -Medical research -Medicare -Military issues -Minority issues -Nursing homes -Prescription drugs -Presidential debate -Social security -Spending -Summary issues -Taxes -Presidential debates -Wildfires -Working families -Youth issues -None 1 3 3 7 4 3 3 1 3 5 5 21 0 1 2 9 2 1 10 4 3 2 1 1 6 1 2 3 4 4 21 4 2 12 1 1 1 1 4 .6 1.9 1.9 4.3 2.5 1.9 1.9 .6 1.9 3.1 3.1 13.0 0 .6 1.2 5.6 1.2 .6 6.2 2.5 1.9 1.2 .6 .6 3.7 .6 1.2 1.9 2.5 2.5 13.0 2.5 1.2 7.4 .6 .6 .6 .6 2.5 TOTAL 162 100 Table 1: Distribution of the election issues in the candidates' campaign rhetoric Table 2: Tone of the 2000 presidential campaign CATEGORY FREQUENCY PERCENT Attacks No attacks 117 45 72.2 27.8 TOTAL 162 100 Table 3: Distribution of the candidates' personal issues PERSONAL ISSUES FREQUENCY PERCENT -Gore campaign conduct -Gore personal background/character -Gore professional background/qualifications -Gore strategies and tactics -Gore friends and families -Gore honesty and integrity -Lieberman campaign conduct -Lieberman deception/dishonesty/hypocrisy -Bush campaign conduct -Bush personal background/character -Bush professional background/qualifications -Bush strategies and tactics -Bush honesty and integrity -Cheney strategies and tactics -None 22 3 11 15 1 1 3 1 18 6 21 10 2 1 47 13.6 1.9 6.8 9.3 .6 .6 1.9 .6 11.1 3.7 13 6.2 1.2 .6 29 TOTAL 162 100 Table 4: Frequency and cross-tabulation of attacks by presidential candidates [--- ??? 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