{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.024933887419720437, 'fraction_numerical': 0.01775595013222516, 'mean_word_length': 5.059496567505721, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Priming Character: Character, Media Influence, and Tony Blair in the 2005 Election in Britain

There is increasing recognition of the importance of party leaders in British elections. The internationalization of domestic politics, growth of the state, erosion of the traditional cleavage of class, and changes in media coverage of elections, have all contributed to the presidentialization of the office of British prime minister (McAllister 2005; Mughan 2000, 2005; Poguntke and Webb 2005). According to Heffernan, “An interest in political celebrity, backed by an ever more prevalent interest in process journalism, magnifies the modern prime minister, placing him or her centre stage in key political processes” (2006, 582). These trends suggest that election campaigns matter more than in the past - because voters’ preferences are less deeply rooted - and that media coverage of leaders may play a key role. The aspects of leadership that matter most to voters and the extent of media influence are, however, not well understood. We know that the media tend to focus more on process and personality than on issues in elections (Deacon et al. 2001), for example, but how, if at all, this affects voters is unknown. In this paper, we examine the structure of leadership evaluations and the influence of media on them in the context of the 2005 general election. We find that while perceptions of Blair’s competence, responsiveness, and trustworthiness all mattered in 2005, perceptions of trust far outweighed competence and responsiveness in driving evaluations of Blair. We also find an impact of the media’s focus on personality and character on the weight given to perceptions of Blair’s responsiveness and trustworthiness in particular - priming effects. For example, a greater focus on character - we follow convention by using the term “character” to describe stories about leaders as individuals or personalities rather than policies - in Labour and Conservative newspapers enhanced the impact of perceptions of his trustworthiness on feelings toward Tony Blair but diminished the impact of responsiveness. We discuss the implications for vote choice. Finally, we find an impact of the number of stories about character and the tone of those stories in 2005, both of which are moderated by the editorial stance of a newspaper. Thus, the editorial stance of British newspapers still seems to matter as much as their tone of coverage, indicating that the observed dealignment of the British press (Bartle 2005) has not eliminated the influence of reading a newspaper that endorses a party, no matter how qualified that endorsement may be.