Do the Media Have a Direct Impact on the Vote? The Case of the 1997 Canadian Election

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Abstract
This paper establishes the methodological foundations for a systematic analysis of the direct impact of the media on the vote. We propose to combine two different approaches: the ‘linkage’ approach which relates media coverage to voting intentions, and the ‘attentiveness’ approach which compares the vote choice of those who pay most and least attention to television news. We apply these two methods to the 1997 Canadian election. We find support for the hypothesis that, during the election campaign, voting intentions for a party increased (decreased) when media coverage of that party was systematically positive (or negative), among those who followed the news and decided how to vote during the campaign, but we find no evidence that, on election day, those more attentive to the news voted differently from those less attentive. We conclude that the media temporarily moved voting intentions during the course of the 1997 Canadian election but that they appear to have had no direct impact on the final vote.

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