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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Slugger who wrote (2761)	10/17/2000 1:22:42 AM
From: ms.smartest.person	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

Bush 'Rats' Ad May Have Left Mark On Undecided Voters By Brian Krebs, Newsbytes WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A., 16 Oct 2000, 5:44 PM CST Several weeks ago, Republican presidential candidate and Texas Gov. George W. Bush was roundly criticized for attempting to pull one over on the American public, with an ad that contained a millisecond of an image some regarded as subliminal advertising, possibly labeling Democrats as "rats." In the TV ad, a truncated image of the word "bureaucrats" flashed on-screen, briefly displaying only the last four letters. Pundits called the move underhanded, even while noting that subliminal advertising has been debunked as an effective advertising medium. A study released Friday by Yale University, however, indicates that the ad had a positive - if not subliminal - effect on voters. About a week before the controversial ads hit the airwaves, a team of researchers from Yale University commenced a study to gauge the true effect of political advertising on vote decisions and turnout by equipping a random group of respondents with their very own WebTV, which displays a series of actual campaign ads and record their reactions. In the first of those experiments, participants were shown a pair of political attack ads, including the "Rats" ad from the Bush camp and the "Siding" ad in which Vice President and Democratic Presidential candidate Al Gore attacks Bush's record on health issues in Texas. An equal number of participants in the "control group" were not shown the ads. According to John Lapinski, an assistant professor of political science at Yale and the director of the workshop, respondents who were shown the attack ads slightly favored Bush to Gore (44 to 43 percent), while the control group favored Gore by a 45 to 41 percent margin. Forty-two percent of voters in the first group said the Bush ad "mostly attacked his opponent," 38 percent reported that it "said something positive about" Bush. Another 29 percent said they thought the ad was completely or mostly true. In contrast, fully 61 percent in the first group said Gore's "Siding" ad was negative, and only 24 percent said it was a mostly positive ad about Gore. Nearly 40 percent thought the Gore ad was mostly or completely untrue. “This finding suggests that Gore may still have an uphill battle to fight on the issue of his credibility,” Lapinski said. Overall, however, the Yale survey has Gore leading Bush by 45 to 42 percent among registered voters. The study, conducted by Menlo Park, Calif.-based InterSurvey in conjunction with Yale's New Media Workshop, will track the responses of a randomly selected panel of registered voters in both the presidential election and the New York Senate race until the election on Nov. 7. Respondents will then be surveyed again to determine what effect - if any - the political ads had on their decision at the polls. John Lapinski, said the study was predicated on the idea that past surveys on the effects of political ads - particularly negative ones - have been largely non-scientific samples that failed to track the attitudes and behavior of the same people over a given period of time. Lapinski said existing studies don't really provide comprehensive data that shows the true effect of political advertising, whether it changes turnout, or whether attack ads "work better" than positive or comparative ads. The study will follow roughly 1,500 voters in the presidential race and another 1,000 in the New York area for the Senate race between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rick Lazio. All study participants will be polled once every two weeks on their view of the issues, the candidates, and for whom they are likely to vote. Roughly half of those in each group will see ads from each candidate and be asked to answer a short list of questions about their reaction to the TV spots. The research team chooses ads with the highest "media buy" rates, or those which campaigns have chosen to spend the most money on or to show in the greatest number of states. Intersurvey will provide the interactive television set-top boxes, which will be equipped with a hard drive that stores a repository of various political ads and/or standard questionnaires. The company will also assume the ISP charge to connect each unit to the Internet. The Yale team is posting a running list of its findings on its Web site yale.edu, approximately every two weeks, and will post the final results following another survey after the election. The Washington Post Company, which owns Newsbytes, holds a financial interest in Intersurvey. Reported by Newsbytes, newsbytes.com 17:44 CST Reposted 19:10 CST (20001016/WIRES TOP, ONLINE, LEGAL, BUSINESS/RATSAD/PHOTO) newsbytes.com