Assimilation and Contrast of Presidential Candidates'Issue Positions, 1972

Voter assimilation, the tendency to exaggerate the similarity between their favored candidate's position on issues and their own position, and contrast, the tendency to exaggerate the distance between their nonpreferred candidate's position on issues and their own position, were examined in the University of Michigan Center for Political Studies 1972 national election study. Significant assimilation effects were found on all nine issues considered, for both McGovern and Nixon voters, replicating and extending findings for the Vietnam issue in 1968 election data. Contrast effects occurred primarily on issues which polarized the electorate and on which the candidates were viewed as distinct. Assimilation was enhanced both by party identification and by attraction to preferred candidate. These moderators did not uniformly enhance contrast. Michael King is Associate Professor of Psychology, California State University, Chico. The author expresses appreciation to Jon Ebeling and Sam Shurtleff for helpful comments on the manuscript. The data for this study were originally collected by the Center for Political Studies of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and were made available for analysis through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Some of the findings in this paper were presented at the Western Psychological Association Meetings at Los Angeles in April, 1976. POQ 41(1977-78) 515-522 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.136 on Thu, 19 May 2016 04:46:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms