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International Journal of Public Opinion Research Advance Access originally published online on April 30, 2008
International Journal of Public Opinion Research 2008 20(2):211-223; doi:10.1093/ijpor/edn022
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The World Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved.

What were the Elections about, and Why We Should Ask about it in Election Surveys

Michal Shamir and Jacob Shamir

Address correspondence to Michal Shamir, Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv Israel 69978, E-mail: m3600@post.tau.ac.il Jacob Shamir, Department of Communication and Journalism, the Hebrew University, Mount Scopus Campus, Jerusalem Israel 91905, E-mail: jshamir@mscc.huji.ac.il

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Elections are a prime topic of research for political scientists, given that they are the major apparatus of democracy. However the bulk of the studies focus on voting behavior and election campaigns. Thus, we know much about how the vote is structured and what enters voters’ calculus, how election campaigns are devised and how they affect voters. We know much less about what the elections mean, how the meaning of election outcomes is constructed, whether the public sees them in the same way as the political community, what affects election interpretations, what produces mandate election interpretations, and what impact the ‘conventional wisdom’ about the election has on politics.

In this research note we put forward the argument that ‘what the elections were about’ is an important question; that it is an understudied question; and that survey research can and should contribute to its study. We illustrate our argument with empirical . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   ELECTION INTERPRETATION IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION AND SURVEY RESEARCH
 

   ELECTIONS AS PRIVATE OPINION/VOTE AND AS THE CLIMATE OF OPINION
 

   WHY IS ELECTION INTERPRETATION IMPORTANT AND WHY SHOULD WE ASK ABOUT IT IN NATIONAL ELECTION SURVEYS?
 

   WHAT WERE RECENT ISRAELI ELECTIONS ABOUT?
 
INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL ‘STANDARD’ VOTING ANALYSIS
CLIMATE OF OPINION: POST-ELECTION MEDIA INTERPRETATIONS
CLIMATE OF OPINION: POST-ELECTION INTERPRETATIONS OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC

   CONCLUSION: WHAT WERE THE ELECTIONS ABOUT
 

   APPENDIX: METHODOLOGICAL DETAILS
 
ISRAEL NATIONAL ELECTION STUDIES (INES): PRE-ELECTION SURVEYS
CONTENT ANALYSIS
POST-ELECTION SURVEYS

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