Looking more closely at how the ad may have shifted the intensity of support for Kerry, Figure 3 examines the difference between preferences before and after viewing the commercial. The light blue bars represent a weakening of support from the initial position. For example, after viewing the advertisement, 16 percent of voters who categorized their support for Kerry as definite before they saw the commercial now were less confident. The reduction was even more pronounced among individuals who said they were most likely to vote for Kerry, with 39 percent less confident of their vote after seeing the Swift Boat ad. Even if offset against the 15 percent of voters moving to the most likely category, the net loss in intensity of support was 24 percent.
While decreasing the intensity of support for Kerry among voters, the ad appears to have more marginal effect on the intensity of support for Bush (see Figure 4, light blue bars). For example, while there was a 24 percent net decrease among individuals who originally said they were most likely to support Kerry, there was no net change among those who said they were most likely to support Bush.
To gain some perspective on the changes observed among individuals watching the first Swift Boat advertisement, it's valuable to look at voter reaction to a Kerry campaign advertisement that ran at the same time. During early August, a commercial entitled "Strength" concentrated on the Democratic nominee's acceptance speech at his party's convention. The clips from the speech focused on Kerry's pledge to protect the country as its president, just as he protected the nation while serving in Vietnam. As can be seen in Table 5, the "Strength" advertisement had very little impact on the pre-test/post-test measures of support for Kerry, in marked contrast to the significant movement observed in the "Any Questions" results, especially for independent voters (Figure 5).
TABLE 5
Advertisement - Kerry Campaign "Strength"
Pre-test/Post-test Intent to Vote for John Kerry by Party Affiliation
|
Definitely |
Most Likely |
Leaning |
Not Sure |
|
Pre |
Post |
Pre |
Post |
Pre |
Post |
Pre |
Post |
Democrats (n= 177) |
72% |
74% |
21% |
23% |
6% |
3% |
0% |
0% |
Republican (n = 11) |
42% |
42% |
33% |
42% |
25% |
17% |
0% |
0% |
Independent (n = 62) |
66% |
60% |
21% |
23% |
13% |
17% |
0% |
0% |
Other Party (n =15) |
66% |
66% |
33% |
17% |
0% |
17% |
0% |
0% |
Overall (n = 265) |
69% |
70% |
23% |
23% |
8% |
7% |
0% |
0% |
Figure 6 adds further evidence of the relative ineffectiveness of the "Strength" advertisement, with minimal increases (net gain of 7 percent) in intensity of support among individuals in the most likely category.
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