Abstract
An enduring assumption exists in the United States that past military service casts electoral candidates in a positive light. To demonstrate how voters understand candidates’ military experiences, it is necessary to understand how their attitudes about a candidate change when exposed to biographic information. This study uses an experimental design to evaluate whether voters see candidates with a military background as better able to handle defense and security issues, are more capable leaders, and whether voters express higher affect toward veteran candidates. Using manipulated television advertising and handbills from an actual election, along with variation of the party information about the candidate, this study finds that voters are unmoved in their impressions of leadership and their affect toward a candidate with military experience. However, potential voters report markedly higher evaluations of candidates’ ability to handle defense and security issues when exposed to the military cue, irrespective of party affiliation.
Since the beginning of the republic, candidates running for political office in the United States have often trumpeted their military service to attract voter support. Election outcomes hinge on issues, parties, and ideologies, but these matters do not fully explain candidates’ efforts to increase their appeal. Those vying for political office do more than fly the party banner and announce strategically held issue positions. They attempt to convey to voters that they are fit for office by showing facets of their biographies to voters. This study examines how candidates’ military service records influence voters, looking at how subjects react to biographical cues using the most commonly deployed campaign communication tools. This article demonstrates that candidates’ military biography—who candidates are and what they have done—colors how voters perceive their ability to handle defense issues once in office.
Candidates share their personal biography; yet this communication is rarely an arbitrary array of personal facts such as age, gender, geographic origin, and alma mater. Rather, candidates strategically emphasize elements of their public curriculum vitae precisely because they (and their campaign managers) believe those facts might attract more support. American electoral history includes innumerable examples of frequently used candidate biographic details: humble roots, professional experience, religious upbringing, and military service. One argument underpinning this use of military biography is that voters see candidates with military service as more able to handle policy and politics related to national defense and security due to their personal experience. The appeal of military service may additionally or alternatively stem from a general approval and affect toward those who have served in the armed forces, perhaps as voters simply “like” them more. Others may see appeal in military veterans as political leaders because of perceptions that these individuals have accrued leadership skills during their military service.
This study uses an experimental design to estimate whether and to what degree candidates’ attempts to wield military service experience succeed in altering voters’ perceptions. Rather than look at actual election results where it is difficult to ascertain the causal role of candidate background, we can better understand the link between service experience and citizens’ perceptions of issue competence if we manipulate biography in an experimental setting. Exposing subjects to two of the most commonly used communication tools candidates employ, television (TV) advertising and push cards, while altering nothing but the military service tag, should reveal the effect of candidate biography on citizens’ impressions. The study evaluates whether military experience substantially affects citizens’ perceptions of issue competence, the appeal of the candidate, and perceptions of leadership ability. By comparing the perceptions between subjects exposed to ads with a military service cue versus others exposed to an otherwise identical treatment without the cue, results reveal that the difference in the groups’ perceptions of the candidate’s competence on a germane issue is substantial and significant.
Understanding Candidate Military Experience, Campaigns, and Issue Competence
Candidate biography is considered by too few scholarly studies of campaign efforts and their impact, especially considering how central it is to campaign practitioners’ beliefs. 1 Military experience is a familiar tag that potential voters can easily consume, and polling evidence has shown that citizens see veterans positively, at least in the abstract, when considering candidates for high political office. Survey results using recent national cross-sectional data demonstrate that military service is a generally desirable attribute for political elites. When asked, “regardless of the specific candidates . . . would you be more likely or less likely to support a candidate for president who has served in the military . . . or wouldn’t this matter to you,” 48 percent reported they would be more likely to support such a candidate. 2 This figure stands in contrast to 28 percent who would be more likely to support a business executive, 15 percent more supportive of a minister or religious leader, 35 percent for an elected official serving “for many years,” and 22 percent for someone who attended a prestigious university. Exactly why respondents held military service higher than the other biographical experiences is unclear, though it may entail perceptions of leadership, selflessness, duty, the centrality of the military experience to the state, technical competence at defense related issues, or some amalgam thereof.
Candidates have run for office on the laurels of past military service. Rare is the candidate who has attempted to conceal past service in the armed forces from voters. On the contrary, exaggeration of war records on the campaign trail is more common. Left unclear is how a candidate’s military service influences votes, voters, and elections. There are a handful of scholarly contributions to help us understand the role that candidates’ military experience plays in elections. A simple question, but challenging to answer, is whether military service helps candidates win elections. Given how commonplace military service appears to be among the country’s past presidents and legislators, the assumption has largely been that martial experience is an electoral boon for candidates. 3 Janowitz surveyed past candidates in his seminal work on military professionalism and contrasted the relative difficulty facing professional career officers in attempting to enter partisan politics yet indicated that enlisted wartime service is an electoral asset. 4 Huntington too, deconstructed the popular appeal of war heroes in American elections in his foundational book on civil–military relations theory by placing careerist professionals outside the mainstream liberal tradition in American politics, explaining their relative absence from electoral contests versus the nonprofessionals who are within the liberal tradition: “While the American people like their political candidates to be military heroes, they want their military experience to be an interlude in, or a sideline to, an otherwise civilian career.” 5
Others’ observations have taken a more empirical approach to assessing the electoral value of being a veteran using presidential elections. On the eve of a potential Dwight Eisenhower or Douglas MacArthur presidential candidacy, Somit counted the number of elected presidents and classified roughly a third of our presidents up to 1916 as military heroes and half as having at least credible military experience. 6 He surmised that the party elites at the nominating conventions that selected candidates saw electoral value in choosing a military figure to compete in the general election, a conclusion he corroborated by comparing the popular vote share of military figures and seeing them slightly higher than nonmilitary candidates, though a recent article questioned Somit’s finding by extending his analysis. 7 Scholarship on the “surge” elections, those presidential elections when the winning candidate’s votes outpaces what should be expected due to low underlying partisan strength, has also noticed that examples such as William Henry Harrison and Dwight Eisenhower were winning candidates from the weaker party at that time, relying on short-term, personality-based forces. 8 In Sellers’ judgment, Eisenhower ran ahead of the normal Republican expectations and Harrison exceeded what could be expected of Whigs overall because of their respective military biographies.
Legislative elections serve as data for another study seeking to understand whether military experience propels candidates closer to winning elections. Using 1950’s US House of Representative elections, Somit and Tanenhaus looked at veteran candidacies by region, district population density, competitiveness, and party. 9 Based on bivariate comparisons, they provided circumspect conclusions that military experience by itself, and its appeal to voters, does not explain overrepresentation of veterans in the House. Rather, the tendency of parties to nominate candidates with military experience drove the high numbers of veterans in Congress. Yet, the number of veterans serving in Congress has declined in the later twentieth century, with a possible corollary that the electoral appeal of military service has correspondingly declined. Looking not at electoral fortunes but over- and underrepresentation in Congress, another study examined the proportion of the US Congress members with military experience. 10 Bianco and Markham found that Congress brimmed with veterans after the large conscription-based wars, but that in the 1990s, veterans became underrepresented. They attributed this change not to a depreciation of the electoral appeal of past military service among candidates, but rather from the end of conscription and generational replacement.
Feaver and Gelpi, in their study that contrasts political elites with and without military service experience, noted the same decline of veterans in the House of Representatives and the president’s cabinet, a much steeper drop than the proportion of military veterans in the electorate. 11 A different way to examine the electoral appeal of military service in congressional elections uses several years of US House of Representative elections to see if veteran candidates vote share surpasses nonveteran candidate vote share, irrespective of who wins races. 12 Teigen found no comprehensive electoral benefit from military service across recent House races, though some particular years show voters rewarding veterans over nonveterans by a small margin and the effect was conditioned by party.
This study takes a different tack to understand the potential appeal of veteran candidates, looking beyond over- and underrepresentation, votes, and election outcomes. Focusing only upon votes overlooks the cognitive process by which voters appraise candidates’ military biography and how their impression of such candidates might change. Hence, the analysis here examines three evaluations of a candidate rather than hypothetical vote preferences. Given the low attention voters pay to candidates and elections, the information shortcuts they use to make decisions are important to understand. Borrowing from foundational scholarship on cognition and psychological processes related to attitude change, 13 many analysts have contributed to a compelling logic that voters rely upon low-information heuristics in forming impressions of candidates for better or worse. 14 These efficient bursts of information work in lieu of time-consuming research on candidate attributes. These cues have value for potential voters, because “past votes by a political candidate frequently are not easily assimilated into a picture, but there is a whole host of tags that do become integrated, such as environmentalist, union member, [or] . . . military veteran.” 15
In some states, ballots disclose candidate occupations alongside their name and party. Such labels aid voters’ decision making and guide them toward supporting the candidate with a background befitting the political office sought. McDermott looked at the effect of on-the-ballot occupation listing upon voters, seeing that these labels help voters positively “judge candidate competence for office through inferred qualifications.” 16 Looking specifically upon the effectiveness of candidates employing their backgrounds to sway voters, Arbour found that mock candidates’ professional background, for example, a medical doctor, enhanced citizens’ favorability thereof. 17 Candidate background therefore bolsters favorability or credibility, especially when partisan cues are absent. It is not difficult to see how potential voters may use just such an available heuristic to form a judgment about issue competence. Military service might enhance a candidate’s perceived credibility and other research has demonstrated how source credibility can mitigate or fortify citizen perceptions. 18 Congressional candidates develop the themes of their campaigns to exemplify their past record of accomplishments, and evaluations of these candidates are higher when campaigns keep the candidate background and the issues complementary. 19 Past military experience may fortify perceptions of leadership qualities for some voters because of the clear rank structure and the inferences that are likely made about veterans having experience leading units and making command decisions. 20
Using these contributions from previous literature as a departure point, this analysis will test four hypotheses related to the effect of biographic military cues and party cues on experimental subjects’ assessments of candidate issue competence, likeability, and leadership.
First, the analysis will examine whether a military biographic cue elevates perceptions of competence on defense issues. Given the strong tie between military service and national defense issues, we should expect to see a positive effect. Second, the ability of candidates’ past military service to influence perceptions of leadership is tested. Voters should perceive those with military service as men and women with experience in an organized, hierarchical institution who served in leadership capacities. Third, given the great regard that today’s military branches enjoy in the eyes of the country, 21 this study tests the notion that veterans running for office may fare better simply because voters “like” veterans or are partial to them, other things being equal. The expectation is that the general affect toward the military in the public will engender higher affect toward a veteran candidate.
Fourth, to connect candidates’ military biography to the perception that they can handle issues related to defense and national security also requires understanding how party labels and party identification interplay with issues. Issues do not exist as a separate dimension from the major parties in American politics. Rather, voters perceive that parties dominate, at least temporarily, some of the major issues in American elections. When candidates campaign on issues “owned” by the other party, they are trespassing into the other party’s issue space strategically. 22 Issues such as health care and education have traditionally resided within the Democratic Party’s territory while military matters, national defense, and security have been Republican issues. 23 To see how party labels mitigate military biographic cues and perceptions of issue competence, this study incorporates party-specific hypothesis tests. We should expect to see little difference between Republicans and Democrats in perceptions of the military cue if it is presented without revealing a candidate’s party information. But, because voters make assessments about office-seekers without forgetting their own partisanship, we should also expect to see respondents reward candidates of their own party when assessing issue competence and punish candidates from the other party irrespective of past military service.
Data and Methodology
Experimental methodology helps reveal causal mechanisms through controlled isolation of political phenomena. In order to measure whether candidate military biography influences citizens’ perceptions of candidates’ issue competence, this study implements an experimental design using two primary means of political mass communication in the United States, TV advertising and printed “push cards,” or handbills. The TV advertising and push cards were edited and paired to vary the military service biography in order to estimate whether and to what degree that information influences voters’ perceptions of candidates.
Rather than rely solely upon a hypothetical candidate with mock stimuli, an attempt was made to increase the realism and external validity of the experiment using a real campaign advertisement and a real congressional candidate. 24 The most reasonable choice, given the need to find a candidate unfamiliar to subjects in the New York City area, was Representative Tim Walz from Minnesota. Walz, a white male Democrat, challenged Gil Gutknecht in 2006 and won with 53 percent of the vote. In this successful challenge, Walz ran as a centrist in this Republican-leaning district that George W. Bush carried in 2004. In many ways, Walz appears to be a believable, typical congressional candidate. Walz was also a veteran of the National Guard, serving for more than twenty years. The Walz campaign aired a biographical ad entitled “Everyday Heroes” in the 2006 general election that included three major portions of his biography: football coach, high school teacher, and soldier. The imagery in the ad parallels the text. When the voiceover intones “football coach,” a still photograph of Walz with a clipboard on a football field with high school players appears. Typical of biographical campaign advertising, Walz is not identified as a Democrat or Republican and his party is not evident beyond a reference to “changing” Congress. 25 This study uses this ad after manipulating it into two slightly different ads. In order to create two versions of the advertisement, one that features Walz’s service and another that does not, professional video and audio editing excised only the voiceover and imagery from the original version featuring Walz as a National Guardsman. 26
In addition to TV, push cards (handbills) were created to supplement the stimuli. The cards were a professional mock-up generated to resemble typical push cards used by political campaigns. One side of the card was common for all groups, featuring a portrait of Walz with typical electioneering text: “Elect Tim Walz for US Congress,” “An independent leader for Southern Minnesota.” The back of the card was different for different groups, just as the TV ad changed across groups. For the groups who saw Tim Walz without reference to his military service, there were images and bullet points demonstrating being a proven community leader, award winning high school teacher (Teacher of the Year), and champion football coach. Groups who saw Tim Walz with reference to his military service saw the same pictures and bullet points plus another with an image of him in uniform, and text touting his National Guard service. The TV and the push card stimuli were always paired together, that is, those who saw the military version of Tim Walz on TV also saw the push card that featured military service.
The candidate was also presented as a Republican, a Democrat, or generically without specific reference to party depending on the stimulus group. Comporting with most real TV campaign advertising, the party affiliation cue was not part of the ad or the push card stimuli. Rather, the “focus group leader” who instructed subjects and distributed and collected the questionnaires made two clear verbal descriptions of Walz (Now, I’m going to play a campaign election advertisement before the next set of questions. It features a Democrat candidate from Minnesota running for Congress, with either Democrat, Republican, or nothing specified). Moments later, the same cue was verbally repeated as the ad was about to begin.
Subjects for experiments are often collected through nonrandom sampling via purposive recruiting or using samples of opportunity such as college sophomores. The subjects comprising this study (n = 157) were recruited through various means in the New York City metropolitan area, including New Jersey suburbs in early 2008. Some of the subjects were college undergraduates at either a suburban liberal arts college or an urban campus. To vary the respondent pool and avoid overreliance upon undergraduate subjects, the preponderance of them were recruited using newspaper advertising, flyers, and Craigslist.org, which sought viewers for a “focus group” convened “periodically” to provide consumer feedback on “out-of-state television advertising.” Immediately prior to the campaign ad stimuli, subjects saw an ad for a minivan to help maintain the illusion of a consumer preference focus group. Financial compensation for nonstudent participation ranged from $30 to $40 per person. Approximately 39 percent of the sample was aged between eighteen and twenty-one, while overall the age distribution centered on a mean of about thirty and a maximum of sixty-eight. 27
After recruitment, subjects were randomly assigned to one of the four stimulus groups. These different groups constitute the key independent variable for this analysis: the presence of biographical and party cues for the same candidate. Tim Walz was depicted identically except for varying these key attributes into four groups: a control group with no service featured and no party featured (group 1), service featured and no party featured (group 2), service featured and Republican affiliation featured (group 3), service featured and Democrat affiliation featured (group 4).
Three central dependent variables were measured after the ad and push card stimuli. The primary dependent variable measured subjects’ perceptions of issue competence regarding defense and national security. The question wording asked for subjects’ perceptions of how well Tim Walz would “handle” defense and national security for the issue competence hypothesis, using a 0–100 scale. In addition, two more questions queried subjects for their perceptions about Walz’s qualifications as a leader for the leadership hypothesis and how much they like Walz for the affect hypothesis using the same 0–100 scale for each. In order to test the data and see if military service cues altered perceptions related to these hypotheses, analysis of variance (ANOVA) models follow. 28 ANOVA tests for differences between the groups, telling us whether the military service and party cues engender changes in how people perceive the candidate.
Findings
To see any effect of exposure to a candidate with different military and party information, the analysis compares respondents’ perceptions between groups and tests for differences in the means of the dependent variables between groups. Table 1 comprises descriptive statistics about perceptions of issue competence on national defense and security, his perceived leadership qualities, as well as subjects’ affect toward Tim Walz. Perhaps, as a surprise to those expecting higher perceptions of leadership skills or higher affect for a military veteran, respondents did not express substantively different perceptions of the candidate’s leadership qualities nor did they simply like him more when confronted with a version of the campaign stimuli that included previous military service information. Yet, comparing mean scores between stimuli groups on Table 1 reveals large differences in perceptions of defense and security competence based on whether people saw Tim Walz as a military veteran or not. The control group that saw the campaign material that did not feature or mention his military service assessed his competence at defense and security issues around 35 on the 0–100 scale. In contrast, the remaining three groups, comprised of people who saw him as a military veteran in the TV ad and the handbill, assessed Walz’s defense and security competence at a score that almost doubles the first group’s score. The statistically significant difference between the control group and the other groups ranges between 29 and 37 points (p ≤ .00). Due to random allocation of subjects to the stimulus groups, the statistical and substantive gap between those exposed to the military version of Tim Walz versus the control version without army service provides strong evidence that citizens easily use the military service cue when assessing issue competence in a low-information environment. When using ANOVA to test whether the experimental stimuli influenced perceptions of defense and security issue competence, leadership, and affect, the same results occur. Adding the military service cue to the candidate was statistically significant for defense and security. F(1, 78) = 26.7, p ≤ .00, but there was no such distinction for either leadership, F(1, 76) = 0.24, p = .62, or affect, F(1, 78) = 0.15, p = .70. 29
Summary Statistics of Perceptions of Issue Competence, Leadership, and Affect.
Note: Cells include mean values for the 0–100 scale, standard deviation (s x), and number of subjects (n) within parentheses. Boldface values indicate statistically significant independent sample t test when contrasted with control group (p ≤ .05).
To test for differences between the groups, the analysis uses ANOVA (see Table 2). 30 Model 1 in Table 2 is the simplest test, a test of the categorical variable “Group,” which has four values for each stimulus group. The statistically significant F statistic reveals at least one intergroup difference, demonstrating that candidate biography influences how the subjects prospectively evaluated his ability to handle security and defense issues. To parse the same question in a different way, the second ANOVA includes dummy variables for each group except the control group (model 2). It is statistically equivalent to the first test but provides further elaboration that exposure to the stimuli leads to different impressions of the candidate’s ability to handle security and defense issues. Group 2, the subjects who saw the candidate as a military veteran, held substantially higher impressions of his ability to work on defense policy matters than the subjects who saw an otherwise identical candidate without military service. Making the veteran candidate a Republican or Democrat did little alter this pattern: the military service cue impelled subjects to have elevated prospective evaluations of Tim Walz’s ability to handle defense issues whether they learned he was a Republican (group 3) or a Democrat (group 4).
Perception of Issue Competence on Defense and Security Issues.
Note: Results from analysis of variance (ANOVA), with boldface F values statistically significant (p ≤ .05). The Group term comes from the omnibus four-value categorical variable measuring to which stimulus groups respondents belonged. “Vet Candidate” variables are dummy variables indicating membership in a stimulus group, detailed in Table 1. Party identification is measured trichotomously with “Independent,” the omitted category. “SS” indicates sum of squares, “df” is degrees of freedom, “F” is ANOVA’s F statistic, “p” is the .00 to 1.00 probability that the F statistic arises due to the chance, and “n” is number of subjects.
Given the possibility that Democratic identifiers in the electorate may differ from Republican identifiers in the way they perceive military service cues from candidates, model 3 tests the group variable in a k-way ANOVA (with k factors, sometimes called factorial ANOVA) along with measures of the subjects’ party proclivities. Including these two covariates of the subjects’ party preferences controls for the role that party loyalty may play, and the significance of the F statistic reveals whether party drives subjects’ impressions. Coding the party identification of the subjects includes a dummy variable for Republican subjects and one for Democratic subjects, leaving independents as the omitted category. The large perception gap on defense issue handling between stimulus groups 1 versus 2, 3, and 4 does not diminish when adding subjects’ party identification to the ANOVA. Figure 1 visually displays the mean predicted value of defense issue competence for each group after controlling for subjects’ party identification with 95 percent confidence intervals using the ANOVA results from model 3. The F statistics for party identification fail to rise to statistical significance, meaning that subjects’ party loyalties did not color their impressions of the candidate’s issue handling capacity.
Perceptions of defense issue competence comparisons between groups. Note: Dots indicate the linear prediction of perceptions of defense and security issue competence by group, assuming that party identification is “independent.” Predictions are based on two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) results from Table 2, model 3 (factors include the stimulus group variable and subjects’ party), using Stata’s “margins” command (version 11.2). Confidence intervals (95 percent) around the linear predictions are shown as vertical capped lines extended above and below dots.
Do citizens’ party loyalties mediate their views of candidates’ issue competence differently depending on whether the candidate is a Republican or a Democrat? Beyond demonstrating that the military service cue enhances perceptions of defense-related issue competence, it is important to examine the interactive effects of subjects’ partisan proclivities and candidate party and biographic cues on perceptions of issue competence. Previous scholarship found that some issues are within one party’s territory more than the other, and the issue of national defense and security has generally been seen as a Republican issue. In order to assess the role that party plays in these perceptions of issue competence by potential voters, the next analytic steps involve interacting the subjects’ self-reported party identification with the different candidate party affiliation stimuli.
If the subjects’ partisan identifications were to mitigate the relationship between the stimulus and perceptions of issue competence, we would see statistical significance among the interaction terms in models 4–7 on Table 3. Model 4 includes the stimulus group variable, the dummy variables for subjects’ party, and the interactions between them (e.g. “Stimuli × Dem. Subject”). Models 5 and 6 are similar but modeled differently by constraining the analysis to two stimuli. They limit the analysis to only two groups, the control (candidate with no service, no party) and either group 3 (candidate with service, Republican) or group 4 (candidate with service, Democrat). If the interaction terms’ F statistics yield statistically significant results, the subjects rewarded veterans of their party or punished veterans of the other party in their impressions of defense issue handling. Models 4–7 test the hypothesis that partisans in the subject pool see a veteran candidate in a better light than a nonveteran candidate when he is of their own party differently than if he is of the other party. We expected subjects to reward veteran candidates of their own party more than those from the other party. However, the results do not suggest this cross-party punishment. None of the interactions in models 4–6 were significant. Rather, Republican subjects exposed to a Democratic veteran Walz assessed him equivalently as Democratic subjects assessed the Republican veteran version of Walz. Democrat subjects, when confronted with a Republican veteran version of Walz, give the same assessment of issue credibility on defense matters as the Republican subjects. Republican identifiers did not “punish” the Democratic veteran version of Walz substantially differently from how Democratic identifiers treat the Republican veteran version of Walz. An additional test, model 7, includes subjects exposed to a military version of Tim Walz (groups 3 and 4 only) and varies the candidate’s party affiliation. The purpose of this test is an extension of the cross-party hypothesis, evaluating whether subjects’ party colors their impression of the candidate differently for a Democratic version of the candidate or a Republican version without the control group. It is a comparison of candidate party with military service constant, but the test reveals no effect. The candidate’s military service cue influences perceptions of issue competence but the party cues did not.
Perception of Issue Competence on Defense and Security Issues.
Note: Results from analysis of variance (ANOVA) with boldfaced F values statically significant (p ≤ .01). The Group term comes from the four-value categorical variable that measures to which stimulus groups respondents belonged. Party identification is measured trichotomously with “Independent” the omitted category. “SS” indicates sum of squares, “df” is degrees of freedom, “F” is ANOVA’s F statistic, “p” is the 0.00 to 1.00 probability that the F statistic arises due to the chance, and “n” is number of subjects.
Discussion: Candidate Biography and Issue Competence
By exposing an arbitrary sample of potential voters to TV advertising and handbills designed to measure the effect of military experience biography cues, this study demonstrates that a candidate’s past in the armed forces can help voters’ perceptions of their ability to handle defense issues. Results from the subjects within the experimental setting presented here demonstrate that adding military service to an otherwise identical candidate’s biography dramatically enhanced their perceived competence on military matters. There are probably many reasons why candidates with military service have, throughout American history, expended much campaign activity featuring their experience in the armed forces in an attempt to promote it as a campaign theme, including demonstrating patriotism, civic duty, service to nation, selflessness, or following family or national tradition. If veterans enjoy any advantage in how voters see them, it appears to stem neither from a simple affect toward veterans nor from assumed leadership credentials. What seems clear, based on these findings, is that candidates can also expect voters to grant candidates an assumption that vets can handle issues of national defense and security well.
While the stimulus in this experimental context is ephemeral and the measurement of the dependent variable occurs immediately after the treatment, it bears reminding that the amount of information that voters know and use for down-ballot races in Congressional or state legislative races is limited. As Popkin and many others have repeatedly demonstrated, voters rely on a diminished array of candidate characteristics when making their decisions compared to the totality of possible criteria and data available. 31 In this sense, the contrast depicted in Figure 1 above (between those in the control group exposed to a candidate without party or military cues vs. one with no party cue and a military cue) is the one voters are more likely to face because ads rarely include party cues to potential voters.
Providing military service biographic cues made a specific impression upon the way potential voters see the candidate and how he might perform as an incumbent. Military service as a biographic cue did not provide a nonspecific, across-the-board rise in broad perceptions of Tim Walz. On the contrary, military service did not drive perceptions of leadership ability nor even general affect toward the candidate. In other words, the results of elevated issue competence perceptions are not due to the simple popularity and general respect afforded to those with military service. Evaluations of Walz’s leadership ability and likeability were unchanged when he was presented with military service compared to his nonveteran doppelganger.
Normative questions about the desirability of having individuals with military experience become elected civilian leaders have existed for quite some time. 32 For a country founded on antimilitaristic whiggish traditions with clear evidence of fears of a standing army within its charter, the United States has elevated a strikingly high number of men with short and long military experience to high office, including the presidency. 33 One reason that the relevance of these findings about how voters perceive veteran candidacies may extend beyond the electoral link is that scholars have found policy differences between veteran and nonveteran officeholders. On most domestic policy preferences, there appeared very little difference between veterans and nonveterans in Congress. 34 On foreign policy questions, however, there were substantial differences in the likelihood of initiating armed conflict as well as differences in the propensity to escalate extant conflicts between political elites with and without military experience. Higher numbers of veterans in elite positions deters the initiation of armed conflict but increases the tendency to escalate extant conflicts. 35
The usual caveats of experimental methodology warrant repeating when reporting results from this type of analysis. With increased control and isolation of the desired stimuli in laboratory-style experiments to bolster the ability to recognize causation comes a commensurate decline in the external validity of the results. While the results above demonstrate substantial and statistically significant increases in subjects’ perceptions of issue competence based on military service, we cannot extend a corollary that asserts military veterans enjoy a commensurate boon in votes on Election Day. Perceptions of issue competence are not votes. When examining twenty-first-century US House election outcomes, previous military service has only an infrequent and small effect upon increasing a candidate’s share of the vote when controlling for other correlates of candidate performance. 36 Another cause for reporting these results with a circumspect tone involves the likely confounding role of priming. Subjects who viewed campaign materials with Walz’s military service were confronted with voice-over, text, and imagery featuring a man wearing camouflage saluting along with stark reminders that 2006 was a wartime election. It is difficult to disentangle perfectly the subjects’ knowledge that the country had troops in two active war zones from an independent assessment that Tim Walz the veteran might be better at handling those issues if he gets to Congress. Yet, despite concerns endemic to experimental designs, the findings here help scholars understand the linkage between candidates’ military experience and voters in the electoral environment. By recognizing a link between TV advertising and perceptions of defense-related issue competence, we can better understand what influences potential voters’ assessments of how well candidates can “handle” these issues.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
This research enjoyed financial support from the Ramapo College Foundation. While the article’s shortcomings belong to the author, several individuals assisted with the research and article: Julie George, Michael Unger, Brian Arbour, Danny Hayes, Laura McKenna, Pat Shields, Brian Autenrieth, Jennifer Doran, Christopher Ash, Joan Capizzi, Lysandra Perez-Strumolo, James Woodley, and Louise Taylor.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.