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The Dog that Didn't Bark: The Role of Canines in the 2008 Campaign

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2010

Diana C. Mutz
Diana C. Mutz
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University
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Abstract

Using the most extensive dataset available on the 2008 election, I examine the impact of dog ownership on presidential vote preference. Canines were elevated to the status of a campaign issue when, during the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama publicly promised his daughters a dog after the election was over, a campaign promise that has since been fulfilled. However, this announcement appears to have unintentionally highlighted the absence of a key point of potential identification between this candidate and voters, and thus to have significantly undermined the likelihood that dog-owning voters would support Obama. I elaborate upon the implications of this finding for future presidential candidates.

Type
Features
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , October 2010 , pp. 707 - 712
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2010

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