Fifteen years ago, Kathleen Hall Jamieson wrote a book with a provocative title, Everything You Know About Politics..Is Wrong. In this book Jamieson describes so-called "conventional wisdom" about a wide array of assumed political knowledge and then explains how political science has established that we are wrong about them. For example, most people assume the media have an enormous influence on campaign outcomes, but there is little to no evidence that this is the case. Campaigns are not nastier than they used to be. Politicians actually DO try to make good on their campaign promises. And so on...
If Jamieson was working on an update for this book, she would do well to add a new incorrect bit of wisdom about politics: presidential candidates shift gears once they lock up their party nomination and start behaving differently, emphasizing different issues than those promoted in the primaries, and communicating different ideas than they had earlier in the campaign season. The logic of a so-called "pivot" is sound: candidates must appeal to more ideological or to issue-specific segments of their party in the nominations, but then must realign to the center during the general election comes in order to appeal to a larger, more centrist general election pool of voters.
Despite the elegance of the logic, this is not the case. In fact, candidates do not pivot, but instead continue to use the same message and emphasis that got them the party nomination. Yes, they may incorporate some of the policy stands and issues raised by their competitors in the primaries (Bill Clinton did this with Paul Tsongas in 1992 and Hillary Clinton is doing it with Bernie Sanders in 2016), but there is no evidence that candidates try to change. Even in 2012, when Mitt Romney's campaign staff argued that an "Etch-A-Sketch" moment would occur once Romney secured the nomination, the study I did of Romney speeches in 2012 found no change in issue emphasis, tone, or positions. A Romney speech from September of 2011 is almost identical to a Romney speech in September 2012. In other words, he did not pivot, change, or even modify either his message or the way he talked about his candidacy.
When you hear or read something about how Trump's "pivot" has not happened, remember, it is because candidates do not (and probably cannot) pivot away from the very message they used to be on the national ticket.
Why don't candidates pivot? The reality is that they actually believe what they run on in the first place, and it is a poor tactic, since their earlier positions are on the record and can be used to make the claim that the candidate is (Mercy!) flip-flopping.
Why the conventional wisdom? Well, never let evidence get in the way of either good deductive logic or lazy information processing (if we believe it to be true when we hear it, we do not have to actually investigate whether pivots occur).
If Jamieson was working on an update for this book, she would do well to add a new incorrect bit of wisdom about politics: presidential candidates shift gears once they lock up their party nomination and start behaving differently, emphasizing different issues than those promoted in the primaries, and communicating different ideas than they had earlier in the campaign season. The logic of a so-called "pivot" is sound: candidates must appeal to more ideological or to issue-specific segments of their party in the nominations, but then must realign to the center during the general election comes in order to appeal to a larger, more centrist general election pool of voters.
Despite the elegance of the logic, this is not the case. In fact, candidates do not pivot, but instead continue to use the same message and emphasis that got them the party nomination. Yes, they may incorporate some of the policy stands and issues raised by their competitors in the primaries (Bill Clinton did this with Paul Tsongas in 1992 and Hillary Clinton is doing it with Bernie Sanders in 2016), but there is no evidence that candidates try to change. Even in 2012, when Mitt Romney's campaign staff argued that an "Etch-A-Sketch" moment would occur once Romney secured the nomination, the study I did of Romney speeches in 2012 found no change in issue emphasis, tone, or positions. A Romney speech from September of 2011 is almost identical to a Romney speech in September 2012. In other words, he did not pivot, change, or even modify either his message or the way he talked about his candidacy.
When you hear or read something about how Trump's "pivot" has not happened, remember, it is because candidates do not (and probably cannot) pivot away from the very message they used to be on the national ticket.
Why don't candidates pivot? The reality is that they actually believe what they run on in the first place, and it is a poor tactic, since their earlier positions are on the record and can be used to make the claim that the candidate is (Mercy!) flip-flopping.
Why the conventional wisdom? Well, never let evidence get in the way of either good deductive logic or lazy information processing (if we believe it to be true when we hear it, we do not have to actually investigate whether pivots occur).
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